Community Blog

A few years ago, I bumped into an ex-colleague of mine who was working with someone who I had also previously worked with - both of us were, or had been, a Scrum Master for this ex-colleague.

You certainly know that COVID-19 has caused a great deal of loss. We’ve lost lives and have had a tremendous shift in our daily behavior.

"How do you get an inexperienced Product Owner to concentrate on the why's and the value delivered by a feature/requirement, rather than a list of what's e.g we must gather a,b,c... x,y,z info from our users"

Breakout rooms in Zoom were a life-saver for many facilitators, trainers and Scrum Masters in recent months. As many of you probably already know, those breakout rooms aim to allow smaller groups to work independently. That increases engagement of each participant.

In Leslie Morse's first Scrum.org blog post she explores the intersection of professional coaching and agile coaching, and the opportunity we have as agilists to overcome the limitations of an industrialized mindset and create space for ushering in the future of work.

In this blog series I would like to address topics that relate to professional team coaching as well as Professional Scrum. In the course of becoming a Professional Team Coach, I noticed a lot of interesting topics for Scrum Masters who want to improve their coaching stance.

Part of the role of being a Scrum Master is to be a coach; to the team, the organisation and the individual.

First of all, I'd like to note that models and terms I am using and discuss are not mine. They come from training and coaching sessions belonging to Vroemen from Teamchange. The connection I make to Scrum is my interpretation. 

The urgency of having the right type of conversation, especially today in a remote setting, has significantly increased overnight. This blog provides a perspective on a particular type of conversation and my own “personal experiences”  that show we need them more than ever.

This post reflects on a workshop, in which we will observe four systemic thinking perspectives. After reading you will have an insight into constellation work and how it can be utilized to incorporate the four key systemic thinking perspectives into your own agile team coaching workshop design.

This blog post takes a look at what a systemic perspective means, and helps to understand how to improve your own approach to coaching in agile environments. In order to answer the question above we will take a look at the key perspectives of a systemic approach to coaching.

The Scrum Guide is quite clear on one important thing: for one product there is only one Product Owner and only one Product Backlog...

The legendary Steve Trapps has been talking to me for months about featuring in an interview. So here we are, I finally agreed and we spent 25 minutes talking about me; obviously mainly avoiding being narcissistic.

I have my own biases,  having seen co-located teams work very well and having struggled with “dislocated” teams, I often recommend my clients to reconsider “dislocated” teams. 

Being a Scrum Master requires to take many different stances and approaches when working together with teams and individuals. Two of them that are probably used most are “Coaching” and “Mentoring”.

Icebreakers: are they a complete waste of time or do they add value? Some people absolutely love them, other absolute dislike them because they didn’t add any value. I believe a well-designed icebreaker can kickstart your session, can be fun and get people warmed-up for the rest of the session. Learn about how you can design icebreakers that add value and that grow connection between the participants and the purpose of a session.

Conflicts are fascinating. Now, this may be the organisational psychologist in me talking, or the facilitator who senses them in the groups I work with.

For executives and for change agents who deal with executives in large contexts ...

In this post I'd like to discuss "Empathy - why it is important in teams and what you can do if you struggle with it". First, we all know what the role of the Scrum Master is, right?

It was 8:59 am on Monday. It was another week which I thought was going to be amazing. Last week our company just closed another round of investment. The company is currently strategizing to scale agility throughout the company.

The purpose of Scrum is to create a potentially releasable Done Product Increment, in order to realize business value. Many teams struggle in improving their Definition of Done. The technique described here allows for greater transparency on what the Definition of Done is, and what the next steps are.

Hello, great people of the world. In my previous article, we have discussed how Scrum Masters need to master many things. In this article, we are going to discuss one of the stances that the Scrum Master need to master, that is the facilitation stance.

"An Agile Coach know more than just Scrum", said one consultant in a boardroom meeting, "he/she knows organisation dynamics, executive coaching and other Agile practices like Kanban and DevOps", he continued.

What we avoid is still being processed and affecting our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.  Sometimes we are aware this is running in the background, and we catch ourselves thinking about it.  Then we try to distract ourselves.  Often we don’t even have awareness, and the effects still show up.

As an Agile Coach, you frequently encounter situations which demand quick thinking to get things moving in the right direction. Over time I have found few techniques which come in handy and always keep these in my playbook in case needs arise. This is the third part in the series of tools that I have found useful in my role as Agile Coach – Asking Powerful Questions.

Do you ever influence or coach people?  How?  Do you use a gut feel approach or do you have coaching patterns that you use?  I have several coaching patterns that I step through when trying to influence people.

Scrum is a framework that thrives on self-organizing teams.  It gives you boundaries (e.g. time-box of a Sprint), clear accountabilities (e.g. Product Owner optimizes value), and goals (e.g. “Done” Increment).

Let the coaching experiment continue!   Welcome back to part two of our curiosity filled coaching questions!

Do you have time for an experiment? Then please ask me a coaching question!   Welcome to the first of a two part blogpost full of curiosity filled questions on coaching!

We talk about coaching a lot in the agile world. However, what we are actually expected to do is not usually about coaching.  We do other things. We teach.  We facilitate.  We advise. We solution.  We manage.  

Recently I had the opportunity to give a guest lecture about "Agile Essentials" at a University of Applied Science. These students, the lecturer told me beforehand, would only be partly interested and engaged. Therefore I prepared for the worst... 

The Scrum Guide talks about coaching as a part of the Scrum Master role.  First, let's define what coaching is.  You can find many definitions, and here is how I describe coaching.

Per a January 20th, 2017 article by Daniel Shapero, VP of Talent Solutions and Careers at LinkedIn, the role of Scrum Master is in high demand. It’s ranked number 10 on his list of most promising jobs of 2017.

Clients and training attendees ask me "Can you use Scrum for something else than software?”. What they usually mean is building some other products or organizing team’s work. Let’s explore a more exotic idea.

NEW YEAR RESOLUTION

In a previous post describing challenges to creating a Done Increment, I identified impediments as one of those challenges.  More specifically, NOT removing t

In a previous post describing challenges to creating a done Increment, I identified too much change during the Sprint as one of those challenges.  Th

In a previous post describing challenges to creating a Done Increment, I identified a lack of team collaboration as one of those challenges.

In a previous post describing challenges to creating a Done Increment, I identified a lack of team ownership as one of those challenges.

EMBARRASSING CONFESSION

UNFLATTERING WISDOM OF HIND SIGHT

This summer, during the Olympics, the Euro Soccer Championships and the Tour the France, while cheering  in front of the tv, I noticed something in the way teams perform. And it worried me.

In my last post, I explained the pattern of the evolution of the Product Owner. This blog is about the evolution pattern of a Scrum Master.

The most common question I am asked at my courses is - what makes a good Scrum Master? I always answer this question with a story from my own experience working with Scrum Masters (good and bad) over the years.

The most common question I am asked at my courses is - what makes a good Scrum Master? I always answer this question with a story from my own experience working with Scrum Masters (good and bad) over the years.

This is a list of 10 questions a Scrum Master may ask a Product Owner, in order to help coach them in their role. Of course, not all questions may apply based on your specific context.

This is a list of 10 questions a Scrum Master may ask a Product Owner, in order to help coach them in their role. Of course, not all questions may apply based on your specific context.

GREAT DALLAS ICE STORM OF 2013  

This blog is the sequel to my earlier blog - Ent

The role of a Scrum Master is one of many stances and diversity. A great Scrum Master is aware of them and knows when and how to apply them, depending on situation and context. Everything with the purpose of helping people understand and apply the Scrum framework better.