support Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Chris Garvey: Crafting a Culture of Love for Work, The Real Challenge for Real Agile Leaders

Chris delves into his perspective on success for Scrum Masters, drawing inspiration from a Simon Sinek story about hotel experiences. He aspires to help team members genuinely love their jobs. Success, for Chris, hinges on trust among team members and leaders, enabling them to excel and voice concerns. He emphasizes the transition from stressing about delivery to focusing on high performance. Ownership of work methods and problem-solving is key, as is the ability to step back under pressure. Chris also advocates for creating a safe space to foster open communication within the team.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Visualizing Progress with the Speedboat Retrospective

Chris discusses his favored retrospective format, the “Speedboat.” He appreciates its visual nature and the ease with which participants grasp it. Using a standard laminated print, he guides teams to imagine their ideal day together. This imaginative exercise helps unlock insights for improvement and encourages team cohesion through the use of metaphor.

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 Chris Garvey

Chris is passionate about people, and creating empowering spaces where people can thrive. He is a coach at heart having been a Life Coach before becoming an Agile Coach. For close to 10 years he has been working in the agile space as a Scrum Master, then Agile Coach, then trainer, and now as an Enterprise Agile Coach.

You can link with Chris Garvey on LinkedIn.

Rik Pennartz: How to coach your Scrum team like a Pro!

When Scrum Masters start their journey but come from project management or even line management background, there’s the temptation to “tell people what to do”. However, that’s not a good approach to help teams grow and improve. In this episode, we explore the role of the Scrum Master as a coach, and discuss how to set up and host “Coaching Conversations”.

In this episode, we refer to Gregg Popovich, legendary coach of the Basketball team San Antonio Spurs.

About Rik Pennartz

Rik is an agile coach, who’s worked during the last years at the Volksbank, the Dutch Railways and ABN AMRO bank. Rik also teaches various agile courses such as Professional Scrum Master, DevOps fundamentals and Leading SAFe.

You can find Rik Pennartz at the Cap Gemini Academy.

You can link with Rik Pennartz on LinkedIn and connect with Rik Pennartz on Twitter.

Moana Pledger: How to help Scrum teams stuck in a Waterfall organization

Not all teams have the benefit of working within an Agile organization. Some of the teams we work with are stuck between Waterfall and Agile. And as Scrum Masters, we very often get asked to work with teams that are struggling with exactly that problem. In this episode, we discuss how we can help teams that are in a similar situation, and what Mo learned from that story that you can use to your advantage.

In this episode, we refer to Martine Davos, and Agile Coach and Scrum trainer.

About Moana Pledger

Mo started her career in education and program management before moving into digital delivery. She’s pretty sure she was a servant-leader before she had even heard the term. Her passion is to build healthy teams and foster the all-important relationship between business and team, which allows a safe space for the magic to happen.

You can link with Moana Pledgeron LinkedIn and connect with Moana Pledger on Twitter.

Chelsie Raiola: How Scrum Masters can help teams handle critical escalations

Once in while, Scrum teams need to face critical situations. In this episode, we explore what a Scrum Master can do to help a team that is facing a critical customer escalation. These are situations where urgency can easily lead to conflict and negatively affect a team. Are you ready to handle such a situation? Listen in to learn how Chelsie tackled that challenge.

About Chelsie Raiola

Chelsie has been working as a Scrum Master in the Greater Boston Area for just over two years. She has experience working with both co-located and distributed teams developing on-premise and SaaS solutions worldwide. She is an avid lover of technology, dogs, and bullet journals, Chelsie loves finding ways to bring Agile outside of the office.

You can link with Chelsie Raiola on LinkedIn.