Stanislava Potupchik Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Stanislava Potupchik: The importance of listening to the team, a key skill for the Product Owner role

Stanislava has shown a keen focus on people, and their interactions this week, and to finish off the week we talk about how to apply that focus in the Product Owner role. First as a learning process, and helping a team member gain trust in their abilities. Later we talk about the great Product Owner, one that was ready to listen to the team, and answer their questions.

The Great Product Owner: Listening to the team

As an example of a great Product Owner, Stanislava mentions the ability to listen. To pay attention to what the team needs, and to be available to answer questions when they arise in the team.

We also talk about how important it is for teams to ask questions, and how Scrum Masters can coach teams to learn how to ask questions from the Product Owner.

The Bad Product Owner: Learning to be a Product Owner from scratch

Sometimes the “bad” Product Owner, is a temporary situation for a team member that wants to take on a new role. In this segment, we talk about how we can help shy, and inexperienced team members learn a new role.

Are you having trouble helping the team working 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 Stanislava Potupchik

Stanislava is not only a serious games facilitator and a team coach, but she also spends a considerable amount of time rock-climbing and hiking, traveling with her partner and son, and drawing zentangles.

You can link with Stanislava Potupchik on LinkedIn and connect with Stanislava Potupchik on Twitter.

Stanislava Potupchik: in Scrum, we produce value through the actions of people

When it comes to the success of a Scrum Master, Stanislava likes to focus on the conflicts that emerge in the team, and ask if they have been solved, and if people are collaborating again.

I the end the value we produce is fully dependent on what people contribute, in Scrum, we only produce value through people!

Featured Retrospective of the Week: The simple matrix

Stanislava likes to refer back to the previous action points from the previous retrospectives and examine what has changed. She asks, for all items listed: “has it changed in the previous 2 weeks?” This way she focuses the conversations on the core outcome of the retrospective: the changes we want to implement to improve our work.

About Stanislava Potupchik

You can link with Stanislava Potupchik on LinkedIn and connect with Stanislava Potupchik on Twitter.

Stanislava Potupchik: how to break the “agile bubbles” some teams are stuck in

Are you working on an “agile bubble”? Agile bubbles emerge in organizations, where one or more teams are allowed to use Agile, but all other teams are stuck in Waterfall. How do we help organizations that have these Agile Bubbles?

In this episode, we talk about the Cynefin Framework and how visualization helps groups understand how they can change.

In this episode, we also refer to Michael Sahota’s work.

About Stanislava Potupchik

You can link with Stanislava Potupchik on LinkedIn and connect with Stanislava Potupchik on Twitter.

Stanislava Potupchik: how to work with team members that act defensively

Sometimes team members have significantly different expectations of the Scrum process or any other Agile process. Before we can help that team, we must detect when the team members are growing apart and understand what the expectations are for each one of them.

In this episode, we talk about the book The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team, by Patrick Lencioni.

Featured Book for the Week: Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box by the Arbinger Institute

In Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box by the Arbinger Institute, Stanislava found a source of inspiration on how to work with people that might be in a defensive mode. It’s a book that helped Stanislava understand better her team members and to communicate with people that are on the defensive

About Stanislava Potupchik

You can link with Stanislava Potupchik on LinkedIn and connect with Stanislava Potupchik on Twitter.

Stanislava Potupchik on meeting the Scrum teams where they are, before they are ready to adopt Scrum

When helping teams adopt Scrum, it is important to start with the concrete situation the team is in. In this episode, we discuss how you can help the team decide on their own improvements as a starting point to adopt Scrum and Agile.

In this episode, we refer to the Complexity Framework Cynefin, the Agile Manifesto, Clean Language and the week of episodes with Susanne Taylor, a previous guest on the podcast.

About Stanislava Potupchik

You can link with Stanislava Potupchik on LinkedIn and connect with Stanislava Potupchik on Twitter.