Kaisa Martiskainen: Coaching your Product Owner transitioning from a project manager role

The Great Product Owner: How a PO Can Be a Great Coach for Your Scrum Team

In this episode, Kaisa shares their experience with a PO who was an expert in lean product development. Kaisa explains that the PO was very generous with their time and knowledge, and ended up being a coach for Kaisa and the team. The PO was able to explain critical lean product development aspects, and showed the team how they worked. Kaisa notes that a great PO can be a mentor and a teacher, and this experience helped them grow and learn more about lean.

The Bad Product Owner: Coaching your Product Owner transitioning from a project manager role

In this episode, Kaisa shares her experience of working with a new Product Owner (PO) who had previously worked as a waterfall project manager. The PO was only focused on planning, executing, and delivering, which went against the principles of agile methodology. The PO struggled with defining the vision and direction of the product, and had to go back to the manager for decisions. To help the PO transition and learn the role, Kaisa recommended having a conversation with the PO and their manager, having a mentor for the PO, and having the Scrum Master support and coach the PO. Kaisa emphasizes the importance of coaching the PO to become an effective member of the agile team.

In this episode, we refer to the Coach Your PO e-course, which tackles 18 key aspects when coaching your PO.

The Ultimate Guide to Supporting Product Owners as a Scrum Master

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 Kaisa Martiskainen

Kaisa is an Agile coach working for a large multinational software company. Originally from Finland, her thirst for learning new things and passion for languages led her to live in Sweden, and Scotland before settling in Montreal, Canada. She is an avid Redditor who spends her free time reading, knitting, investing and playing with her two daughters.

You can link with Kaisa Martiskainen on LinkedIn.

Meena Venkataraman: Coaching Stakeholders and product owners, a critical aspect of the Scrum Master role

In this episode, Meena shared her experience coaching a team where the Product Owner (PO) was hostile towards her. The PO had previously been a project manager with control over many aspects of the project, and had trouble adjusting to the new role in Agile. Meena observed that the team was using a mix of Scrum and Waterfall practices, and the PO was still using language like “resources” and moving team members around like Lego pieces.

Meena worked with the team to establish common vocabulary and practices through training and discussions, but found it challenging to help the PO understand the Agile approach. Meena emphasized the importance of working with early adopters in the team and coaching stakeholders outside of the team. Overall, the experience highlights the challenges of change management in Agile and the need for patience, education, and communication to help teams and stakeholders understand and adopt new practices.

As Scrum Master we work with change continuously! Do you have your own change framework that provides the guidance, and queues you need when working with change? The Lean Change Management framework is a fully defined, lean-startup inspired change framework that can be used as the backbone of any change process! You can buy Lean Change Management the book at Amazon. Also available in French, Spanish, German and Portuguese.

About Meena Venkataraman

Meena is an Agile & Lean coach who helps organizations and teams transition to Agile ways of working. She is passionate about the neuroscience behind team dynamics and is interested in organizational design and the application of Agile principles across different business domains. Meena enjoys speaking at conferences and is an avid learner.

You can link with Meena Venkataraman on LinkedIn.

Elly Griffith-Ward: The impediment that kills Agile adoption in many organizations, and what to do about it

Many Scrum Masters will recognize the impediment to Agile adoption that Elly mentions in this episode: there are other, interdependent parts of the organization that are not using Agile! However, the way in which this impediment expresses itself is very diverse between organizations. In this episode, we explore one of the anti-patterns that comes from trying to implement Agile in a previously waterfall organization. Listen in to learn to recognize the signs of problems, and how to help your organization despite this “glass ceiling”.

About Elly Griffith-Ward

Elly is an Agile Coach at a major e-commerce company. Previously in user research (and a royal food historian). She aims to 1) improve the experience of work through reducing mental load, improving communication and forming strong teams 2) shift the focus from managing the worker to managing the work by focusing on flow and waste.

You can link with Elly Griffith-Ward on LinkedIn and connect with Elly Griffith-Ward on Twitter.

Ricardo Ribeiro: Waterfall to Scrum, a change process starting with the basics

Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes.

Although it may be obvious for Scrum Masters that Scrum is a better alternative to Waterfall, the fact is that organizations take their time to accept even that seemingly obvious conclusion. In this episode, we explore Ricardo’s change adventure in a company that went from Waterfall to Scrum.

About Ricardo Ribeiro

Ricardo is a Scrum Master (PSM) and certified Professional Scrum Product Owner™ (PSPO) with over 10 years of experience leading high-performing teams and delivering complex Transformational Programmes within the Banking, IT, Computer Hardware and Oil & Gas companies.

You can link with Ricardo Ribeiro on LinkedIn.

Ricardo Ribeiro: Hands on with a Scrum team moving from Waterfall to Scrum

Ricardo was working with a team in transition from Waterfall to Scrum. This team tried to manage their Scrum process as if it was a Waterfall process, and added gates between Sprints as if they were phases in a Waterfall process. On top of that, the Product Owner – himself with a Waterfall background – wanted the team to have all the requirements defined first before starting to develop. Ricardo needed to find a way to help the team get out of the sequential, phase-based thinking. He needed to help the team evolve, but not become the “scrum cop”! In this episode, we explore how to support teams in transition from Waterfall to Scrum.

Featured Book of the Week: Fixing Your Scrum by Ripley et al

In Fixing Your Scrum by Ryan Ripley (Ryan Ripley has been a previous podcast guest) and Todd Miller, Ricardo found a book that helped him understand common challenges many teams go through, and how to overcome the problems that come with those challenges.

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 Ricardo Ribeiro

You can link with Ricardo Ribeiro on LinkedIn.