team dynamics Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Peter Janssens: From Big Bang thinking to incremental delivery, an Agile success story

When Peter joined this project, the teams had been working on it for years and had little to show for it. Thanks to the CTO at the company, the new team which Peter coached, was able to focus on small, valuable increments to deliver the back-office system the company needed. Listen to this segment, to hear how we can help teams go from BIG BANG thinking to incremental delivery, a crucial need for Agile teams.

In this segment, we refer to the Toyota Kata and the PDCA cycle.

Featured Book of the Week: Accelerate by Forsgren et al.

In Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations by Forsgren et al., Peter found evidence-based support for many of the approaches, and practices used by Agile teams and Agile organizations. In this segment, we talk about the DORA metrics, and how to focus software development on business results.

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 Peter Janssens

Peter built a long career in agile coaching and training, and worked in leadership positions leading a PO team, and recently became CTO in a SAAS product company. Peter loves all conversations on effectiveness of team decisions, but he quickly realized that being responsible is different from being a coach. As a leader there is the challenge of sticking to the same foundations when dealing with delivery pressure

Peter Janssens: Learning to work well with a difficult team member, a critical lesson for Scrum Masters

Peter joined a team, and after a while he found himself not wanting to coach one of the team members. The team member in question was well respected in the team for this technical knowledge, and his “hero” status, but Peter was not able to help him to adapt to the needs for the team. He missed daily meetings on a random basis, and did not accept other ways of working. Over time, Peter and this team member grew apart, and Peter eventually handed the team to another Scrum Master. In this episode, we talk about how to avoid situations like this, and what Peter learned that now helps him deal with even the hardest to coach team members!

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 Peter Janssens

You can link with Peter Janssens on LinkedIn.

Gert Brits: The story of an Agile team that went from Conflict to Collaboration

Gert was working with a team that enabled other teams. It was a “developer advocate” team for Spotify, which helped other teams and company external contributors to develop innovative solutions at the website backstage.io. What this team was trying to achieve was completely new in that industry. As such a new team, there was a lot of uncertainty about the outcome to be worked on, which caused tension in the team. Listen in to learn how Gert was able to help the team overcome that tension and conflict, and grew to be a great team!

In this segment, we talk about the RACI chart, and the Squad Health Check.

Featured Book of the Week: Drive by Daniel Pink

Gert recommends Drive by Daniel Pink, a book that helped him understand what motivates people to take action. The book helped Gert develop a heightened awareness of people’s motivations, and also the necessary self-awareness he needed as a Scrum Master.

About Gert Brits

Gert came from a programming background, and has worked across multiple industries, applying Agile Coaching across diverse and non tech areas. He has a focus on group dynamics blended with systems thinking, and the art of balancing application vs theory.

You can link with Gert Brits on LinkedIn.

Gert Brits: When “taking it to the team” is the wrong solutions, an unexpected lesson for Scrum Masters

Gert heard his colleagues complain to him about some of the challenges and problems they were facing. Trying to help them, Gert setup a session for the team of Scrum Masters to discuss the problems he had heard. However, there was one problem… Listen in to learn when it is not a good idea to set up a collective retrospective, even if you know there are problems that need to be solved!

About Gert Brits

You can link with Gert Brits on LinkedIn.

Omar Perez: Escaping death-march projects in Agile teams, a breakthrough!

Omar was working with a team that had been assigned a project with a fixed schedule, fixed scope, and a fixed price! The team was struggling with the assignment, and the mood was somber. There was little motivation, and conflict was everywhere… until there was a breakthrough that helped the team overcome all the anti-patterns! Listen in to learn how to escape the death-march that fixed projects can become!

Featured Book of the Week: Audiobook Beyond The Phoenix Project by Kim and Willis

In the Audiobook Beyond The Phoenix Project by Kim and Willis, Omar found a book that helps clarify and describe the foundations on which devOps and Agile stand. As Omar describes it: these are the Newtonian Physics of our work with teams and software organizations. In this episode, we also refer to Out Of the Crisis by Deming, and Deming’s work in general.

About Omar Perez

Omar is an Agile Coach from Barcelona who currently supports distributed teams that build data products to enable their company to be genuinely data-driven. He has had many previous lives as a design thinker, market analyst, communication consultant, project manager and startup founder. He aspires to become a “peopleware” expert.

You can link with Omar Perez on LinkedIn.