Helen Garcia: Helping Scrum teams speak up and take responsibility for their success

This team would not speak up. That puzzled Helen. We explore the anti-pattern of the silent team that would not speak their mind, and what happened. Through this story, we discuss how we, as Scrum Masters, can help teams grow and be confident of their ideas, and take responsibility for their success.

Featured Book of the Week: Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins

In Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins, Helen found inspiring stories that changed her perspective on the Scrum Master role. Through this book, she started her learning journey, and explored how to coach teams, and become a better coach herself.

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 Helen Garcia

Helen’s been in projects for over 10 years, everything from construction to pharma to more recently gaming. Not only does she want to bring an Agile mindset to organizations that are ready for change but she also strongly believes that Agile can be just as effective at home. Bringing value sooner, safer and happier thanks to Jon Smart it’s a quote Helen take most places!

You can link with Helen Garcia on LinkedIn and connect with Helen Garcia on Twitter

You can also visit Helen Garcia’s website to learn more about her work.

Chris Foley: Defeating the “Hero” anti-pattern in Scrum teams

In this episode, we talk about the “heroes” anti-pattern, which describes the case of a team that is focused on the performance of its members, rather than the whole team. It starts with the siloed knowledge and skills, which cases over-dependence on a single team member for certain work, and hampers the team when that specific team member is out. Liste in to learn how to help your team get out of that self-defeating pattern.

Featured Book of the Week: Mindset, The New Psychology Of Success by Carol S. Dweck

In Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol S. Dweck, Chris found the concept of the “Growth Mindset” a model that helped him work with teams to develop their ways of working. And he also found that model useful in his study for coaching accreditation.

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 Chris Foley

Chris is a Principal Systems Design Engineer at Red Hat working in the area of Engineering Improvement. He has over 20 years of experience in software and has filled PO and ScrumMaster roles. The team, to Chris, is the essence of the whole process and the Scrum Masters role is to help optimize that. He uses his experience from the sporting world to draw parallels around how successful teams function.

You can link with Chris Foley on LinkedIn and connect with Chris Foley on Twitter.

Joe Auslander: From struggling with testing to shipping every Sprint!

There are many teams that struggle with the “last mile” in developing and shipping software. This story is about a team that had trouble getting everything tested by the end of the Sprint, and how, through visualization of work, they were able to change how they organized themselves, and started shipping software reliably.

Featured Book of the Week: Agile Retrospectives – Making Good Teams Great, by Larsen and Derby

Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great, by Larsen and Derby is probably the most talked-about book on Agile Retrospectives and it helped Joe understand the role of the retrospectives as well as to prepare and facilitate great retrospectives. This was the book that helped Joe learn to appreciate Agile Retrospectives. 

About Joe Auslander

Joe is into game/experience design and enjoys working with teams to solve unique problems. In the past this has been in areas of ship repair, crew coordination, television production and software delivery. Joe enjoys learning and sharing what he has learned and he particularly loves seeing people succeed. 

You can link with Joe Auslander on LinkedIn and connect with Joe Auslander on Twitter.

Jakub Jurkiewicz: How to help a Scrum team to handle conflict, without a blow-up

This team had a conflict that no one wanted to address. The team behaved as if they just hoped things would go back to normal. It was wishful thinking, though. Things got so bad, that the team members started to fake agreement, just to avoid facing the conflict. Jakub wasn’t happy with the situation, and started working on how to resolve that conflict, and learned key lessons on how to prepare to handle the conflict. 

Featured Book of the Week: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen R. Covey

In the book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Jakub discovered a guide on how he could live his life to the full potential. In the book, which he still re-reads, he finds something new every time he picks it up. It’s a book that reminds him of what an Agile life could look like.

About Jakub Jurkiewicz

Jakub is a kaizen practice lead who participated in his first standup in 2005 and facilitated his first retrospective in 2007. Previously a software developer, team leader, Scrum Master and Agile consultant, Jakub is also, a podcaster and trainer at Agile Coaching Lab. Loves wine, bicycles and his wife (in the reverse order).

You can link with Jakub Jurkiewicz on LinkedIn and connect with Jakub Jurkiewicz on Twitter

John Albrecht: Navigating Complexity and Conflict in Scrum teams

Conflict is a natural process in teams. How teams handle, and survive conflict becomes therefore a critical aspect of their work. In this episode, we explore some of the skills/tools that help teams survive and benefit from (constructive) conflict, instead of suffering and being destroyed by (destructive) conflict.

Featured book of the Week: One From Many, The Rise Of The Chaordic Organization by Dee Hock

In One From Many, The Rise Of The Chaordic Organization by Dee Hock, John found a book that gave him a different perspective of organizations and the role of “order” and “control” in management. In this real-life story about the creation of VISA (the credit card and payment processing organization), John found many ideas that help us navigate complex organizations. In this episode, we also talk about Wardley Maps, Complexity, and the Cynefin framework.

About John Albrecht

Agile Person, for the team by the team, used to be a developer. Got into Agile via Extreme Programming (XP), then Kanban, then Scrum. Some of his key ideas are Principles over Practices, #noestimates, love working with teams and organizations, the softer side, finding what they and customers need and what works for them.

You can link with John Albrecht on LinkedIn and connect with John Albrecht on Twitter.

You can learn more about John Albrecht’s work at Scrum Lake, and All Agile websites.

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This simple checklist and calendar handout, with a coaching article will help you define the minimum enagement your PO must have with the team
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Download a detailed How-To to help measure success for your team
Motivate your team with the right metrics, and the right way to visualize and track them. Marcus presents a detailed How-To document based on his experience at The Bungsu Hospital
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Read about Visualization and TRANSFORM The way your team works
A moving story of how work at the Bungsu Hospital was transformed by a simple tool that you can use to help your team.
Read about Visualization and TRANSFORM The way your team works