trust Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Johannes Lindman: Lessons in Communication and Trust for Scrum Masters, helping teams overcome adversity

In this episode, Johannes Lindman shares a story about a small team he worked with for a few months leading up to a major release. The team was focused on delivery and even had checklists to ensure that they were well-prepared. However, they encountered a problem that they had not anticipated and had to stop and acknowledge their failure. The team was surprised because they believed they had prepared well and were not sure how they missed the issue.

The team started to point fingers and look at one person who did not talk much. They realized that they were not talking about the problems they were afraid of and needed to be super honest with each other. Johannes notes that the team trusted each other as individuals, but they did not pick up on each other’s signs. In the end, the team learned the importance of communication, honesty, and trust. They realized that they needed to work on their communication skills and ensure that everyone felt comfortable speaking up when there was an issue.

Featured Book of the Week: Extreme Programming Explained by Kent Beck

In this segment, Johannes shares the impact that the book “Extreme Programming Explained” by Kent Beck had on his career. Johannes explains that the book helped him in many ways, and he found so many valuable ideas in it. He recalls the mantra “make it work, make it right, make it fast,” which he believes summarizes the essence of the book’s philosophy.

He credits the book with helping him to become a better developer and to embrace a growth mindset.

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 Johannes Lindman

Despite many years of experience Johannes still learns new things every day in order to stay relevant. This aligns with his curiosity on life and people.

You can link with Johannes Lindman on LinkedIn.

Caterina Palmiotto: The Phantom Product Owner, How Lack of Decision-Making Impacts the Team and Kills Innovation

The Great Product Owner: The Collaboration Between PO and Team as Key to PO Success

In this segment, Caterina shares a story of a great Product Owner who worked closely with their team. The PO took the time to share the high-level vision and timeline for a new module, collected doubts and comments from the team, and presented user stories with enough information to start a discussion. The PO listened to all suggestions and was available every day to collaborate. The refinement process was done in two parts, with the second part focused on investigating technical aspects. The PO even participated in retrospectives and worked with the team to improve the product based on either technical or functional ideas by the team. Caterina emphasizes the importance of building this kind of productive collaboration between POs and their teams, with the help of Scrum Masters.

The Bad Product Owner: The Phantom PO, How Lack of Decision-Making Impacts the Team and Kills Innovation

In this segment, Caterina talks about a Product Owner who only wrote user stories but was unable to make decisions. The Product Owner always needed to report to his boss, which caused a delay in decision-making. This led to delays in the team’s work, resulting in not completing the story in the sprint. Additionally, the team lost trust in the PO, and did not have enough information or support from the PO to bring their contribution to the product through technical innovation. Eventually, the team started to make decisions on their own and stopped suggesting ideas to the PO. Caterina emphasizes the importance of Product Owners being able to make decisions and not causing delays in the team’s work.

Are you having trouble helping the team work well with their Product Owner? We’ve put together a course to help you work on the collaboration team-product owner. You can find it at bit.ly/coachyourpo. 18 modules, 8+ hours of modules with tools and techniques that you can use to help teams and PO’s collaborate.

About Caterina Palmiotto

Caterina started as a software developer but soon realized that she was passionate about team dynamics and communication, and embraced agility from the moment she saw it.

Caterina believes a team can be more than the sum of its parts and that growing the right culture is essential. When people are surrounded by good examples they will be motivated to do their best. So the first step is doing your best to be a good example of the culture you want to nurture.

You can link with Caterina Palmiotto on LinkedIn.

Kirill Golubev: The Pitfalls of a Project Management Mindset in the Product Owner role

The Great Product Owner: Building a strong relationship between Scrum Master and PO, a critical contribution to the success of the team

Kirill talks about how important it is for Scrum Masters to build a close understanding and trusting relationship with the product owner (PO), and how that relationship is critical for the success of the team. He emphasizes that if there is no chemistry between the Scrum Master and PO, it’s better not to join that team. When there is good chemistry, the team will benefit much more from both Scrum Master’s and PO’s presence.

