Tanzil Choudhury Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Tanzil Choudhury: The Scrum Master and Product Owner partnership as a key enabler for Agile teams

The Great Product Owner: A great engagement tactic for Product Owners

This PO was just a beginner, a young PO but she was able to set the right expectations, and constantly worked with the team to get feedback on what should be done (or not). She gave the team space to negotiate and come up with better ideas. Tanzil also shares a great tactic that this PO used to better engage the stakeholders in the Sprint Review.

The Bad Product Owner: How to build a product partnership with your Product Owner

The PO was both a tech lead and an architect for the team, on top of being the Product Owner. His understanding of the success in the role of the PO was very different from what the team needed. Thanks to the deep domain knowledge, this PO took on the role of the controller/project manager, which was only amplified by the team who did not know any other way of working. In this segment, we talk about how important it is to build a partnership with the Product Owner.

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About Tanzil Choudhury

Tanzil is a passionate Agilist focused on coaching individuals, teams and organizations towards the Agile transformation journey. Specialized in working with teams and organizations to help them overcome cultural hangovers.

You can link with Tanzil Choudhury on LinkedIn.

Tanzil Choudhury: A fresh new look at the Sailboat Agile Retrospective

Tanzil’s definition of success has evolved over time, and revolves around assessing and acting on the idea that companies and teams should be moving “forward” continuously in their Agile journey.

We dive into some of the questions that Tanzil asks to assess if the teams are able to learn and advance in their journey. We also introduce the concept of “cultural hangover”, which Tanzil uses to describe one of the problems he wants to remove in the teams he works with.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: A fresh new look at the Sailboat Retrospective

Tanzil’s retrospective format of choice is the Sailboat retrospective (featured often here on the podcast), but he uses that in a specific way. For Tanzil, the Sailboat retrospective can be a great Futurespective, focusing the team on the future to define their vision. He then uses the Lean Coffee format to discuss the times that come up in the retrospective.

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About Tanzil Choudhury

You can link with Tanzil Choudhury on LinkedIn.

Tanzil Choudhury: Helping Scrum teams grow, from waterfall to agile, step by step

Tanzil was helping multiple teams in an organization that had short history of Agile adoption. As the teams started to apply Scrum, they quickly realized that the training they had was no longer enough. Tanzil had a challenge: with so many teams at different stages of their learning journey, where to start?

Listen in to learn how you can help multiple teams, even when they are in very different stages of their journey.

About Tanzil Choudhury

You can link with Tanzil Choudhury on LinkedIn.

Tanzil Choudhury: A great Scrum team that went bad because they were so good at following Agile

Tanzil had just kickstarted a new team that he helped hire. The start of the assignment went as well as could be expected. The team picked up the practices, and learned how to apply them as described by Tanzil. However, later on that became part of the problem. The team, sure of their practices, was unwilling to move beyond the original practices they had learned.

In this segment, we talk about The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team by Lencioni.

Featured Book of the Week: Everyone Communicates, Few Connect by John C. Maxwell et al.

This week’s book, is also an audiobook: Everyone Communicates, Few Connect: What the Most Effective People Do Differently by John C. Maxwell et al. In this book Tanzil learned several practices he could directly apply to his work, and go beyond the “process” aspects that a Scrum Master often works with. The book helped Tanzil move from thinking about product, to thinking and act with people.

In this segment, we also refer to Shift From Product To People, a book that helps Scrum Masters understand and apply that shift to focus on people and their behaviors, instead of sticking only to process and product.

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 Tanzil Choudhury

You can link with Tanzil Choudhury on LinkedIn.

Tanzil Choudhury: The Agile Anti-patterns Scrum Masters should be on the lookout for

Tanzil was working with one team, when the second team lost its Scrum Master. However, that second team, was really 3 teams put together. Filled with too many people, and different strong cultures, this second team proved to be a real challenge for Tanzil. And the problems did not stop there. The PO wasn’t a full-time PO, and that hurt the second team even more. Listen in to learn about the anti-patterns to look out for when starting off with a new team.

About Tanzil Choudhury

You can link with Tanzil Choudhury on LinkedIn.