Podcasts about sprint planning

Global Agile Summit Preview: Implementing Agile Practices for Data and Analytics Teams with Henrik Reich In this BONUS Global Agile Summit preview episode, we dive into the world of Agile methodologies specifically tailored for data and analytics teams. Henrik Reich, Principal Architect at twoday Data & AI Denmark, shares his expertise on how data teams can adapt Agile principles to their unique needs, the challenges they face, and practical tips for successful implementation. The Evolution of Data Teams "Data and analytics work is moving more and more to be like software development." The landscape of data work is rapidly changing. Henrik explains how data teams are increasingly adopting software development practices, yet there remains a significant knowledge gap in effectively using certain tools. This transition creates both opportunities and challenges for organizations looking to implement Agile methodologies in their data teams. Henrik emphasizes that as data projects become more complex, the need for structured yet flexible approaches becomes critical. Dynamic Teams in the Data and Analytics World "When we do sprint planning, we have to assess who is available. Not always the same people are available." Henrik introduces the concept of "dynamic teams," particularly relevant in consulting environments. Unlike traditional Agile teams with consistent membership, data teams often work with fluctuating resources. This requires a unique approach to sprint planning and task assignment. Henrik describes how this dynamic structure affects team coordination, knowledge sharing, and project continuity, offering practical strategies for maintaining momentum despite changing team composition. Customizing Agile for Data and Analytics Teams "In data and analytics, tools have ignored agile practices for a long time." Henrik emphasizes that Agile isn't a one-size-fits-all solution, especially for data teams. He outlines the unique challenges these teams face: Team members have varying expectations based on their backgrounds Experienced data professionals sometimes skip quality practices Traditional data tools weren't designed with Agile methodologies in mind When adapting Agile for data teams, Henrik recommends focusing on three key areas: People and their expertise Technology selection Architecture decisions The overarching goal remains consistent: "How can we deliver as quickly as possible, and keep the good mood of the team?" Implementing CI/CD in Data Projects "Our first approach is to make CI/CD available in the teams." Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) practices are essential but often challenging to implement in data teams. Henrik shares how his organization creates "Accelerators" - tools and practices that enable teams to adopt CI/CD effectively. These accelerators address both technological requirements and new ways of working. Through practical examples, he demonstrates how teams can overcome common obstacles, such as version control challenges specific to data projects. In this segment, we refer to the book How to Succeed with Agile Business Intelligence by Raphael Branger. Practical Tips for Agile Adoption "Start small. Don't ditch scrum, take it as an inspiration." For data teams looking to adopt Agile practices, Henrik offers pragmatic advice: Begin with small, manageable changes Use established frameworks like Scrum as inspiration rather than rigid rules Practice new methodologies together as a team to build collective understanding Adapt processes based on team feedback and project requirements This approach allows data teams to embrace Agile principles while accounting for their unique characteristics and constraints. The Product Owner Challenge "CxOs are the biggest users of these systems." A common challenge in data teams is the emergence of "accidental product owners" - individuals who find themselves in product ownership roles without clear preparation. Henrik explains why this happens and offers solutions: Clearly identify who owns the project from the outset Consider implementing a "Proxy PO" role between executives and Agile data teams Recognize the importance of having the right stakeholder engagement for requirements gathering and feedback Henrik also highlights the diversity within data teams, noting there are typically "people who code for living, and people who live for coding." This diversity presents both challenges and opportunities for Agile implementation. Fostering Creativity in Structured Environments "Use sprint goals to motivate a team, and help everyone contribute." Data work often requires creative problem-solving - something that can seem at odds with structured Agile frameworks. Henrik discusses how to balance these seemingly conflicting needs by: Recognizing individual strengths within the team Organizing work to leverage these diverse abilities Using sprint goals to provide direction while allowing flexibility in approach This balanced approach helps maintain the benefits of Agile structure while creating space for the creative work essential to solving complex data problems. About Henrik Reich Henrik is a Principal Architect and developer in the R&D Department at twoday Data & AI Denmark. With deep expertise in OLTP and OLAP, he is a strong advocate of Agile development, automation, and continuous learning. He enjoys biking, music, technical blogging, and speaking at events on data and AI topics. You can link with Henrik Reich on LinkedIn and follow Henrik Reich's blog.

