stakeholder engagement Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Toby Rao: The Critical Impact of Effective Stakeholder Engagement in Agile Projects

In this episode, Toby shares his experience of working with a team in this transition. Toby emphasized the importance of addressing the initial challenges, including stakeholder engagement and logistics. He highlights the need to overcome mindset barriers within the organization. Key takeaways from this conversation include: the importance of seeking to understand before being understood, helping others grasp the team’s needs, involving leads and stakeholders from other teams to identify blockers, and being open to negotiation for the team’s success. Ultimately, creating shared understanding and transparency led to successful collaboration.

In this episode, we refer to the Tuckman Stages Of Group Development.

The inspiring story of how a failing hospital turned things around with Agile and Lean

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 Toby Rao

Toby is an ICF-credentialed Coach and accredited IC Agile trainer, and practices as a certified Executive coach. With a dynamic Agile journey beginning in 2007, he’s an active contributor to the global Agile community. He is based in Washington DC Metro, and speaks at Agile events worldwide and co-founded the A20 Agile conference. Toby also co-founded two thriving Agile meetups in the Washington DC area, with a combined 1300 members.

You can link with Toby Rao on LinkedIn and connect with Toby Rao on Twitter.

Khwezi Mputa: Breaking Down Dysfunctional Dynamics between a Scrum team and their Product Owner

In this episode, Khwezi discusses a challenging team scenario where great individuals struggled due to high-pressure dynamics and dysfunctional patterns. The Product Owner lacked decision-making authority, leading to delayed information and a proxy PO situation. This pressure caused scope creep and hindered technical debt management. Khwezi highlighted the importance of empowering the team to push back against excessive demands, coaching the PO to engage stakeholders effectively, and ensuring the right person fills the PO role. Addressing these issues was crucial for improving the product and fostering a healthier team dynamic.

If you need to support your Product Owner, we’ve created a course for you. You can access the Coach Your PO e-course here.

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

In this segment, Khwezi shares her recommended book, “Coaching Agile Teams” by Lyssa Adkins, which played a pivotal role in her self-improvement journey as a scrum master. This book provided valuable insights into guiding teams toward high performance. Khwezi emphasized using the Agile coaching competency framework and suggested self-assessment based on it. This framework led her to discover additional paths for growth. The book also highlighted the importance of exploring diverse topics to enhance skills. She mentioned the “Periodic Table of Scrum Master’s Competencies” as a useful resource for understanding various skills enhancement facets.

Transform Your Agile Teams with Hard-Earned Lessons from Super-Experienced Scrum Masters

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 Khwezi Mputa

Khwezi is an experienced Agile coach, trainer, and IT professional since 2008. With diverse roles like Scrum Master, Agile Project Manager, and Business Analyst, she’s active in the Agile community, promoting diversity. Passionate about teaching, she empowers individuals and organizations to reach their full potential through coaching and mentoring.

You can link with Kwhezi Mputa on LinkedIn.

Bojan Smudja: The salesmanship required of a Scrum Master, and how it supports Agile adoption at team and organizational levels

In this episode, Bojan emphasizes the importance of following established practices and processes. As Scrum Masters, we often juggle multiple responsibilities. Bojan highlights the need for Scrum Masters to adopt a sales mindset and effectively sell the agile transformation to others in the organization. He reflects on a challenging conversation he had with the CEO, and prompts listeners to consider the vision they are presenting to management and to understand their responsibility for team effectiveness. Additionally, he emphasizes the Scrum Master’s role in helping PO and team select the right tasks to work on. Bojan provides a tip to continuously question the team’s activities and encourages listeners to ask critical questions.

The inspiring story of how a failing hospital turned things around with Agile and Lean

About Bojan Smudja

Bojan is an Agile coach dedicated to assisting individuals, teams, and organizations in reaching their objectives. With his expertise and guidance, he empowers others to embrace Agile methodologies and maximize their potential for success.

You can link with Bojan Smudja on LinkedIn.

Mirela Mus: The Product Owner’s view on Leadership Impact, Priorities, and Stakeholder Management for Scrum Teams

In this episode, Mirela discussed the challenges of change management and shared valuable tips. She emphasized that change can fail for various reasons and highlighted the importance of impactful leadership to drive successful change. Mirela recommended having a supportive group of people ready to assist in the change process and showcasing examples of successful changes to the team. Collaboration with Product Owners (POs) was emphasized, as they can greatly influence team performance. The ability of a PO to say “no” to higher-ups was discussed. Anti-patterns such as a lack of priorities or structure in prioritization were identified as potential problems at the team level. Mirela provided tips on mapping stakeholders, managing relationships, and helping the PO learn to influence people. In this episode, we refer to the book “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie. Managing oneself, leveraging asynchronous work, monitoring the PM’s meeting time, and deprioritizing as a cost-cutting measure were additional tips shared in the episode.

Want to Improve Your Change Management Results? Discover the Lean Change Management Approach Today!

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 Mirela Mus

Mirela is the founder of Product People, a Product Management Consultancy on a mission to help companies discover and deliver great products faster. They have 41 full-time Product Managers who help companies focus on product-led growth and/or profitability.

You can link with Mirela Mus on LinkedIn and connect with Mirela Mus on Twitter.

Manuele Piastra: Measuring Progress in Agile Transformation Using a Maturity Tracker

In this episode, Manuele talks about his experience as an external change agent in an organization. He shares some tips on how to start off an engagement the right way. First, he suggests having a conversation with the sponsor to evaluate the assignment. Next, he advises defining what is expected from the team, sponsors, and yourself. He emphasizes the importance of having the sponsor introduce you to the team and doing a boot camp with them. During the boot camp, he tells the team that he’s not there to do their job. He recommends measuring progress by using a tool to track the team’s movement towards agility, such as the Agile Reloaded Maturity Tracker. This helps identify pain points and what needs to change with the help of the coach. Finally, he advises having success criteria and looping and repeating the process.

Want to Improve Your Change Management Results? Discover the Lean Change Management Approach Today!

About Manuele Piastra

Manuele Piastra moved to London in 2014, which was a life-changing experience for him. He gained access to more sources of learning, worked in fast-paced companies with complex technology stacks and ambitious goals, and developed open-mindedness, patience, and autonomy.

You can link with Manuele Piastra on LinkedIn and connect with Manuele Piastra on Twitter.