Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile storytelling from the trenches Vasco Duarte, Agile Coach, Certified Scrum Master, Certified Product Owner

Kevin Hoey: The Product Owner as a Team Player in Agile Teams 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.
The Great Product Owner: The Product Owner as a Team Player in Agile Teams Kevin highlights the qualities of an exceptional Product Owner who excels in communication, provides clear context, and uses inclusive language like "us" and "we". This PO effectively conveys the product vision, fosters team collaboration, and ensures everyone understands the impact of their work. Kevin underscores the importance of over-communication and listening, demonstrating how great POs drive team success.
The Bad Product Owner: From Absent to Engaged, Removing the Absent PO Dynamics Kevin discusses the challenges of working with an absent Product Owner, which he identifies as a significant anti-pattern. He shares his experience of addressing the issue by understanding the PO’s pressures and advocating for their presence. Kevin introduced the concept of a Proxy PO, which eventually led to a successful transition and improved team dynamics. He emphasizes the importance of curiosity, understanding, and taking transition steps to manage risks.
 
[IMAGE HERE] 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 Kevin Hoey
Kevin is the lead scrum master at Domestic and General, with 10 years' experience in project management before moving into scrum mastery. He now heads up a team of scrum masters, whilst continuing to support his own squads. Kevin believes scrum masters need to focus on self-improvement to turbocharge their ability to better support teams and the wider business on the journey to effectiveness.
You can link with Kevin Hoey on LinkedIn.

Kevin Hoey: Two Scrum Master Critical Tasks: Measuring Value Delivery in Agile Teams, And Aligning With Stakeholders 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.
When it comes to success for scrum masters, Kevin focuses on people-centric approaches, continuous improvement, and value delivery. He emphasizes aligning with stakeholders' goals and measuring outcomes. Kevin discusses the importance of having a product roadmap and vision, conducting health checks, and striving for daily improvement. Removing unnecessary steps and making processes more efficient are key to achieving better outcomes for the team and the business.
Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Order Stories by Cycle Time Kevin emphasizes the necessity of retrospectives, especially for teams that claim to be too busy. He discusses the anti-pattern of avoiding retros, highlighting the benefits of examining sprint goals and reinforcing what works well. Kevin suggests periodically reviewing stories by cycle time to identify and address delays, ensuring continuous improvement in handling challenging tasks.
Kevin also shares two other retrospective formats. Starting with the simple: just do a retro, and talk; and he also recommends another simple format: “Did we meet our Sprint goal? Why/Why not?”
 
[IMAGE HERE] Retrospectives, planning sessions, vision workshops, we are continuously helping teams learn about how to collaborate in practice! In this Actionable Agile Tools book, Jeff Campbell shares some of the tools he’s learned over a decade of coaching Agile Teams. The pragmatic coaching book you need, right now! Buy Actionable Agile Tools on Amazon, or directly from the author, and supercharge your facilitation toolbox! 
 
About Kevin Hoey
Kevin is the lead scrum master at Domestic and General, with 10 years' experience in project management before moving into scrum mastery. He now heads up a team of scrum masters, whilst continuing to support his own squads. Kevin believes scrum masters need to focus on self-improvement to turbocharge their ability to better support teams and the wider business on the journey to effectiveness.
You can link with Kevin Hoey on LinkedIn.

Kevin Hoey: How to Master Stakeholder Collaboration in Agile Environments During Change 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.
Kevin discusses the constant nature of change in the scrum master role, highlighting the challenges of working with external stakeholders who often revert to command-and-control under pressure. He stresses the importance of coaching stakeholders on agile principles, prioritizing high-value items, and showing progress every sprint. Kevin shares tips on managing scope, meeting deadlines without compromising quality, and the value of incremental delivery to reduce risk and extract value.
 
[IMAGE HERE] 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 Kevin Hoey
Kevin is the lead scrum master at Domestic and General, with 10 years' experience in project management before moving into scrum mastery. He now heads up a team of scrum masters, whilst continuing to support his own squads. Kevin believes scrum masters need to focus on self-improvement to turbocharge their ability to better support teams and the wider business on the journey to effectiveness.
You can link with Kevin Hoey on LinkedIn.