In this episode, Kate Megaw joins Brian Milner to share simple but powerful techniques that can turn those soul-sucking meetings into dynamic, action-driven conversations. If you're ready to make meetings worth attending, this one’s for you! Overview Brian Milner and Kate Megaw uncover the secrets to running highly effective and engaging meetings. They tackle common facilitation pitfalls, the staggering amount of time wasted in ineffective meetings, and how simple tweaks can transform team collaboration. Kate shares practical strategies for keeping participants engaged, fostering psychological safety, and ensuring meetings lead to real action—because no one has time for another pointless meeting. References and resources mentioned in the show: Kate Megaw ARCLight Agile Katanu Katanu’s Facilitator Certification Course Katanu Resources #44: Transformations Take People with Anu Smalley Advanced Certified ScrumMaster® Mountain Goat Software Certified Scrum and Agile Training Schedule Join the Agile Mentors Community Subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. Got an Agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He's passionate about making a difference in people's day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work. Kate Megaw is the Founder and CEO of ARCLight Agile, specializing in helping organizations create empowered, high-performing teams through agility and collaboration. A dynamic Certified Scrum Trainer (CST), Certified Team Coach (CTC), and Project Management Professional (PMP), Kate is a sought-after speaker known for sparking ‘aha’ moments that drive real transformation. Auto-generated Transcript: Brian Milner (00:00) Welcome in Agile Mentors. We're back here for another episode of the Agile Mentors Podcast. I'm here as I always am, Brian Milner. I'm with you as your host. But today I have the one and only, amazing Kate McGaw is with us. Kate, thank you for coming on. Kate Megaw (00:17) Thank you for having me. Brian Milner (00:19) Absolutely. If there's some of you out there that aren't familiar with Kate, she is a CST, a Scrum trainer like myself. She's also a certified team coach. And she also has the other side of things, the dark side. She's a PMP. So she has that project management kind of background that she brings to the table as well, which I think is awesome. She's a CEO of a company called Arclight Agile. And she's a co-founder of one of our favorites here that's come on the show, Anu. But they team up together. So it's Kate and Anu. And so their company is Katanu. I love it. love it. So why we decided to have Kate on is because Kate and Anu both have done a lot of work around facilitation. And we did have a user request. Kate Megaw (00:57) That's it. Brian Milner (01:09) to have an episode where we focused on facilitation. And listeners of the show know there's nothing I love more than being able to fulfill listener requests here and try to do those as soon as possible. So let's dive in. Let's talk about facilitation. It's a funny word. There's lots of different misconceptions and things about it, I'm sure. What do you find people misunderstand most about facilitation? Kate Megaw (01:34) think one of the key misunderstandings around facilitation is that you're part of the meeting, you're part of the event, you're actively involved. And when you're facilitating, you're actually, taking a step back because you are accountable for making sure that everyone is speaking and that we're keeping an eye on the agenda and things like that. And if you are actively involved in the discussion, You can't be doing that because you're missing body language. You're missing people who need to talk and who aren't talking. So I think one of the main misconceptions is, or that people forget is a facilitator is neutral. So if, for example, you have a scrum master facilitating a retrospective and they need to be actively involved in the retrospective, they should be inviting somebody else in to facilitate it. and I think We're beginning to see a lot more interest in it now because it's one of these key things. If it's done badly, people generally will notice. If it's done well, hopefully you don't notice that much other than, you know what, that meeting was very efficient. We achieved the goal and I feel as though it was worth my time. One of the things I like to say to people at the end of a meeting is the fist of five, how worth your time was this meeting? And I'm looking for fives or fours. If we're getting threes, twos and ones, we've not facilitated it well, or the meeting didn't achieve its agenda and things like that. think a lot of the statistics around facilitation that have come out recently, and you and I were talking about these briefly before we started that the average at the Microsoft trend index shows us that average time spent in meetings by employees at the moment is 21 and a half hours a week, which is an increase, I know, an increase of 252 % since the pre-pandemic. So. Brian Milner (03:36) That's incredible. Yeah, I mean, that's more than half of a work week, right? I mean, we're spending more than half our work week in just locked in meetings. So you're right. We had this conversation beforehand and you were telling me that stat and it just kind of floored me that we're spending that much time in meetings. But it was the next one you told me that really floored me. And it's a combination of these two, I think, that people need to really grasp onto. So tell them what you told me next. Kate Megaw (03:49) Mm hmm. Yep. Yep. Yeah. So the next one is that the Harvard Business Review indicates their research, 67 % of meetings are considered by executives to be failures. So if we look at the financial impact of that, and this is something I didn't share with you, but the financial impact of that is for a company, imagine you have a company with 100 employees, unproductive meetings are wasting upward of $1.7 million a year. If you have a thousand employees, increase that number. it's one of these things that it is not difficult to do. It is just understanding why we need someone in the facilitator role. And the basics around the basic facilitation, the basic getting ready for the meeting, facilitating during the meeting and properly closing the meeting. takes those unsuccessful numbers up to successful numbers where you're getting those fives and people are sort of, yep, that meeting totally achieved the purpose and the outcome and it finished early. So I've got 20 minutes back before my next meeting. Brian Milner (05:24) Yeah, it's so incredible that