Nancy Beers Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Nancy Beers: The anti-pattern of long product backlogs

From the Visionary PO to the PO that was down in the weeds of an overly long backlog, we discuss two contrasting examples of a sense of clarity and focus in the PO role.

The Great Product Owner: Speaking both technical and stakeholder language

Great PO’s combine a great product Vision (and the ability to communicate it), with savvy stakeholder management and communication. Additionally, a great PO is able to work with the team to understand when it is time to “pay down” some technical debt, and makes the case towards the stakeholders.

In this segment, we refer to the Scrum Master Toolbox’s Compelling Product Vision e-course (FREE when you sign-up), and the Tetris game.

The Bad Product Owner: The anti-pattern of long backlogs

One of the main tools for PO’s is the Backlog (both Sprint and Product Backlogs). However, many PO’s aren’t able to use that tool effectively. In this segment, we talk about the PO that was not able to keep the backlog short, and explore how Scrum Masters can help PO’s manage the Backlog effectively, as if it was a garden.

Are you having trouble helping the team work well with their Product Owner? We’ve put together a course to help you work on the collaboration team-product owner. You can find it at bit.ly/coachyourpo. 18 modules, 8+ hours of modules with tools and techniques that you can use to help teams and PO’s collaborate.

About Nancy Beers

Nancy says she is here to change the world one game at a time. She plays with people to learn or unlearn things. This can either be hard skills or soft skills (aka. Human skills)

You can link with Nancy Beers on LinkedIn and connect with Nancy Beers on Twitter.

Nancy Beers: Taking advantage of Agile Retrospectives BEFORE the retrospective takes place

While retrospectives are a critical part of the Sprint, and the team’s evolution over time, there’s a problem when “everything” gets discussed only in the retrospective. Nancy shares her perspective on the importance of team conversations during the Sprint, right when the events to be analyzed take place.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: “Get out of your head” retrospectives

Nancy is an avid gamer, and regularly adapts and creates games to help her in her work with teams. In this segment, we talk about how we can use certain games to help teams “get out of their head”, and learn to listen to the emotions caused by certain events in the sprint.

In this segment, we refer to Rory Story Cubes, a fun tool we can use to help teams be more creative in analysing the events of the Sprint.

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About Nancy Beers

Nancy says she is here to change the world one game at a time. She plays with people to learn or unlearn things. This can either be hard skills or soft skills (aka. Human skills)

You can link with Nancy Beers on LinkedIn and connect with Nancy Beers on Twitter.

Nancy Beers: Adapting Scrum for Operations, a real-life story

Nancy and her colleagues were working with a team from the customer service and account management department. As they worked more with those teams, it was clear that the “vanilla” approach would not fit those teams’ needs, so they started adapting some ideas from Scrum to that local context. In that process, they created SCROP, Scrum for Operations. Listen in to learn how you can adapt Scrum to operational teams like sales teams or customer service teams.

About Nancy Beers

Nancy says she is here to change the world one game at a time. She plays with people to learn or unlearn things. This can either be hard skills or soft skills (aka. Human skills)

You can link with Nancy Beers on LinkedIn and connect with Nancy Beers on Twitter.

Nancy Beers: Why the Scrum Master work with stakeholders is critical for the teams’ success

Nancy was working with a team that was high-energy and focused on delivering value. Every sprint they tried to ship software, but there was always something that was preventing them from releasing. Over time, the team and Nancy tried to bring that up with stakeholders, but all they got was “blame” for not delivering to production. And then the team lost it… Listen in to learn how teams may react when external blockers are identified, talked about, but never solved.

Featured Book of the Week: Three books to help you perfect the team’s routines and calendar

In this segment, we talk about 3 books that, as Nancy puts it, bring together 3 important lessons for Scrum Masters that try to help their teams perform. The books are: Drive by Daniel Pink, When by Daniel Pink, and Deep Work by Cal Newport. These books helped Nancy reconsider the cycle she sets up for her teams with the aim to help them perform better. In this segment, we also refer to Ayurveda, and Team Coaching.

How can Angela (the Agile Coach) quickly build healthy relationships with the teams she’s supposed to help? What were the steps she followed to help the Breeze App team fight off the competition? Find out how Angela helped Naomi and the team go from “behind” to being ahead of Intuition Bank, by focusing on the people! Download the first 4 chapters of the BOOK for FREE while it is in Beta!

About Nancy Beers

Nancy says she is here to change the world one game at a time. She plays with people to learn or unlearn things. This can either be hard skills or soft skills (aka. Human skills)

You can link with Nancy Beers on LinkedIn and connect with Nancy Beers on Twitter.

Nancy Beers: When transparency is no longer an advantage for a Scrum Master

Nancy has a background as both a project manager, as well as an Open Source contributor. Through her career, she eventually realized that the Scrum Master role would be a better fit for her because, as she puts it, it is about working with technology and humans, together! In this episode, we focus on that human aspect, and we learn that – sometimes – being transparent can have negative consequences. Listen in to learn how and when transparency can hurt you in the role of the Scrum Master.

About Nancy Beers

Nancy says she is here to change the world one game at a time. She plays with people to learn or unlearn things. This can either be hard skills or soft skills (aka. Human skills)

You can link with Nancy Beers on LinkedIn and connect with Nancy Beers on Twitter.