Kirill also stresses that the PO needs to have guts and be clear about prioritizing the backlog. He warns against the anti-pattern of conflict between the Scrum Master and PO.

The Bad Product Owner: The Pitfalls of a Project Management Mindset in the PO role

In this segment, Kirill shares why he thinks that the PO role is a cornerstone role in Scrum and without a PO, a Scrum team cannot even get started properly. We explore how POs that come from the project management field, often have a project management mindset, which hinders their ability to grasp the PO role.

Kirill shares an example of 3 POs for one team who were new to the role and to Agile. The POs did not trust the team to self-manage, and wanted to control everything by telling the team what they had to work on, and when. We discuss how we can help the PO understand that it helps the team to trust and help them self-manage. We also refer to the concepts of Theory X and Theory Y and how, knowing about that can help the PO’s understand their role as a leader.

About Kirill Golubev

Kirill considers himself an Agile and common-sense apologist. He wants to see simple processes in place, when people self-organize and manage themselves without constant push from management.

You can link with Kirill Golubev on LinkedIn.

Tinatin Tabidze: Building Trust in Agile Teams, Insights from a Scrum Master

Tinatin discusses the importance of the scrum values in a team and how well the team is living those values. She highlights the importance of team health checks to identify inefficiencies, which can often result from a lack of collaboration and trust between team members. Tinatin uses the example of the Spotify Squad health check (mentioned several times here on the podcast) that reveals a lack of trust between developers and testers, and offers tips for identifying a lack of trust in a team, such as monitoring levels of comfort among team members, monitoring communication, and observing meetings for signs of discomfort or silence.

Featured Book Of The Week: Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Sutherland

In Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Sutherland, the author describes how to optimize work through Agile methodology and Scrum principles. In this episode, Tinatin also refers to Scaling Lean and Agile Development by Craig Larman, and Bas Vodde. Bas Vodde has been a previous guest on the podcast. And she also refers to Strategize: Product Strategy and Product Roadmap Practices for the Digital Age by Roman Pichler.

About Tinatin Tabidze

Tinatin Tabidze is a Scrum Master currently working in Stuttgart, Germany. Originally she started out as a project manager. She has experience with multiple scrum and kanban teams, working with scaled agile frameworks.

You can link with Tinatin Tabidze on LinkedIn.

Bram De Block: Overcoming fear of failure and embracing experimentation in Agile teams

In this episode, Bram shares the story of a workshop where people participated and found that they liked it, but soon after, started to find reasons not to apply what they were excited about during the workshop. The team felt they were not allowed to make decisions, and the manager was not trusting that the team was capable. Bram highlights the common anti-pattern of a manager projecting fear onto the team and how to help the manager and team overcome that anti-pattern. He suggests considering what the worst case scenario is and to focus on celebrating successes instead. Bram also highlights that often, teams don’t feel they are allowed to experiment, and how he helps teams experiment and learn from their failures. We also talk about how to encourage managers to let teams work on safe-to-fail experiments, as they can help the team learn and grow. The episode aims to help managers and teams to overcome the fear of failure and to be more open to experimentation and learning.

Featured Book of the Week: Getting Things Done by David Allen

Bram recommends ‘Getting Things Done’ by David Allen, the ultimate productivity guide for anyone looking to streamline their workflow and achieve more. This book is a comprehensive guide that covers a lot of techniques to capture what is on your mind, what you need to do and get all those things out of your mind and into a system. The book offers strategies for getting calmer, being more effective and letting go of things that are holding you back. It emphasizes the importance of starting with a system and how to create one that works for you. This book will help you to achieve your goals and work smarter, not harder. It is a must-read for anyone who wants to be more productive and organized.

About Bram De Block

Bram is not an official trainer, consultant nor freelancer. He is just himself, supporting colleagues in applying and growing their own potential and getting stuff done. Bram started as a software developer for 10 years, then grew into a half-time agile coach, and finally, full-time “Global Agile Lead” at Skyline Communications. Something “special” he learned (even if he wishes it wasn’t special): the meaning and impact of “respect”.

You can link with Bram De Block on LinkedIn, or meet Bram face-to-face at this meetup he hosts in Belgium.