combination of those two stats. I thinking that we're spending over half our time in meetings and that 67 % of them are failures, we're having a lot of them and we're not doing them well, clearly. Kate Megaw (05:36) Absolutely. I think with, I don't know with Zoom, well, I think with Zoom, it's got easier to have meetings. So we're probably having meetings where we don't need to have meetings. That's one of my favorite things to ask is, does this need to be a meeting? Or are you just going to talk at me and roll data out? In which case, send it to me in email. Don't tie me up for a meeting. Brian Milner (05:44) Yep. Kate Megaw (06:02) Because so many meetings are a waste of time that a lot of people are spending meetings multitasking. So we're taking an hour for a meeting that we could do in 25 minutes if people were 100 % engaged and following the agenda and things like that. Brian Milner (06:22) Yeah, yeah, that's so fascinating. it seems like such a, it's hard to believe that there's not more of that skill in just basic business training, right? Because if we're having all those meetings, then it would seem natural that there would be more segments that would say, you know, a little facilitation skill for, you know, a, you know, bachelor's in business, you know, like that might be a little helpful, right? Kate Megaw (06:41) Yep. Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. And it's a small investment for something that will make a huge difference. I mean, one of the things Anu and I have been working on is the mnemonic of ready, reach, and wrap in order to make sure we have effective meetings. And the ready part of it is setting the foundation. So before you even get to your meeting, this is ahead of time. You're understanding, okay, what are the Rs? What are the roles and responsibilities? So if I'm facilitating, then who are the decision makers? Who is mandatory? Who's required to be there? Who are the, you can come if you want. Let's stop doing meetings to 30 people and expecting 30 people to show up. So we've got to understand the roles and responsibilities. The other, the E for the ready is expectations and engagement. Brian Milner (07:29) Ha ha ha. Kate Megaw (07:41) So if the expectations are that this is an interactive meeting, we're using Lucid or Mural or Mira, whatever tool we're using, it's going to be collaborative, webcams are going to be on, multitasking is going to be at a minimum, everyone knows going into that meeting what the expectations are. And then the A again is the agenda and the alignment. The agenda should be very clearly saying these are the items that the D is making sure where we have defined the purpose and the outcome. So every meeting, we need to know what the purpose of the meeting is, what the outcome of the meeting is, and they should be included in the agenda. We shouldn't be accepting meetings. Imagine the power of being able to decline a meeting if it didn't have an agenda in it. And if you think about it, why do we attend meetings? Brian Milner (08:27) Ha Yeah. Kate Megaw (08:33) with no agenda and people turn up to the meeting and said, okay, so what's this meeting for? Pretty sure we've all got better things to be doing. So make sure for every meeting we have a defined purpose and outcome. And then the why is making sure we as facilitators have your logistics ready. If it's Zoom, if we're using a remote whiteboard, do people need to practice it? Do we need to set up an environment? Do we need to make sure webcams are on? All that type of thing. So a huge amount of meetings would be better if we did nothing other than better planning with the roles, responsibilities, the expectations, the agenda, the defining the outcome and the logistics. If we just did that. Brian Milner (09:09) Yeah. Kate Megaw (09:23) I bet we're going to see the amount of productive meetings increase considerably. Brian Milner (09:29) Yeah, there's so much transfer here too as well, just to the normal scrum meetings that we have because, you know, one of the things I'll talk about lot in class is just to say, you know, you can't just expect to show up to something like Sprint Planning and have it go smoothly. You have to put in some work beforehand and get ready for it. Same thing with like a Sprint Review. You got to put in some work beforehand and make sure you know who's going when and who's speaking, you know, that speaking order and all that stuff. Kate Megaw (09:42) Yeah. Brian Milner (09:55) goes miles in making those more successful meetings. But the other thing that really interested me in that is you talk a little bit about purpose and that we don't really understand the purpose of the meetings. And that's something that's really stuck out to me is when I talk to people who don't like their Scrum meetings, it feels like 90 % that is just Brian math, but it feels like 90 % of the time, right? Feels like this. It feels like 90 % of the time. Kate Megaw (10:04) Mm-hmm. Brian Milner (10:20) that the people who have a problem with those meetings don't know the purpose of the meeting and that's really the root cause of it, right? If they knew why we were here, then the meeting makes sense. Now I understand what we're trying to do. Kate Megaw (10:26) Yep, absolutely. And I think one of the interesting things, I would love to repeat these numbers around the Scrum events, because I think by default, the Scrum events do have a purpose. They do have an outcome. We know what the roles and responsibilities are. We know what the expectations for engagement are. So I think the Scrum events are much more productive than your average event. Brian Milner (10:41) Yeah. Kate Megaw (10:59) But I do feel if we don't have well-facilitated Scrum events, that's where we get our criticism, or, this meeting was a waste of time. Okay, well, let's look at our facilitation and see, it an error in planning or was it an error in expectations? But it always surprises me when people say, well, Scrum's just so many meetings. And I'm so... No, we should have fewer meetings and if they're well facilitated, we need all of those meetings. So it's not as though we're having a meeting for meeting sake, which I think is unfortunately something we can't say for our non-scrum events. Brian Milner (11:43) Yeah, yeah, I mean, I go so far as to say, if you don't understand the purpose of it, don't show up. I mean, there's really no need to be there if you don't know what we're trying to get out of it. One other little side correlation there too, because this kind of ties in a little bit to some of the