story mapping Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Frederik Vannieuwenhuyse: Tackling Corporate Politics for Agile Success, The Scrum Master’s Perspective

In this episode, Frederik discussed his experience with corporate politics in an agile software development project. Initially a Product Owner, he became a Scrum Master while a colleague took over as the single Product Owner. Facing a team of 20 people, Frederik encountered challenges with the client’s perception of the team as a “feature factory” and their desire for a perfect end product delivered all at once.

He emphasized the importance of incremental thinking and work, offering tips such as being proactive, using User Story Mapping, prioritizing work through slicing, and collaborating with stakeholders. Frederik stressed the need for a strong relationship with management and higher-level stakeholders and highlighted the value of retrospectives in fostering understanding and promoting agile principles. Overall, the episode highlighted the challenges of corporate politics and provided practical strategies for successful agile software development projects.

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 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.

Pratik Dahule: How to help a Product Owner bring the right amount of work to a Scrum team

The Great Product Owner: Present and thorough, two great PO qualities

This Product Owner had the customer and end users in mind, and was very thorough in their preparation of the stories. The PO was present at all times and helped the team during refinement. This helped the team understand the scope, and break down enough the stories and epics they had to work on.

The Bad Product Owner: How to help a PO bring the right amount of work to a team

When Product Owners force teams to take on more work, that’s never a good sign. And this PO was no exception to that rule. Additionally, the PO seemed unaware of how much they had already asked the team to take on, leading the team to burn out, and to have quality problems. Pratik understood that this anti-pattern had to stop, and he explains how he helped the PO and the stakeholders to find a new way of working with the team. In this segment, we also refer to User Story Mapping, a technique all Scrum Masters should bring to their work!

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 Pratik Dahule

Pratik is an Agile Project Manager and Agile enthusiast working in the USA. He leads teams and creates a culture of lifelong learning, constant collaboration and continuous improvement. Pratik has 12 years of experience and is passionate about helping teams in their agile transformation. Outside of work, he has a blogging site ClassactLifestyle.com where he shares insights on books and exotic places to travel.

You can link with Pratik Dahule on LinkedIn.

Samet Ulutas: The many anti-patterns that develop when people are forced to take on the PO role

The Great Product Owner: Developing great networks with stakeholders

Great Product Owners know their product backlog back and forth, and develop great networks within the organization that help solve the critical problems, and answer questions for themselves and the teams they work with. This particular PO also made a point of being available for the team when the teams needed them, and met regularly with stakeholders 1-on-1.

In this segment, we talk about User Story Mapping, and Impact Mapping.

The Bad Product Owner: The many anti-patterns that develop when people are forced to take on the PO role

This Product Owner did not want to take on that role, they were forced to take it, and acted mostly like a Backlog secretary. By stepping back due to other responsibilities, this PO left the team to their own devices, and was mostly absent when the team needed them.

And this was just the start, listen in to learn about the many anti-patterns that develop when people are forced to take on the PO role.

About Samet Ulutas

Samet has been working as an Agile Coach for more than 3 years and coached 35+ different teams until now. Samet has plenty of experience dealing with difficulties of an Agile Transformation, including being to witness the Agile Transformation of the largest private bank in Turkey from the beginning. Samet is also the co-owner of “Be Agile Stay Agile” YouTube channel.

You can link with Samet Ulutas on LinkedIn and connect with Samet Ulutas on Twitter.

Maximilian Dazer: Fighting Conway’s law, an Agile story we all should learn

Max worked with a team that was composed of team members from two previous teams. As he joined in the role of the Scrum Master, he started noticing that the team members did not focus on collaboration, but rather on single, individually assigned tasks (listen in to learn about how you can detect if your team is falling prey to the same anti-pattern). This way of working was causing delays, and slowing down the team because of the many handovers necessary. In this episode, the Scrum Master can help the team understand the anti-pattern, and help teams get out of the silo-thinking. In this episode we refer to Conway’s Law, an empirical observation and statement by Mel Conway that helps us understand why organizations and software end up mirroring each other: “if you have a 3 team compiler organization, you end up with a 3-pass compiler”.

Featured Book of the Week: User Story Mapping by Jeff Patton

User Story Mapping by Jeff Patton helped Max understand many critical aspects of applying Agile to the requirements/definition of the product. He learned about how the Backlog could be different than a simple list of requirements/user stories, and how User Stories are meant to be used.

Jeff Patton has been a previous guest on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast.

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 Maximilian Dazer

Maximilian’s goal is to drive change from the bottom. For every team he creates a vision and tries to get them on board to pursue the change together. Maximilian wants to free people from the micromanagement-hell version of “scrum”.

You can link with Maximilian Dazer on LinkedIn.

Med Marouane Ajraoui: From collaborator to bossy, the Product Owner attitude spectrum to look out for

The attitude that the PO exhibits will fundamentally affect their effectiveness in the role, and in this episode, we explore 2 contrasting attitudes in the PO role.

The Great Product Owner: The great Collaborator

A great Product Owner is able to collaborate with the teams and the stakeholders, through their listening skills and ability to communicate ideas and why they matter for the product and the customer. Another great asset for a Product Owner is to be able to understand and evaluate technical debt together with the team. Finally, we talk about how great teams have the PO inside, and as a key part of the team.

The Bad Product Owner: The bossy PO

In this segment, we talk about how PO’s sometimes take a “bossy” perspective and are not able to understand their role. They might think they are “the boss”, and can just give orders to the team. In this segment, we also discuss the concept of the “product team”, as opposed to having the product focus only in the PO role.

We refer to the book User Story Mapping by Jeff Patton.

Are you having trouble helping the teamwork 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 Med Marouane Ajraoui

Med Marouane Ajraoui enjoys practicing AIKIDO while helping individuals, teams, and organizations embrace the agile mindset. He is from Morocco but has lived in several countries, and he enjoys being a “citizen of the world”. He is the founder of Agile Africa, an NGO for disseminating Agile culture in Africa. He is also the CEO and founder of JediSquad, an international firm that supports developing Eco Agile businesses and meaningful digital products.

You can link with Med Marouane Ajraoui on LinkedIn.