stakeholder collaboration Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Fred Deichler: Learning to communicate uncertainty in Agile planning and in SAFe

Fred joined an organization that had adopted a modified SAFe model. His job was to help the teams do joint planning with the PI (Program Increment) planning event approach from SAFe. He had been asked to help the teams because of them taking too much work into an increment. The first step Fred and the teams took was to spend a bit more time understanding and planning each increment (from 2 days to 1 week of planning time). However, this extra time did not help with the planning accuracy. Even if they planned for longer, the result was still that the teams failed to deliver what they had planned.

That’s when the challenge came from a Senior VP who asked them “how can we do things differently?”

Over the next PI, the teams and Fred came up with a different approach to help visualize and understand the impact of uncertainty over time, and its impact on the results of the PI. Listen in to learn about how to define and communicate planning uncertainty!

As Scrum Master we work with change continuously! Do you have your own change framework that provides the guidance, and queues you need when working with change? The Lean Change Management framework is a fully defined, lean-startup inspired change framework that can be used as the backbone of any change process! You can buy Lean Change Management the book at Amazon. Also available in French, Spanish, German and Portuguese.

About Fred Deichler

Always leaning on the Scrum values and Agile principles (even before he knew about them), Fred has guided numerous teams through their Agile Journeys over his 20-year career in Technology leadership. Driven by a passion for continual improvement and finding a balance between people, process, and tools. And Fred knows his own journey is just as important.

You can link with Fred Deichler on LinkedIn.

Fred Deichler: The opposite of “too dogmatic” isn’t “less dogmatic” for Scrum Masters! Lessons learned in helping teams

Fred had just started his first assignment as a Scrum Master. As he joined the team, he was told that the previous Scrum Master had been too dogmatic. Fred took that as a hint, and focused on being less strict in his Scrum training/mentoring, however as he started to work with the team, things started to unravel. The team was not really working well together, and there was tension between the team and their management/leadership. This brings us to a discussion on how to set up teams, and how to help the team members take responsibility for their participation in the distribution of work by taking on “T-Shape” skill development.

Recovering from failure, or difficult moments is a critical skill for Scrum Masters. Not only because of us, but also because the teams, and stakeholders we work with will also face these moments! We need inspiring stories to help them, and ourselves! The Bungsu Story, is an inspiring story by Marcus Hammarberg which shows how a Coach can help organizations recover even from the most disastrous situations! Learn how Marcus helped The Bungsu, a hospital in Indonesia, recover from near-bankruptcy, twice! Using Lean and Agile methods to rebuild an organization and a team! An inspiring story you need to know about! Buy the book on Amazon: The Bungsu Story – How Lean and Kanban Saved a Small Hospital in Indonesia. Twice. and Can Help You Reshape Work in Your Company.

About Fred Deichler

You can link with Fred Deichler on LinkedIn.

Paula Dunne: Adapting Scrum to the new world remote work, an Agile learning journey

When Paula joined this team, she noticed the team was not sharing the good (or bad) things that were happening. We discuss how teams in the new “remote world” become passive and do not follow-up on their agreements, and let things drop because the other person is not there, present by their side. In this segment, we talk about how important it is to work on the relationships between team members as well as between team members and stakeholders, especially in this remote work world!

Featured Book of the Week: The Art of Being Brilliant by Cope and Whittaker

In The Art of Being Brilliant: Transform Your Life by Doing What Works For You by Cope and Whittaker, is a book that helped Paula orient her career and learn about positive psychology which helped her feel and help others feel more confident in themselves. In this segment, we refer to Woody Zuill, a previous guest on the podcast and his mantra “turn up the good”.

Do you wish you had decades of experience? Learn from the Best Scrum Masters In The World, Today! The Tips from the Trenches – Scrum Master edition audiobook includes hours of audio interviews with SM’s that have decades of experience: from Mike Cohn to Linda Rising, Christopher Avery, and many more. Super-experienced Scrum Masters share their hard-earned lessons with you. Learn those today, make your teams awesome!

About Paula Dunne

Paula is an Agile Coach with experience in large organization Agile adoption as well as in coaching product owners.

You can link with Paula Dunne on LinkedIn.

Jill Stott: Adopting Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), a real life story of success

Jill was working with a UI toolkit team. This team served a lot of other teams as their direct users/customers. All seemed to be going fine, but as the number of client teams was growing, senior management came in and asked them to adopt the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) as a way to help coordinate the work of these multiple teams. This started a process of SAFe adoption that Jill describes in detail in this episode!

About Jill Stott

Jill Stott is here to make friends! She’s worked in IT for too many years to count. She is passionate about assisting ScrumMasters to be successful and happy in their roles. Jill knows that there is no such thing as a perfect chocolate chip cookie and she isn’t afraid to use puppets.

You can link with Jill Stott on LinkedIn.

Jill Stott: Learning to work with dominant people in Scrum teams

Jill was working in a team where all the team members knew each other well, it was almost like a group of friends. However, this team was not perfect. They struggled to complete even a third of all the stories they took into the Sprint. When looking back, she can recognize the pattern of the dominant/opinionated developer who wanted to take a lot into every sprint. This left the Product Owner and Business Analyst for that team frustrated, because the unpredictability had already become a problem. Listen in to learn how that team was able to move away from the “take as much as you want” mentality into the sprint.

Featured Book of the Week: Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins

In Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins, Jill found an essential guide to her work as a Scrum Master. It was the book that helped her understand the different responsibilities of a Scrum Master, the difference between Agile Coaching and the Scrum Master role. It’s a book she still refers to even now.

About Jill Stott

You can link with Jill Stott on LinkedIn.