stuff I did this last year in kind of studying a little bit about neurodivergency and different neuro types and that kind of thing. And one of the things I found really fascinating was certain neurodivergent types, Kate Megaw (11:48) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Brian Milner (12:12) really need to have an agenda in advance. And if they don't, then it just raises their anxiety level. they're just, you even not, you know, neurodivergent types, just regular, normal, you know, neurotypical people. There are those that just don't respond well when you're just throwing out a blank slate and saying, give us your best idea, right? They need time to process and think in advance and Kate Megaw (12:15) Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep. Mm-hmm. Yep. Brian Milner (12:38) And so yeah, if we could send out that just the day before, it's not that much work. It's just one day earlier, right? It's actually the same amount of work. It's just doing it a day earlier. Right. Kate Megaw (12:45) Absolutely. Absolutely. It's just better organized. Yeah. I mean, I even on my team meetings, I know some members of my team want to know, because I always like to start them with segue questions and some of my team completely fine. Ask them a question, favorite food or you want to have any sort of segue question and they're fine with it. But I have my thinkers who want to think about it ahead of time. So I think it's important when we're facilitating any event that we understand the audience. How many of the audience are going to want to maybe read a document ahead of time? How many of the audience are, you know what, they can think on the feet, I can throw anything at them, but there are others that do need the preparation. yeah, I think that the planning that we do, if we can do it just slightly ahead. And then things like when we get into the meeting, of the mnemonic that we use for actually facilitating during the meeting is the mnemonic of reach, which is we're guiding the process. The very first thing we do when we go into the meeting is we review the agenda and open the meeting. So here's the agenda. I've got the agenda visible. mean, what the agenda that we use in classes. Is the to do doing and done. I use that for all my meetings. I've got that up on the virtual board and the topics of the meeting are moving across to doing and done because then our visual people can see how we're doing. But the reviewing, at the start of every meeting we said, OK, let's just review the agenda. Let's just remind everyone this is the purpose and this is the desired outcomes. And if the right people are not in the meeting. There's no point having a meeting that we cannot achieve the purpose and the outcomes because we don't have the right people. So, I mean, I always say open it, open it with a segue question and things like that, but level set on the agenda. And then the middle part of the meeting is the bit that people are familiar with, which is the gathering ideas. It's exploring. It's the A is the assessing, making sure we've got the collaboration and the discussion and the... Brian Milner (14:39) Yeah. Yeah. Kate Megaw (15:07) The C is our concluding, are we doing dot voting or is somebody else who makes the final decision? But the H is the one that we often forget at the end, which is let's highlight the action items from the meeting. Let's make sure we know what it is, who's accountable for it, when it's going to be done by, and then close the meeting. mean, you... Brian Milner (15:18) Hmm. Kate Megaw (15:33) you and I will both close out our classes. Maybe we use one word, maybe we use, give us a statement, all sorts of different things, but we forget to close out meetings. go, time's up. Okay. Bye everyone. And we've not reviewed the, this is what we're going to do for next time. And we've not formally closed the meeting, even if it's as simple as one word, but we've got to open and close it. Sorry. Passionate about that. No. Brian Milner (15:44) You You mean that's not how you close out a class? I've been closing classes like that for years. No, I'm just kidding. Yeah, exactly. Ding, sorry. Kate Megaw (16:03) Yes, sorry, time's up, clunk. Yeah, sorry, dog's barking, dog needs to go out. So, but yeah. Brian Milner (16:11) Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, no. And there was something I came across just in trying to put together materials for classes where we have little segments on facilitation in it. Because I think sometimes there's a lot of focus on the different various techniques, like fist to five or thumbs up or whatever. There's different kind of techniques. I'm not trying to belittle those. Those are things we need to know. But. Kate Megaw (16:21) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Brian Milner (16:36) One of the things I came across was that the root word of this thing is this Latin word, facilius. stands or it means literally to make easy. And I've always had that kind of in the back of my mind when I'm a facilitator is like, what are they trying to do? And whatever they're trying to do, just, my job is just to make that as easy as possible, right? You know, it's always difficult when you're trying to make a decision and you have no direction about how that decision is going to be made. Kate Megaw (16:46) Yeah. Brian Milner (17:05) But a good facilitator can give the structure to it and say, no, no, no, it's OK, I got you. We're going to go through this little journey together, and we're going to end in this other side, and you're going to have something to take away from it. Kate Megaw (17:16) Yeah, we're going to have heard everyone's voices as we go through. We're not going to let one person dominate the conversation. We're going to use techniques like, that's a great point. Can we also check in on the other side of the table? Let's hear some counter points here. It's pulling people in, it's summarizing. So if I'm hearing you correctly, Brian, you're saying A, B, C, D. It's all of that going into it. And I think one of the other... big has when we teach facilitation is the facilitator is not the scribe. So people say, well, I'm the project manager or I'm the facilitator. need to be taking all the meeting notes. And I'm like, well, what direction is your head pointing when you're taking notes? And it's down at a piece of paper. So you're not seeing who's yawning because you're tired and you need to take a break. You're not seeing people who are confused or wanting to talk and things like that. sort of either you turn on the AI tool