Gemma Murray: Maximizing Impact of Agile Coaching at Moo, Feedback and Measurement Strategies

In this episode, Gemma discusses her work as an agile coach at Moo and how they measure the impact they have on the organization. She emphasizes that feedback is important but measurement helps us reflect and grow. When it comes to defining success, she shares that to measure the impact of their coaching, the coaches at Moo use engagement surveys that touch on Scrum values and use one or two of the survey questions to build their agile coach OKR’s. These metrics provide a lagging indicator but at the same time, they help the coaches define shorter term actions, and metrics, and eventually the OKR’s help measure their impact on a longer time scale.

In addition to using engagement surveys, they also use collaboration questions for which they ask an evaluation on a 1-5 scale to measure the level of collaboration among teams towards a shared goal. The collaboration questions align with their OKR’s as Agile Coaches and help them to see the impact they are having on the organization.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Simplifying Agile Retrospectives to amplify their impact on Scrum teams

In this segment, Gemma shares her favorite approach to conducting agile retrospectives. She emphasizes the importance of keeping the format simple, especially for new teams or teams that are adapting to retrospectives. Gemma shares one example, where she uses a smiley face column, a sad face column, and a question mark column to initiate a wide-ranging conversation and to capture various types of feedback and perspectives. To complement the conversation, she captures the action items that the team wants to put into practice, using frameworks such as CAT (Concrete, Attainable, Timely) and SMART. Gemma views retrospectives as a conversational format and emphasizes the importance of asking “what’s the next immediate step?” and making small changes that have a big impact. Additionally, she mentions the 15% solutions from liberating structures and Toyota Kata as helpful tools in facilitating agile retrospectives.

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 Gemma Murray

Gemma works as an Agile Coach for MOO, a branding company whose vision is to provide ‘Great design for everyone’. Having worked in various change roles using both waterfall and agile approaches throughout her career, Gemma believes in the diversity of teams to unlock innovation, creativity and delivering value.

You can link with Gemma Murray on LinkedIn.

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: Embracing Self-Awareness and Empathy in the Agile Change Process, Insights from Dustin Thostenson

In this episode, we explore Dustin’s personal experience with change during his career and share his lessons learned, and experiences with change in teams. Dustin notes that while he has found certain practices to be successful, sometimes things do not work out and this can lead to consequences like being fired. Dustin asks us to consider if our  behavior could be perceived as telling others they are doing things wrong instead of being considered helpful by the team.

The Importance of Self-Awareness and Empathy in Agile Software Development

Continue reading BONUS: Embracing Self-Awareness and Empathy in the Agile Change Process, Insights from Dustin Thostenson

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