Kevin Hoey: Fostering Agile Team Collaboration in Remote Settings 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.
Kevin describes a team struggling with collaboration, where members worked in isolation and did not work towards a sprint goal. This led to over-the-wall work handoffs and blame in the team. Kevin emphasizes the importance of having cameras on during remote meetings to foster team connection. He shares that effective scrum masters unlock team productivity by focusing on people first, ensuring everyone is aligned and engaged in their work.
Featured Book of the Week: Drive by Dan Pink Kevin shares that his greatest influence isn't a book, but the Agile podcasts such as this one and others. As a new scrum master, it was the insights from experienced professionals that shaped his journey. However, he recommends "Drive" by Dan Pink, which emphasizes intrinsic motivation through mastery, purpose, and autonomy. Kevin's company has long embraced autonomy, helping him reflect on his role in fostering these qualities within his teams. He highlights the importance of enabling autonomy, purpose, and mastery to drive motivation and success in the teams we work with.
 
[IMAGE HERE] 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 Kevin Hoey
Kevin is the lead scrum master at Domestic and General, with 10 years' experience in project management before moving into scrum mastery. He now heads up a team of scrum masters, whilst continuing to support his own squads. Kevin believes scrum masters need to focus on self-improvement to turbocharge their ability to better support teams and the wider business on the journey to effectiveness.
You can link with Kevin Hoey on LinkedIn.

Kevin Hoey: How to Speedup Agile Team Deliveries With Better Story Splitting 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.
Kevin reflects on his early career, sharing a time when his team of 12 struggled due to an anti-pattern of splitting stories by roles, causing an eight-week delivery delay. Kevin recognized the issue and initially approached the team with a focus on adherence to the Scrum guide, which didn't resonate. He later revised his approach, explaining the benefits, and managed to persuade the team to deliver one story in one go, although unsuccessfully at first. Through continuous effort, he introduced better story splitting, quick deliveries, and built trust with stakeholders, boosting team morale and productivity.
 
[IMAGE HERE] 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 Kevin Hoey
Kevin is the lead scrum master at Domestic and General, with 10 years' experience in project management before moving into scrum mastery. He now heads up a team of scrum masters, whilst continuing to support his own squads. Kevin believes scrum masters need to focus on self-improvement to turbocharge their ability to better support teams and the wider business on the journey to effectiveness.
You can link with Kevin Hoey on LinkedIn.

Stella Ihenacho: Agile Team Collaboration and Setting a Clear Product Vision, Two Critical Product Owner Skills 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.
The Great Product Owner: Team Collaboration and Setting a Clear Product Vision, Two Critical PO Skills In the great PO segment, Stella highlights an exemplary Product Owner who, despite lacking deep technical knowledge, developed a clear vision and strategy for the product and communicated it clearly to the team. This PO regularly collaborated with subject matter experts and held frequent calls to align with team members on the roadmap. By fostering a shared product vision, this PO exemplified effective leadership and teamwork.
The Bad Product Owner: Engaging the PO to Create Clarity and Purpose for the Agile Team Stella shares the story of a Product Owner who was present but not engaged with the team. This PO missed key team events, leading to confusion and demotivation among the team members. Stella understood that the team lacked context and clear priorities, resulting in a poor ability to understand stakeholder feedback. When analyzing the causes for this anti-pattern, Stella highlights the pitfalls of spreading a PO too thin and the importance of mid-sprint reviews. 
 
[IMAGE HERE] 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 Stella Ihenacho
Stella is the Manager of the Continuous Improvement and Agility team at RedHat and Agile Faculty Lead at NSTAR Technologies. Dedicated to transforming organizations and individuals through an agile mindset, she believes there's always room for improvement, even when things aren't broken.
You can link with Stella Ihenacho on LinkedIn and connect with Stella Ihenacho on Instagram.