and have the AI tool summarize the meeting for you. Do check it before you submit, it out or B have everyone in the meeting as a grown ass adult. They can take their own agenda items. mean, their own action items, have an area on your virtual board or in the room you're having the meeting in that is action items. And again, what is it? Brian Milner (18:18) Sure. Kate Megaw (18:36) Who's gonna be doing it? When's it gonna be done by? And I think one of the key criticisms of meetings is, and you'll hear this as well, particularly by retrospectives is, well, nothing changes. And I'm sort of, well, who has the action item? well, there isn't an action item. And I'm sort of, at the end of every meeting, we should be doing the mnemonic we use here is rap. The first thing is retrospect. Brian Milner (18:53) you Kate Megaw (19:04) How was this meeting? We talked about the fist of five. Give me one word. Anything we need to do differently next time. And then the A is make sure we have all of these action items assigned to someone. And then the P is the one we forget about. Tracking that progress. How are we going to hold each other accountable for making sure that something changes as a result of the meeting? So. Brian Milner (19:22) Mm-hmm. Kate Megaw (19:31) If we're doing retrospectives, if the team is voting whatever technique they're using to choose the one thing they want to do differently, how do we make it visible? Do we put it on our scrum board somewhere? Do we talk about it every day as part of after we've done daily scrum? How are we doing with the communication techniques that we wanted to try and do differently going forward? We've got to have that visibility. Otherwise nothing changes. Brian Milner (19:57) Yeah, yeah, that's so awesome. I completely agree. And that's something that I think you're right is missing, not just from retrospectives, but just a lot of meetings in general. We don't really understand, all right, well, what's the takeaway? What's the thing we need to do as a result of this to make this not a waste of our time, to make this something that was a useful, not the 67 % that were failures, but something that actually leads to success. I want to. Kate Megaw (19:59) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yep. Yeah, yes, so that we're not having the same meeting again next week and the week after and nothing's changing. Brian Milner (20:30) Exactly. Exactly. I want to ask you one question about facilitation. I've heard this a lot in regards to retrospectives, but probably it's more a facilitation thing than it is a retrospective thing. But I think probably the number one question we get from people about retrospectives is, how do you handle a quiet team? so I'm just kind of curious. When you talk about facilitating and working with individuals who are a little more introverted, Kate Megaw (20:50) Mm-hmm. Brian Milner (20:57) or just not as comfortable speaking out in public, are there special considerations or are there things that you do differently just to try to accommodate and make those people feel more comfortable when you're facilitating them? Kate Megaw (21:09) So yes, several things. So one, I will look at a theme. So do they have a team name and do I want to set up a mnemonic around the team name to gather the data? Are they a visual team? Do I want to do something like the sailboat that's interactive and people can add things to the board? Are they a movie buffs? Do I need to do a Star Wars themed retrospective? So I'll generally try and find something to connect the team. I've done it before where I'm working with airlines. Okay, what is it keeps our planes in the air? What is it that grounds our planes? What are the storm clouds we need to be aware of? What are causing bumps during the air? So all of that type of thing, it's a theme relevant to the team. And I generally will find that if I can start a team talking, I can keep them talking. So if... one of the ways that I will often start a retrospective is if the retrospective, if your last retrospective was a ride at Disney, what ride would it have been? and get them talking or give me one word that describes the last retro or in a scale of one to the, mean, the last sprint, give me one word that describes it or scale of one to 10. How well do you think we did at the last sprint? But I love to get people talking. If I'm in the office, I sort of adapted the Adam Weisbart's retrospective cookies and I'll use candy bars and I'll wrap questions around candy bars and the team grabs a candy bar and there is a question on it which they answer and then other people in the room will then answer as well. Maybe things like, what can I do to better support you as a scrum master? Or, What can we do to better support each other as team members? So I think it's getting people talking, making sure the big reminder for me is as a facilitator, if you did not write the Post-It note, you should not be reading the Post-It note and you should not be moving the Post-It note. The team owns the Post-It notes. Everyone should be adding their own Post-It notes, whether it's virtual or in person. Brian Milner (23:07) Yeah. Kate Megaw (23:28) They should be grouping their own Post-it notes. They should be moving them. And the other one, people always say, well, what happens if there's the elephant in the room and this thing on the board that nobody wants to talk about? And I'm said, well, often I will say, okay, I'm going to add, we're going to do something different for this round. This time, I'm going to ask you to introduce something you did not write on the board. And let's talk about, I'm going to ask you to choose a topic and we're going to talk about that. Just read it, you read it out. Brian Milner (23:39) Yeah. Kate Megaw (23:58) and then we'll have a discussion around it. So as a facilitator, I can uncover the elephants in the room without anyone feeling too uncomfortable. Brian Milner (24:07) Yeah, that's great stuff. of parallel to this, think is kind of, I know we've, I've heard you talk about this, but the sense of safety in the room and just that people feel safe to talk about that. Are there things we can do as facilitators to actually raise that sense of safety? Kate Megaw (24:25) There are absolutely, there's a lot of things we can do. And I, every now and then I will hear something and I will just cringe. And there's, well my team doesn't really like sharing. They're not honest in the retrospective until the CTO disconnects from the retrospective. And I'm sort of, okay, so maybe what do you think this is maybe