Tinatin Tabidze: Maximizing Agile Team Success, A Scrum Master’s Guide to Self-Organizing Teams

In this podcast episode, Tinatin focuses on the idea that the less a scrum master is needed, the more successful they are. She emphasizes the importance of helping teams become more self-organizing and notes that the path to achieving this will vary for each team. Tinatin stresses the role of the product owner in promoting self-organization, and she suggests checking the team’s level of participation in ceremonies as a starting point for evaluating the team’s self-organization. She also encourages scrum masters to be honest about any areas where the team may be lacking in self-organization, and to discuss these areas with the team in retrospectives. Tinatin reminds scrum masters to keep themselves accountable for the level of self-organization in their team, and asks the question of how to take teams to the next level.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: The Squad Health Check

Tinatin discusses the Spotify squad health check, a process of self-reflection for a team to evaluate their performance. She emphasizes the importance of regularly conducting health checks and tailoring retrospectives to the current sprint. Tinatin suggests using ice breakers to start the health check, then moving into an inspection of the completed sprint by checking metrics and the improvement backlog. She emphasizes the importance of evaluating what happened in the last sprint to identify areas for improvement.

Retrospectives, planning sessions, vision workshops, we are continuously helping teams learn about how to collaborate in practice! In this Actionable Agile Tools book, Jeff Campbell shares some of the tools he’s learned over a decade of coaching Agile Teams. The pragmatic coaching book you need, right now! Buy Actionable Agile Tools on Amazon, or directly from the author, and supercharge your facilitation toolbox!

About Tinatin Tabidze

Tinatin Tabidze is a Scrum Master currently working in Stuttgart, Germany. Originally she started out as a project manager. She has experience with multiple scrum and kanban teams, working with scaled agile frameworks.

You can link with Tinatin Tabidze on LinkedIn.

BONUS: Karin Tenelius, Self-management in practice for Scrum teams and entire organizations

How to help teams self-organize, and why that matters to Scrum teams. Success stories from self-organizing teams.

Karin shares stories from her recent book: Moose Heads on the Table: Stories About Self-Managing Organisations from Sweden.

✋ We are organizing a self-organization masterclass for Scrum Masters. It’s a unique opportunity to talk to Karin and get direct coaching from the author of one of the latest self-organization books. Don’t miss this chance!

Karin’s book’s title “Moose Heads on the Table” is a reference to a method she describes that helps her work with teams towards self-organization. We start this episode by discussing what that metaphor means, and why it is so critical for teams wanting to self-organize.

Karin refers that it is critical to bring up the hot topics (the Moose heads) and discuss those openly and without judgment. It is not always necessary to have an idea of what a solution would look like, and being open about that with the teams is actually a bonus in the self-organization process!

Being a CEO in a business you don’t know anything about, and succeeding wildly!

Continue reading BONUS: Karin Tenelius, Self-management in practice for Scrum teams and entire organizations

Catrine Björkegren: How to facilitate a Scrum team self-selection process, the essence of self-organization

When the organizations we work with need to adapt, sometimes that means changing the team composition. In this episode, we talk about a project that required the teams to re-organize and find a new way to collaborate. We discuss the impact of distribution on team formation and dive deep into a process of self-selection: when teams create themselves by allowing team members to find the right group to contribute to a mission.

About Catrine Björkegren

Agile coach and scrum master, Catrine has worked with agile for a decade in various areas like education, nuclear waste, government agencies, pharmaceutical and at the Royal Swedish Opera.

She believes that co-location is the key to building teams and that leadership is the key to successful agile transformation.

You can link with Catrine Björkegren on LinkedIn and connect with Catrine Björkegren on Twitter.

How to help Self-organization get started in the team – Q&A with Jeff Campbell

Jeff is the author of Actionable Agile tools (available on Amazon, and direct from the author at bit.ly/aatbook). He joins us on this series of Q&A shows to answer questions you’ve submitted. You can submit your questions via our survey (short, about 2 min to fill-in) or by tweeting us @scrumpodcast with #agilejeff.

In this episode, we talk about getting management to understand and learn how to support and promote self-organization by the team.

Helping teams and managers adopt self-organization as a way to improve the team’s impact

Continue reading How to help Self-organization get started in the team – Q&A with Jeff Campbell

BONUS: Karin Tenelius on how Self-organization can have a major positive business impact

Karin has a long experience helping teams and businesses to use self-organization as a way to drive business success. She’s worked as an interim-CEO in several companies where she helped drive major changes and positive business results using the principles and ideas behind self-organization.

Self-organization is not only for small teams. Karin shares with us the stories of the businesses where she worked, and how some fundamental changes enabled not only self-organization but also major business changes.

Read on for the detailed insights from this episode.

Continue reading BONUS: Karin Tenelius on how Self-organization can have a major positive business impact