success – Page 21 – Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Daniel Hommel on why it matters that teams run experiments

There are many ways to look at success. Daniel chooses to look at it from the learning point of view. He wants to see teams learn, and run experiments. He mentions the book Lean Change Management by Jason Little as an inspiration for the experiment mindset. As Daniel puts it: being fast is good, but being able to change direction quickly is much better.

About Daniel Hommel

Daniel is a ScrumMaster and Agile Coach with a strong background in Software Engineering. His first touch point with Agility was starting to use the Extreme Programming practices in 2007. After some years of working more on the technical side in recent years his interest has shifted to facilitation, coaching, guiding continuous improvement and working with people in general. You can connect with Daniel Hommel on Twitter.

Natalie Warnert: the questions the team ask are your Success Metric

There are many ways to measure success, and it’s not easy to choose just one of them. Natalie chooses to focus on the questions that the team asks. Are they asking questions that challenge you? Are they asking questions that make you feel uncomfortable? Natalie also suggests you focus on how your own questions make you feel. The job of the Scrum Master is not easy, and the questions we ask are supposed to be a critical part of our job. HOw many uncomfortable conversations did you have last week?

About Natalie Warnert

As a developer turned Agile coach, Natalie Warnert understands and embraces what it takes to build great products. Natalie focuses teams on embracing Agile values to build the right product and build the product right. Natalie is currently coaching the Cart/Checkout teams for Best Buy Dotcom and recently earned her Master of Arts degree in Organizational Leadership and Strategic Management.
You can link with Natalie Warnert on LinkedIn, connect with Natalie Warnert on Twitter, read her blog at nataliewarnert.com, and visit her project page Women in Agile.

Marcus Hammarberg explains his recipe for team success

Many management approaches settle for measuring activity instead of outcomes. Marcus asks us to focus more on outcomes to be able to investigate the system conditions. After all it is outcomes that matter. He also asks us to be so precise about outcomes that we can measure it with a single metric. His process is:

Go for smaller and smaller iterations as a way to help teams “own” their work
Bring the outcome definition down to ground-level, so that everyone understands it
Everyone needs to understand the metric. Simplify it.
The metric needs to be one that changes often, so that we can use it as feedback.
Update the metric daily
Celebrate success

Marcus shared with us a discount code for all that purchase his book until October 14th, 2015. Don’t miss it, purchase the book at http://bit.ly/theKanbanBook, and use the code scrumkan.

Marcus is the Author of Salvation:The Bungsu Story, a fascinating account of a real-life crisis, and how Agile, Lean and Kanban saved the Hospital from bankruptcy! Twice! Get ready for the journey, it’s going to be a bumpy ride!

About Marcus Hammarberg

Marcus is a Software / agile consultant from Sweden on IT-sabatical leave in Indonesia, working for the Salvation Army hospitals there. And yes, using techniques from agile in that work even in non-software environments.
One of those approaches he is using is Kanban, as Marcus is the author of the book Kanban in Action with Joakim Sundén, don’t forget to go to http://bit.ly/theKanbanBook, and get the book with the discount code scrumkan.
You can link with Marcus Hammarberg on LinkedIn, and connect with Marcus Hammarberg on twitter.

Marcus Hammarberg measures his success in happiness points

Scrum Masters measure their success in many different ways, Marcus chose happiness in his last project with a software team. He walks us through that and suggests that we use Niko, Niko index as a tool to measure happiness.

Marcus shared with us a discount code for all that purchase his book until October 14th, 2015. Don’t miss it, purchase the book at http://bit.ly/theKanbanBook, and use the code scrumkan.

Marcus is the author of Salvation:The Bungsu Story, a fascinating account of a real-life crisis, and how Agile, Lean and Kanban saved the Hospital from bankruptcy! Twice! Get ready for the journey, it’s going to be a bumpy ride!

About Marcus Hammarberg

Ebenezer Ikonne on the 6 success questions for Scrum Masters

In this episode we cover what success means for Scrum Masters and what questions you can use to assess your own success

● Is the team achieving its purpose?
● Is the team fulfilling its goals?
● Is the team working according to the agile values?
● Is the journey of the team an enjoyable one?
● Did I address the blockers in a timely fashion?
● How did I help solve the conflicts productively?

We also discuss the importance and how to ask for feedback from the team and stakeholders.