telling us? I'm sort of retrospectives are Vegas rules. It is the team. I will do retrospectives even with non-scrum teams, but it is the team that is there. There are no visitors. It is the team only. The other thing that makes me cringe is, yes, well we sent out the minutes of the retrospective and I'm sort of, excuse me, the retrospective again, Vegas rules. What is the one thing we're going to do differently as a team in the next sprint? Okay, is everyone okay if I put this up on our scrum board so it's visible? Brian Milner (25:07) Ha Kate Megaw (25:20) Okay, that's the one thing we're taking away. But back to the question you were asking, one of the biggest signs of a lack of psychological safety is that the team just doesn't want to talk. They're worried that the minutes are going to be captured. Somebody, one of the leaders is in there and, well, everyone's fine with my leadership. They're completely open and honest in front of me. And I'm sort of, okay, let's try a retrospective then with you there. Brian Milner (25:32) Yeah. Kate Megaw (25:50) And then we'll also try retrospective without you there. And let's see which one is more comfortable because otherwise it's a, it's a colossal waste of time. If nothing's going to change, why are we wasting sort of 45 minutes to an hour or even doing it? So I think that the psychological safety is a key one, making sure it is the right people, making sure that minutes are not being captured. The other thing is. A lot of times people say, well, I need to capture it because I need to bring all of the information again next time. And I'm sort of, no, you're trashing the Post-it notes. You're trashing the mural board, whatever. You're starting from scratch next time. they're sort of, well, I'm going to lose all this information. I'm sort of, no, if it's important enough, it's going to come up again next time. Brian Milner (26:23) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And things change, right? mean, what the universe of things we might identify this sprint could be entirely different for next sprint. I've always loved, Jeff Sutherland had this phrase, he would say about it to say that, you have to remove that one big thing. And when you move that one big thing, then the system adjusts and you don't really know where the next bottleneck is going to come from until you remove that one big thing. Kate Megaw (26:58) Yeah. Brian Milner (27:02) So it's likely to be somewhere you wouldn't expect. so you can't just hang on to your number two issue from one retrospective and then say, well, next retrospective, we'll just do that and we can cut out having the conversation because we identified important things in this one. Kate Megaw (27:14) Yeah. And it anchors the tea. It stops the creativity. that's the other thing with retrospectives. I occasionally will work with a client and there's the, oh yes, we've been doing what's going well and what's not going so well every two weeks for six months. And I'm sort of, it's not really any wonder your team's bored out of their minds at retrospectives and nothing new is coming up. There's so many websites out there. Brian Milner (27:41) Yeah. Kate Megaw (27:42) that retrospective should never, in fact, no meeting should ever be boring because we should always be opening and closing a meeting in a creative way. Even if it's, mean, one of the things that we like to do in the morning of class is have music. So when people are joining, the energy is there so that we're getting that interaction and things like that. So people are starting on a high and then... I mean, you'll notice in the afternoons people begin to yawn, especially after lunch. Okay, you know what? It's been 65 minutes. Let's take a break. Let's do a segue question at break. So when we come back, show us something on your desk that tells us a bit about you. Or one of the ones I like is go stand up, go and look outside and come back and tell us something you saw outside. We have chickens. We have all sorts of things that people are saying. but it's encouraging them to get up and go get some oxygen in their system, take a break and then come back and then it's more engaging. But if as a facilitator, I'm not planning that type of thing, the energy is going to go down and I'm not going to achieve the purpose of my half day event or my one day class, whatever it is. Brian Milner (28:56) Yeah, it doesn't happen by accident. It's all very intentional. Well, this is fascinating. And we could have this conversation for another several hours, I'm sure. I just wanted to let everyone know that in case you were scrambling to write down these mnemonics and other things, we're going to link that in our show notes. So you can go to our show notes, and we'll put you over to Katanu team. Kate Megaw (28:58) No. Yep, absolutely. Yep. Brian Milner (29:20) Katanu, I keep on saying cat and Anu, trying to say it right way. Yeah, but we'll link you over them so you can get those three Rs for meetings and know kind of what each one of those little letters stands for in there. Kate Megaw (29:24) Yeah. Brian Milner (29:33) This has been really eye-opening for me and it just is a fascinating topic and it's so delightful just to hear the intentionality and how we can do simple things. They're not hard things, but simple things that make such a huge difference. Kate Megaw (29:48) Yeah, yeah, mean, that's the key. This is not rocket science. It's one or two simple things that helps us take that if we are going to spend 20 % or 20 hours a week, which is half of our time in meetings, let's at least make sure they're productive meetings so that we're not literally burning money by having unproductive meetings. Brian Milner (30:12) Yeah, absolutely. Well, I also forgot to mention here at the beginning, and we'll put this in the show notes as well, but Team Katanu also has a facilitation course. The Scrum Alliance has a certified Agile facilitator designation that you could obtain if you were interested in that. We'll link that off as well. But yeah, I couldn't recommend any better people for you to take that from than Kate in a new idea. We were saying that she had a, when she was younger, used to have the nickname Cat, and now everyone's calling her Cat from that. Well, thank you again for coming on and sharing your wisdom with us. I really appreciate it. Kate Megaw (30:46) Yep. Yep. Thank you very much for having me, Brian. And I look forward to hearing amazing facilitation stories from everyone once they've implemented some of this stuff. Brian Milner (31:03) Absolutely.

