stakeholder involvement Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Khwezi Mputa: Visualizing Success And Coaching With Impact, With The Help Of A Coaching Backlog

In this episode, Khwezi emphasizes empowering teams over personal recognition. She highlights the importance of informing and involving stakeholders and sponsors, using a coaching backlog as a valuable tool. This backlog aids in feedback provision, achievement tracking, and maintaining focus. It also visually represents the team’s journey. Khwezi acknowledges the challenge of conveying intangible scrum master efforts to sponsors and recommends visual tools like MURAL for clarity. Her insights encourage fostering empowerment and sharing impact beyond tangible metrics, reflecting her holistic approach to effective scrum mastering.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: The Movie Critic Retrospective

In the episode, Khwezi introduces “The Movie Critic” retrospective, a creative approach to retrospectives using movies. By asking the team to liken their experience to a movie genre, such as action or drama, they delve into struggles and reasons behind their choices. The question “do you recommend this movie?” prompts reflection. Utilizing tools like MURAL enhances the process, and Khwezi advises encouraging additional sharing to ensure comprehensive insights are captured. This cinematic retrospective technique offers an engaging way to explore team challenges and insights collaboratively.

How can I, as a Scrum Master, supercharge my facilitation?

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 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 Khwezi Mputa on LinkedIn.

Gregory Miller: The Importance of Relationship Building in Agile, And How To Prepare For A New Team

In this episode, Greg shares a story during a time of large company changes. He was assigned to a team that had previously struggled with a problematic Scrum Master. Greg had a conversation with the team’s manager to understand their expectations. However, he failed to address the manager’s assumption that the Scrum Master should perform the team’s work.

As a result, the team remained confused about the role of the Scrum Master, and they constantly questioned Greg’s activities. The failure, in Greg’s perspective, was his inability to establish a stronger relationship with the manager and gain a deeper understanding of their expectations. Greg emphasizes the importance of building relationships with the teams one works with, even if it means setting aside the framework of Scrum temporarily.

In this episode, we recommend the book “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie as a valuable resource for improving interpersonal skills. Greg also shares a couple of tips based on his experience. Firstly, he suggests sitting next to the team from day one to foster a sense of belonging. Additionally, spending quality time with the team can help in developing a better understanding of their dynamics and needs. Greg emphasizes that effective work happens through people and building relationships is crucial for success.

Greg’s failure to build a better relationship with the manager resulted in confusion within the team and a lack of clarity about the Scrum Master’s responsibilities.

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 Gregory (Greg) Miller

Greg is an Agilist and Coach who has been working in Agile software development for more than 10 years. He hosts The Agile Within podcast with Mark Metze (a previous guest), which promotes agile behaviors and mindset. He lives in Ohio with his wife and four children, two of which are twins.

You can link with Gregory (Greg) Miller on LinkedIn and connect with Gregory (Greg) Miller on Twitter.

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.

Frederik Vannieuwenhuyse: The Power of Purpose, Unveiling the Qualities of a Great Product Owner

The Great Product Owner: The Impact of an Absent Product Owner on Agile Teams

In this episode, Frederik introduces a product owner who is absent and unresponsive, leading to challenges for the team. The lack of interaction and participation in Scrum events becomes demotivating, and the team starts seeking excessive upfront details, leading to slow and cumbersome planning. This absence may be due to the PO’s busyness or other roles they hold. The episode provided tips such as talking to the PO to understand the situation and sharing the vision for the PO role. It emphasized the importance of explaining to the PO why their presence is critical for successful collaboration and achieving shared goals.

The Bad Product Owner: The Power of Purpose, Unveiling the Qualities of a Great Product Owner

In this segment, John – the PO – is portrayed as an exceptional product owner who prioritizes purpose and outcomes. He possesses a clear vision of the product’s purpose and utilizes it to guide decision-making for the backlog. John effectively aligns stakeholders and the development team by communicating the product goal and emphasizing the “why” behind their work. He excels in identifying the target customer and ensuring the product meets market needs. John collaborates with the team, facilitates stakeholder involvement, and holds them accountable for decisions. The episode highlights the use of impact mapping as a valuable tool for goal-oriented decision-making. John embodies the qualities of a great product owner, driving the success of the product through purpose-driven leadership.

The Ultimate Guide to Supporting Product Owners as a Scrum Master

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 Frederik Vannieuwenhuyse

Frederik is a Certified Team and Enterprise Coach at the Scrum Alliance. He works and lives in Belgium. He is part of the company iLean. Frederik has worked as Scrum Master, Product Owner, and Agile Coach. He works with teams and leadership to improve collaboration, flow, and learning. Frederik co-organizes the XP Days Benelux conference – this year, in 2023, the conference has existed for 20 years. He is also a regular speaker at local and international conferences.

You can link with Frederik Vannieuwenhuyse on LinkedIn.