systems Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Rayyan Karim: The importance of team design and backlog structure in an Agile adoption process

In this episode, Rayyan discusses their experience working with IBM at a Brazilian bank. The teams were facing serious problems with delivery, despite having agreed on a strategy. Rayyan discovered that the root of the problem was organizational design. Although the program consisted of 300 people, the teams were organized functionally, which was hindering their success. Rayyan emphasizes the importance of considering the team’s design, the backlog design, and clear measurements of success when implementing Agile. They also stress the importance of addressing beliefs and providing an alternative identity for those who may not be sold on the ideas of agility.

Featured Book for the Week: “System of Profound Knowledge” on Deming’s work

In this segment, Rayyan recommends the resource “System of Profound Knowledge” about Deming’s work to help in understanding the true intent and start of agility. The article explores adaptive systems and helps readers understand the change that is happening in the workplace, as well as what a system is and how leaders think. The article also explains the concept of “tamper.”

Transform Your Agile Teams with Hard-Earned Lessons from Super-Experienced Scrum Masters

Do you wish you had decades of experience? Learn from the Best Scrum Masters In The World, Today! The Tips from the Trenches – Scrum Master edition audiobook includes hours of audio interviews with SM’s that have decades of experience: from Mike Cohn to Linda Rising, Christopher Avery, and many more. Super-experienced Scrum Masters share their hard-earned lessons with you. Learn those today, make your teams awesome!

About Rayyan Karim

Rayyan is and Agile Coach & Trainer and the founder of Design Your Future with presence in the UK and the UAE. Rayyan is known for supporting leading executives of FTSE100 and NASDAQ corporations to create transformational results quickly.

You can link with Rayyan Karim on LinkedIn and connect with Rayyan Karim on Twitter.

Daniel Westermayr: The Group Mentality vs. Creating Real Agile Product Teams

In this episode, Daniel discusses the overuse of the word “team” and the importance of true teams in product development. He highlights the need for preconditions for a team, and notes that sometimes teams don’t even have a shared goal. Daniel also warns against the “it’s done, just needs to be tested” anti-pattern and explains how it can lead to problems with team collaboration. We discuss the use of Causal Loop Diagram to find hypotheses, and mention a talk by Jeff Patton on the client-vendor anti-pattern. Finally, Daniel emphasizes the need to remove the notion that one party needs to own the game in the client-vendor relationship.

Featured Book of the Week: Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

In this segment, Daniel Westermayr discusses the importance of data-driven decision making in product development. He references the book “Thinking, Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman, which highlights the biases and faulty intuitions that can arise in decision making. Daniel emphasizes the need to use data to inform decisions and cites the book “Out of the Crisis” by W. Edwards Deming as an important resource. He also provides a link to a talk by Russell Ackoff about Deming’s approach.

Transform Your Agile Teams with Hard-Earned Lessons from Super-Experienced Scrum Masters

About Daniel Westermayr

Daniel is a Kanban Trainer with a knack for all things Lean and Theory of Constraints. He wants to help teams achieve and measure their continuous improvements.

You can link with Daniel Westermayr on LinkedIn.

Shubhang Vishwamitra on the Agile Theatre that some teams play

Agile Software Development is a new entrant in the Software Development industry. Although it started in 2000, the fact is that many organizations are still in the first stages of adoption.

Inevitably we run into several Agile Theatre problems: missing PO, teams doing Scrum ceremonies to keep the Scrum Master happy, but not really understanding why they are needed. The list goes on.

In this episode we discuss some of those patterns and what we can do as Scrum Masters to understand and learn how to overcome those anti-patterns.

In this episode we refer to the Hands-On Agile Slack for agilists to share their experiences and learn from each other.

About Shubhang Vishwamitra

Shubhang is a passionate agile practitioner originally from Bangalore, India. Who’s worked in Japan and Finland and is currently based in London and working as scrum master.

Shubhang has an extensive background in software development and agile delivery model in smartphone, travel and finance industries. He believes that having a technical background helps to connect with teams and ease the flow of discussion in solving complex problems.

You can link with Shubhang Vishwamitra on LinkedIn.

Petr Holodňák on applying Scrum in an old-world industrial company

Scrum was “born” in the IT world, and it is still mostly applied in that environment. But the lessons that Scrum can teach us go over industrial borders. In this episode we learn how the ideas in Scrum can apply to an old-world industrial company. At the same time we explore what kind of systemic conditions Petr uncovered in that assignment and how he tackled them.

About Petr Holodňák

Petr has a small consulting company where he helps businesses overcome obstacles of ever-faster changing environment, growth problems, stale processes, poor performance, lacking company culture etc. Petr helps companies be more adaptable through empowering their people. Petr also does some pro-bono consulting. Recently for example for a Liberal/democratic school in Prague. His passion is introducing modern management (we can call that “Agile”) to “old school” businesses like heavy industry, manufacturing and so on. Petr wants to help build a brighter future! You can find Petr’s business at: www.cerebra.cz. You can link with Petr Holodňák on LinkedIn.

Balazs Tatár on how to transform the intangible systemic problems into actionable solutions

In the regular Retrospectives we find the symptoms of the systemic problems we have to face. We can use Retrospectives as the engine to find and create possible improvements to solve those systemic problems. Balazs shares his approach to Retrospectives and some examples of how he applied this approach in his work. We also discuss a critical technique to make the “intangible” problems more concrete and actionable. This technique can take your team from complaining to taking action.

About Balazs Tatár

Balazs is a technical project manager, working for the European Commission in Brussels, Belgium. Currently he plays the Scrum Master role in a support team of one of the biggest web project at the European Commission. He is a former technical lead and fan of open source technologies.

You can link with Balazs Tátár on LinkedIn and connect with Balazs Tátár on Twitter.