Antti Horelli: The Three-Day Sprint Planning Nightmare - Learning from Agile Failure Read the full Show Notes and search through the world's largest audio library on Agile and Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes. In this episode, Antti shares a critical learning moment from his early Scrum Master days when a sprint planning session extended to three days due to poor preparation. The team discovered that backlog items were much larger and different than expected, while unexpected background decisions further complicated the planning. This experience highlighted the vital importance of proper refinement work and maintaining clear communication channels about decisions affecting the team. Self-reflection Question: How do you ensure your team has sufficient context about upcoming decisions while avoiding information overload? [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends]

In dieser Folge der Produktwerker geht es darum, wie Product Roadmaps in der täglichen Arbeit eingesetzt werden können. Zu Beginn eines Jahres investieren viele Product Owner und Produktmanager viel Energie in die Erstellung einer Product Roadmap. Doch was passiert danach? Die Roadmap, die oft als Ergebnis intensiver Diskussionen und strategischer Planung entsteht, ist kein statisches Dokument, sondern ein dynamisches Werkzeug, das den Alltag von Produktteams prägen sollte. Eine Product Roadmap gibt die Richtung vor. Sie bildet die Brücke zwischen der Produktvision und den operativen Aufgaben im Backlog. Damit wird sie zur Operationalisierung der Produktstrategie und hilft dabei, Entscheidungen fundierter zu treffen. Gerade in Gesprächen mit Stakeholdern bietet sie eine klare Orientierung, welche Outcomes und Ziele im Fokus stehen. Anstatt über einzelne Features zu diskutieren, lenkt die Roadmap die Aufmerksamkeit auf die übergeordneten Ziele und erlaubt es, neue Anforderungen kritisch zu hinterfragen. Im Scrum-Kontext erweist sich die Product Roadmap als besonders nützlich. Ob im Sprint Planning, bei der Formulierung eines Sprintziels oder im Sprint Review – die Roadmap sorgt für eine klare Verbindung zwischen Vision, Strategie und operativer Umsetzung. Sie zeigt auf, wie das aktuelle Sprintziel auf die langfristigen Produktziele einzahlt. Darüber hinaus unterstützt sie Product Owner, den Fokus zu behalten, etwa in Diskussionen über Prioritäten oder neue Feature-Wünsche. Auch im Kontext von Product Discovery bietet die Roadmap Orientierung. Unsicherheiten, die bei der Entwicklung auftreten, können systematisch angegangen werden. Sie ermöglicht es, Hypothesen oder Annahmen gezielt zu priorisieren und ihre Relevanz für das Gesamtbild zu bewerten. Dabei wird der iterative Charakter der Roadmap deutlich: Neue Erkenntnisse führen zu Anpassungen, um sicherzustellen, dass das Produkt den Anforderungen des Marktes gerecht wird. Product Roadmaps in der täglichen Arbeit einzusetzen erfordert Engagement und Disziplin. Sie ist mehr als nur ein Dokument – sie ist ein zentraler Bestandteil der Produktarbeit und unterstützt dabei, langfristige Ziele mit den täglichen Aufgaben zu verbinden. Indem sie regelmäßig reflektiert und angepasst wird, trägt sie dazu bei, die Produktentwicklung effektiv und zielgerichtet zu gestalten.

Warum wird fast jede zweite Onlinebestellung zurückgeschickt – und warum hat sich daran seit 20 Jahren kaum etwas geändert?Das Start-up toern liefert digitale Lösungen, wie Retouren nicht nur nachhaltiger, sondern auch profitabler werden können.Im Podcast spricht Co-Founder und CTO von toern, Jonas Zeuner mit Moderatorin Stephi Schneider mit über smarte Retourenportale, Peer-to-Peer-Shipping und Wege, neue Produktkreisläufe zu schaffen.Freut euch auf spannende Einblicke und frische Ideen, die klassische Rücksendeprozesse auf den Kopf stellen. Ein Gespräch, das inspiriert, um E-Commerce-Prozesse neu zu denken.Kapitelmarken:00:00 – 03:27 Intro & Begrüßung Gast03:28 – 06:00 Sprint Planning mit Entweder-Oder-Fragen06:01 – 08:20 Spiel: Erklärs den Großeltern (Begriff: Peer-to-Peer-Shipping)08:21 – 10:04 Die Motivation hinter toern10:05 – 13:45 Prozess Peer-to-Peer-Shipping13:46 – 16:49 Funktion digitales Retourenportal16:50 – 18:19 Besonderheiten am Geschäftsmodell von toern18:20 – 22:44 Voraussetzungen & Vorteile für Händler 22:45 – 24:50 Ziele & Weiterentwicklung Geschäftsmodell 24:51 – 26:51 Retro & Outro

Ramya Shastri: From Estimates To Team Availability - The Capacity Sheet Tool For Scrum Masters 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. Ramya faced resistance when introducing change in an organization bound by outdated timesheet practices. By implementing capacity sheets, she reframed the discussion around team availability instead of tracking hours, convincing the Delivery Manager and customer of its benefits. This success highlights the power of leading by example and addressing resistance with practical, team-centric solutions. Self-reflection Question: How can you use simple tools to address resistance and demonstrate the value of change in your team? [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends]

Benieuwd hoe je jouw Scrum-events direct kunt verbeteren? In deze aflevering bespreken we met Davide, een ervaren product owner, hoe je kritisch naar je eigen Scrum-events kunt kijken en ze optimaal kunt benutten. We duiken in de essentie van elk event, van Sprint Planning tot de Retrospective, en geven je praktische tips om de effectiviteit van je team te vergroten. Waarom werken sommige events beter dan andere, en hoe maak je een event écht succesvol? Na het luisteren kun je direct aan de slag met verbeteringen binnen je eigen Scrum-team! In deze aflevering hebben we het over: Scrum-events, product owners, sprint planning, daily scrum, team optimalisatie, retrospective, scrum masters, en refinement. Over deze podcast: In de Product Owner podcast spreken we elke week met een interessante gast uit de wereld van product management en gaan we in op echte ervaringen, lessen en tactieken van product owners, ondernemers en specialisten. De Product Owner podcast is een initiatief van Productowner.nl

