stakeholder collaboration Archives - Page 6 of 7

Matthias Kostwein: How a Product Owner can help the Scrum team negotiate better with the client

Matthias shares the story of a team that was in trouble with their estimations. Matthias had just joined this team, and noticed that the team was not able to communicate the uncertainty of their estimates. On top of that, this team was working with a very demanding customer, who had pushed the team to “minimize” their estimates! As a Product Owner, Matthias had to help the team get back their confidence, and build trust between team and customer. Listen in to learn how Matthias (as a Product Owner) helped this team work better with this challenging client.

Featured Book of the Week: Lean from the Trenches (Managing Large-Scale Projects with Kanban) by Kniberg

Matthias recommends Lean from the Trenches (Managing Large-Scale Projects with Kanban) by Kniberg, and Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Sutherland. However, as he puts it, he’s learned the most about the Product Owner role from interacting with his peers, and trying to foster a more collaborative environment. He describes empathy as an essential skill for Product Owners.

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 Matthias Kostwein

Matthias is a Project Manager, turned Programmer, turned PO, turned Client Service Director with a varied background in different industries from Mechanical Engineering to IT Agencies. Throughout all of his journey, Agile has been part of his work life, even before he knew what Scrum was.

You can link with Matthias Kostwein on LinkedIn.

Matthias Kostwein: Solving conflicts as a Scrum Product Owner, what great PO’s do!

Matthias joined, as a Product Owner, a project that was in trouble. A former Product Owner had quit, the team was having trouble predicting what they could deliver. On top of that, the Scrum Master and the Tech Lead did not see eye-to-eye. In this messy situation, Matthias had to help out the team and the Scrum Master recover! Luckly, Matthias had enough experience as a Scrum Master to help mediate the conflict! Listen in to learn how Product Owners can be critical partners to the Scrum Master when things aren’t working well!

About Matthias Kostwein

You can link with Matthias Kostwein on LinkedIn.

Ali Asl: Learning to set boundaries, a must-have skill for Scrum Masters and Agile teams

This team was stuck in a pattern where they used over-time and holidays to work on releasing their software. Ali was puzzled as to how to help the team. Over time he learned what was needed to help that team establish healthy boundaries to the demands their manager and Product Owner wanted to put on them!

About Ali Asl

Ali is an experienced and accomplished Independent Agile Coach, Trainer and Scrum Master focused on supporting organizations and teams in the application of Agile values and principles to deliver quality and value.

You can link with Ali Asl on LinkedIn.

Bert Heymans: The Product Owner that thought they “owned” the team, and what to do about it

The Great Product Owner: Collaborating with the Scrum Master to help the teams succeed.

This PO was able to defend the team in front of others, and also helped the team clarify their questions so that they didn’t have any doubts about their performance. He helped the team with reports and red-tape related tasks and focused on enabling the team to deliver. Finally, great PO’s know how to collaborate with the Scrum Master to help the team succeed.

The Bad Product Owner: The PO that thought they “owned” the team

When Product Owners think they “own the team”, they might change the team’s priorities according to their own personal preferences. When this happens, they might start changing priorities every sprint, micro-manage the team and even bring conflict to the team. In this section, we also talk about a PO that insisted that the team release on a Friday (a well-known anti-pattern). In this segment, we discuss how Scrum Masters can avoid these anti-patterns by deliberately building a great rapport with the PO.

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 Bert Heymans

Bert is a long time Lean Management aficionado and project management tool specialist, along the way he fell in love with business analysis and teaching business analysis techniques. In 2016 he founded Lean Coffee Ghent and has been at it since.

You can link with Bert Heymans on LinkedIn and connect with Bert Heymans on Twitter.

Bert Heymans: Finding the right level of transparency between a Scrum team and its stakeholders

When we work with teams that are under pressure of a tight deadline, it’s not so easy to find the right level of transparency with the clients and stakeholders. On one side we should protect the team, on the other side, the team needs to be open with the stakeholders to be able to find a solution when it seems the projects are going over the schedule and budget! In this episode, we explore some of the lessons Bert learned about finding the right level of transparency between the team and the clients and stakeholders.

In this episode, we refer to XP Explained by Kent Beck, and the concept of Single Piece Flow, a key part of Lean Thinking.

About Bert Heymans

You can link with Bert Heymans on LinkedIn and connect with Bert Heymans on Twitter.