Meena Venkataraman: Knowing When to Step Back, a Scrum Master superpower

In this segment, Meena shares how, as a scrum master, she strives to step back once the team is self-sufficient.

Meena mentions that it is important to make sure that there is no unhealthy dependency between the team and the scrum master. To do this, the scrum master needs to ensure that they are not the only one who can resolve conflicts and that the team is communicating effectively with stakeholders.

The success of a scrum master is also measured by whether the team is delivering a quality product. Meena provides several tips for scrum masters, including making sure that it’s not about them, and observing the behaviors of the team to determine if they can self-manage.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Simple and effective conversation focused formats

In this segment, Meena shares that when it comes to retrospectives, she prefers to focus on simplicity and creating conversations with the team. She emphasizes the importance of creating insights and actions with the team, rather than just generating data. Meena shares a tip to ask questions that crystallize insights and anchor them in the agile principles.

She also shares a story about observing a retro led by someone else where there was a lot of data but no actionable insights. Meena emphasizes that retros are great places for scrum masters to coach and that it’s not about the format, but rather about anchoring questions in the agile principles.

In this segment, we refer to a shared whiteboard tool named MURAL.

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 Meena Venkataraman

Meena is an Agile & Lean coach who helps organizations and teams transition to Agile ways of working. She is passionate about the neuroscience behind team dynamics and is interested in organizational design and the application of Agile principles across different business domains. Meena enjoys speaking at conferences and is an avid learner.

You can link with Meena Venkataraman 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!

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 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.

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 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.

Elly Griffith-Ward: Investigating personalities in Agile teams to improve communication and collaboration

In this team, the communication with stakeholders was a problem. The stakeholders make it clear they were not satisfied with the information they were getting from the team. On top of that, Elly felt she was not able to connect with, and understand all the people in the team. She decided to try the DISC personality test with the team. She facilitated a workshop where the focus on the personalities in the team.

In this episode, we refer to the book Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It by Chris Voss.

About Elly Griffith-Ward

Elly is an Agile Coach at a major e-commerce company. Previously in user research (and a royal food historian). She aims to 1) improve the experience of work through reducing mental load, improving communication and forming strong teams 2) shift the focus from managing the worker to managing the work by focusing on flow and waste.

You can link with Elly Griffith-Ward on LinkedIn and connect with Elly Griffith-Ward on Twitter.

Elly Griffith-Ward: The impediment that kills Agile adoption in many organizations, and what to do about it

Many Scrum Masters will recognize the impediment to Agile adoption that Elly mentions in this episode: there are other, interdependent parts of the organization that are not using Agile! However, the way in which this impediment expresses itself is very diverse between organizations. In this episode, we explore one of the anti-patterns that comes from trying to implement Agile in a previously waterfall organization. Listen in to learn to recognize the signs of problems, and how to help your organization despite this “glass ceiling”.

About Elly Griffith-Ward

Elly is an Agile Coach at a major e-commerce company. Previously in user research (and a royal food historian). She aims to 1) improve the experience of work through reducing mental load, improving communication and forming strong teams 2) shift the focus from managing the worker to managing the work by focusing on flow and waste.

You can link with Elly Griffith-Ward on LinkedIn and connect with Elly Griffith-Ward on Twitter.

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This simple checklist and calendar handout, with a coaching article will help you define the minimum enagement your PO must have with the team
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This simple checklist and calendar handout, with a coaching article will help you define the minimum enagement your PO must have with the team
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Download a detailed How-To to help measure success for your team
Motivate your team with the right metrics, and the right way to visualize and track them. Marcus presents a detailed How-To document based on his experience at The Bungsu Hospital
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Read about Visualization and TRANSFORM The way your team works
A moving story of how work at the Bungsu Hospital was transformed by a simple tool that you can use to help your team.
Read about Visualization and TRANSFORM The way your team works