About Ebenezer Ikonne

Technology enthusiast. Change artist. Culture hacker. People focused. Helping organizations provide their employees with the most meaningful and fulfilling experience they could have while delivering solutions that change the world. Ebenezer is also a Tech Director at Mannheim.
You can link with Ebenezer Ikonne on LinkedIn, and contact Ebenezer Ikonne on Twitter. You can also read his thoughts on Agile on his blog.

Gil Zilberfeld on the incremental success we must strive for

We often define success as one point in time, an achievement, a breakthrough. However, success happens over time, over many interactions. Success is, in fact, incremental. Gil explains his view on the success in our role as Scrum Masters.

About Gil Zilberfeld

For over 20 years, Gil has developed, tested, managed and designed software products. He’s gone through failures and successes, in different types of projects and companies.
He has trained and coached developers how to write tests for their untestable code. He has worked with testers on complex applications and with very tight deadlines. He’s helped release products that fit customer needs, by testing the waters, and getting their feedback integrated. He has implemented agile, kanban and lean principles and adapted them to fit teams better.
You can link up with Gil Zilberfeld on LinkedIn, or find Gil Zilberfeld on Twitter.
Gil is writing a book on Unit Testing. Check it out.

Matthias Seul tells us that relationships is the KPI for Scrum Masters

What are the KPI’ for us as Scrum Masters? Matthias mentions several KPI’s he looks at to evaluate his work as a Scrum Master. One stands out: Relationships. How do you measure relationships and their quality? That’s what we discuss today.

About Matthias Seul

Matthias worked 10+ years as software developer and gravitated towards coaching in recent years. He is a tech enthusiast, board gamer, inventor and wild duck. Matthias believes in intrinsic motivation – thus he believes in Agile. He says that “together we can make projects a more fulfilling and successful work environment for all involved”.
You can link up with Matthias Seul on LinkedIn, and reach Matthias Seul on twitter. Matthias is interested in your questions and feedback, and you can reach him via email as well.

Juha Heimonen’s recipe to measure Scrum Master success: Happiness

Happiness is the metric for Scrum Masters to measure their success, according to Juha. We talk about the role of the process in making people happy, as well as the reasons why happiness is so important for Scrum teams.
We also discuss the book by Marshall Rosenberg: Nonviolent Communication, A Language of Life.

About Juha Heimonen

Juha is a entrepreneur, programmer, kanbanista and a unicorn. He calls Software a garden, and says that he tries to be a gardener tending the soil as well as the specific plants.
He is active in the local agile community in Jyväskylä, Finland and also quite active on twitter.
You can link up with Juha Heimonen on LinkedIn and connect with Juha Heimonen on twitter.
You can find out more about his thoughts on Fellowship and how he applies that in his own business at Flowa’s website and blog.

Emilia Breton-Lake on the importance of conversations for successful scrum masters

How do you measure your success as a Scrum Master? Emilia shares her definition of success, and her main tasks in the search for that successful outcome. The tool that she uses the most is 1-on-1 conversations that help her focus on the right topics and discover possible blockers. As she puts it: “whenever you have a question: ask the team!”.

About Emilia Breton-Lake

Emilia is a natural-born Agile thinker who managed to swim out of the PMI waterfall almost a decade ago. As the head of the PMO at a major non profit she is constantly looking for new ways to build better software and make the world a better place.
She has also been working on 2 major innovations, On going retrospectives, and #NoNumbers where they have eliminated sizing of stories. They still groom and plan, but don’t assign sizes to stories.
Emilia has worked hard to introduce Scrum and Agile to a non-profit that is very resistant to change.
You can link up with Emilia Breton-Lake on LinkedIn. Or follow Emilia Breton-Lake’s articles at the Scrum Alliance website.

Sven Schnee on the importance of retrospectives for Scrum Masters to evaluate their work

Retrospectives are a key part of any Scrum team’s process. However, they are also key for Scrum Masters to evaluate their performance. Sven shares with us a process he uses to help him detect possible problems, and invest in solving the right problems to help the team, and himself succeed. We discuss plenty of practical advice regarding the structure and the content of Retrospectives.

About Sven Schnee

Sven started his journey as a developer around the year 2000. He experienced many projects and felt the pain of how traditional approaches to software development failed.
A few years ago he discovered Agile and Lean, and he is not going back.
He is an Agile Coach and Founder of Oikosofy. He wants to bring agile ways of working to a variety of customers from small companies to big enterprises. One of his key strengths is helping teams evolve on their path to self-organization.
You can connect with Sven Schnee on twitter, and link with Sven Schnee on LinkedIn.
You can read Sven Schnee’s blog The Product Owner Toolbox.