Rasmus Lund-Jensen Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Rasmus Lund-Jensen: Can developers be great Product Owners? Two contrasting Agile stories

The Great Product Owner: The developer that became a great PO!

This Product Owner had been a very skilled developer (just like the Bad PO story), however the reason why this skilled developer had moved to the PO position was because he wanted to have a higher impact, and saw that the PO position helped achieve that impact. This PO was able to communicate with stakeholders, and represent the product as well as the technical perspective of the team. The PO was able to listen to, and respect the team’s perspective in a way that made the team feel trusted.

In this segment, we refer to situational leadership.

The Bad Product Owner: The developers that became a bad PO!

Rasmus shares with us the story of a developer that, being motivated by the prestige and salary, wanted to move to the PO position. The developer saw that as the only way to progress in the career, and that’s when the problems started. Listen in to learn about the many anti-patterns that developed because of this career move that was motivated by all the wrong reasons.

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 Rasmus Lund-Jensen

Rasmus is an agile coach and Scrum Master from Denmark. He is passionate about finding pragmatic ways for teams to reach their potential. He previously spent six years at the LEGO Group where he learned the power of bad jokes. If people are laughing, it means they are listening.

You can link with Rasmus Lund-Jensen on LinkedIn and connect with Rasmus Lund-Jensen his website.

Rasmus Lund-Jensen: Helping Agile teams deliver, the success focus for Scrum Masters

Scrum Masters help others “do”, and because of that they are further away from the delivery work, making it hard to understand – sometimes – how we contribute to that delivery. Rasmus shares with us tips and questions to ask that helps us understand how we help teams deliver and succeed.

In this segment, we refer to the Monday episode, where Rasmus talks about an Agile transformation story.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Setting up Conversations, a key Scrum Master skill

Although Rasmus shares with us a structured format, he starts by asking us to create moments of pure conversation with the team. Creating the conditions for conversations to happen on a regular basis is Rasmus’ favorite approach to Agile Retrospectives. The structure format he shares with us is the Sailboat Retrospective, which we’ve covered in the past from multiple perspectives.

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About Rasmus Lund-Jensen

You can link with Rasmus Lund-Jensen on LinkedIn and connect with Rasmus Lund-Jensen his website.

Rasmus Lund-Jensen: A change technique that motivates and engages Agile teams in the transformation

In this episode, we share the story of a transformation, and how people started to imagine the worst possible scenario. This led to bigger and bigger problems. Rasmus shares how a communication approach he calls: frequent, short and boring town halls helped dispel those disaster scenarios that people had in mind, and helped communicate the “why” and “how” of the transformation in a way that engaged the organization.

About Rasmus Lund-Jensen

You can link with Rasmus Lund-Jensen on LinkedIn and connect with Rasmus Lund-Jensen his website.

Rasmus Lund-Jensen: How even the best teams can forget what Agile is about, and how to fix it

This team was succeeding in the improving and implementation of their practices. They were in control of the testing. They were doing most things right. As they felt more comfortable, they started thinking about the future, and decided to invest in tackling a future risk with a “quick” hackathon. What happened next was both surprising and instructive on how, even the best teams, can lose sight of what Agile is all about.

In this segment, we refer to the Tuckman model of team development.

Featured Book of the Week: I’m Afraid Debbie From Marketing Has Left for the Day by Munster

How do we make changes stick in the real world? Munster’s I’m Afraid Debbie From Marketing Has Left for the Day is about asking the right questions to understand how change can be implemented in a way that sticks. In this segment we also refer to Thinking Fast and Slow by Kahneman.

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 Rasmus Lund-Jensen

You can link with Rasmus Lund-Jensen on LinkedIn and connect with Rasmus Lund-Jensen his website.

Rasmus Lund-Jensen: When the teams push back on Scrum, an Agile transformation story

Rasmus was helping an organization in their Agile transformation. In this organization only a few people had seen such a transformation before. Many were going through the first Agile transformation. When management, Product Owners and Scrum Masters recommended the teams use Scrum, they got an immediate push back. The teams saw Kanban as a more adequate method for them. An immediate stand-off emerged that made the work with the teams very difficult. Listen in to learn what Rasmus learned from that story, and what the organization ended up doing to help the teams get started with Scrum.

About Rasmus Lund-Jensen

You can link with Rasmus Lund-Jensen on LinkedIn and connect with Rasmus Lund-Jensen his website.