quality Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Nousheen Manzoor: A death march project, from a Scrum Master perspective

In this project, there were several teams working on different aspects of the project: UI, Data, etc. The Project Manager pushed the different teams to “deliver”, even if that was done at the expense of quality. Nousheen, wanting to help, started to push the team as well, leaving some of the critical aspects of being a Scrum Master behind. Listen in to learn how the “push to deliver” created a negative spiral for the project, and learn some of the key lessons Nousheen got from that project.

About Nousheen Manzoor

Nousheen believes that the future of leadership is kindness and empathy, and the same goes for any role which involves individuals and teams, like the Scrum Master role!

You can link with Nousheen Manzoor on LinkedIn.

SPECIAL XMAS BONUS: Team Performance Predictors, with Sally Elatta

When we look at team performance in a business, we need to take into account 3 different metrics. Sally explains those 3 key metrics at the start of this episode, and we dive into why some metrics are good leading indicators of team performance.

As we dive into performance metrics, we discuss what are some of the enablers for team performance, as well as how leaders, and leadership teams can positively impact the agility and performance of their teams.

Measuring Maturity, Performance and Outcomes, the critical aspects of performance

Continue reading SPECIAL XMAS BONUS: Team Performance Predictors, with Sally Elatta

Julio de Lima: How a QA engineer can help the PO get closer to the team

Being closer to the team, and the user are two important aspects of the PO work in a Scrum team. In this episode, we also about the QA engineer role in the relationship between the team and the PO.

The Great Product Owner: The User-centered PO

A great PO will help the team focus on the user, and understand what their needs are when they use the product. The PO helps the team understand, and focus on the interactions with the product, instead of the code or the technical details.

The Bad Product Owner: How a QA engineer can help the PO get closer to the team

When PO’s work mostly on their own, and share little with the team beyond the basic specifications for User Stories, a gap emerges in the relationship and later in the understanding of the product. But in these cases, the QA engineer can help the PO get closer to the team, and we explore how in this segment.

Are you having trouble helping the team working 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 Julio de Lima

Julio is a Principal QA Engineer working for Capco that believes in the Culture of QA. He has been sharing professional insights and experiences on a daily basis and has more than 4500 students in his 4 online courses. In 2020, he was elected the Brazilian Testing reference practitioner.

You can link with Julio de Lima on LinkedIn and connect with Julio de Lima on Twitter.

Julio de Lima: Success for QA engineers and Scrum Masters

Julio is a Quality Assurance (QA) engineer, so we discuss what does it mean to be a successful QA engineer in a Scrum/Agile team. In this conversation, we talk about the need to help the whole team feel responsible for the quality of their deliverable. In other words, we talk about how to get the whole team to think like a QA engineer.

We also talk about the focus on this episode: success as a Scrum Master. In this regard, Julio shares how Scrum Masters can work with QA engineers specifically, to help them improve, and work better with the rest of the team. In this segment, we also discuss some of the pitfalls of estimation.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: People, Process and Technology

Julio’s preferred formats revolve around the triad of improvement: people, processes, and technology. He describes how he usually organizes retrospectives around these three topics, and how teams reacted when he deviated from these 3 topics.

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About Julio de Lima

You can link with Julio de Lima on LinkedIn and connect with Julio de Lima on Twitter.

Julio de Lima: The strikingly different role for QA leads in Agile organizations

As Julio’s career evolved, he started facing a waterfall anti-pattern: the status chaser. Julio’s superiors expected him to be intimately familiar with all the details of what was happening with every team, and every tester in his team. This led to an important personal change for Julio, a change that every QA lead needs to go through when working with Scrum/Agile teams.

About Julio de Lima

You can link with Julio de Lima on LinkedIn and connect with Julio de Lima on Twitter.