Send us a textIn this episode of the Customer Success Playbook Podcast, hosts Roman Trebon and Kevin Metzger interview Jasmine Reynolds, a Customer Success Manager at Pluralsight, about applying Scrum methodologies to customer onboarding. Jasmine discusses how Scrum, typically associated with software development, can significantly enhance the customer onboarding experience. She outlines six key Scrum techniques that can be immediately applied to onboarding processes, including prioritized backlog, sprint-based onboarding, daily stand-ups, and continuous feedback loops. The discussion highlights the benefits of this approach, such as improved time to value, increased customer satisfaction, and stronger client relationships. Detailed AnalysisThe application of Scrum to customer onboarding represents a significant innovation in customer success practices. This approach addresses several critical challenges in traditional onboarding processes:Flexibility and Adaptability: By breaking the onboarding journey into sprints, companies can respond more quickly to changing customer needs and feedback. This agility is crucial in today's fast-paced business environment where customer requirements can shift rapidly.Cross-Functional Collaboration: The Scrum approach encourages better coordination among various teams involved in onboarding, including sales, customer success, product, and support. This holistic approach ensures that all aspects of the customer's needs are addressed cohesively.Accelerated Time to Value: By focusing on delivering value in each sprint, businesses can ensure that customers start seeing benefits from their investment much earlier in the process. This rapid demonstration of value can significantly impact customer satisfaction and long-term retention.Enhanced Customer Communication: Daily stand-ups and regular feedback sessions keep the customer closely involved in the onboarding process. This transparency builds trust and allows for immediate course corrections if needed.Measurable Progress: The sprint structure provides clear milestones and measurable progress, making it easier to track the effectiveness of the onboarding process and identify areas for improvement.Scope Management: While scope creep remains a challenge, the sprint-based approach provides a framework for managing and prioritizing additional requests without derailing the entire onboarding process.Continuous Improvement: Regular retrospectives allow teams to refine their onboarding processes continuously, leading to ongoing improvements in efficiency and effectiveness.For businesses looking to implement this approach, Jasmine recommends starting by breaking existing onboarding processes into sprints, defining clear value deliverables for each sprint, and creating a prioritized backlog. She emphasizes the importance of flexibility and setting clear expectations with customers.The potential integration of AI tools in this Scrum-based onboarding process presents an exciting opportunity for further innovation. AI could potentially assist in sprint planning, predicting potential issuPlease Like, Comment, Share and Subscribe. You can also find the CS Playbook Podcast:YouTube - @CustomerSuccessPlaybookPodcastTwitter - @CS_PlaybookYou can find Kevin at:Metzgerbusiness.com - Kevin's person web siteKevin Metzger on Linked In.You can find Roman at:Roman Trebon on Linked In.

I share the best tool I have found in Agile methodology for overcoming perfectionism and analysis paralysis. I talk about the process of picking your sprint goals and polishing them up with the Definition of Done. Watch this episode is in video format: https://youtu.be/k7kR9OUn1B000:00 - Are you a perfectionist?01:25 - Agile concepts we've already covered02:25 - The purpose of your first sprint03:16 - How do you pick your sprint goals?03:25 - Can you get it done in one sprint?04:00 - Account for your sprint capacity04:20 - Had time to age04:42 - You are still excited04:55 - You are in full control of getting it done06:53 - Finalizing your goals with the definition of done09:35 - The Random Person Test12:47 - The Definition of Done is not a collection of subtasks13:58 - Where to find more examples of Definitions of DoneHow to apply Agile to your life: http://monthlymethod.com/start-here/If you want to stay in touch:

Die Cloud ist aus der IT-Landschaft nicht mehr wegzudenken. Das gilt ganz besonders für SAP Commerce Kunden: Durch das Einstellen des Supports und der Wartung ab Mitte 2026 besteht Handlungsbedarf.Aber was bedeutet das, welche Optionen gibt es? Müsst ihr als SAP-Kunden zwingend in die Cloud migrieren? Wie funktioniert der Cloud Move eigentlich? In dieser Folge gibt SAP-Experte Markus Hartleb Antworten auf diese und viele weitere Fragen.Erfahrt, warum die Migration zu SAP CX nicht nur sinnvoll, sondern auch strategisch wichtig ist. Markus erklärt, welche Vorteile euch erwarten und wie ihr euer Migrationsprojekt optimal angeht. Mit Praxisbeispielen aus seiner langjährigen Erfahrung untermalt er, wie Unternehmen den erfolgreichen Cloud Move geschafft haben.Freut euch auf wertvolle Tipps rund um die Migration und nutzt den Wandel als Chance. Move it!Kapitelmarken:00:00 - 01:28 Intro & Begrüßung Gast01:29 – 03:37 Sprint Planning mit Entweder-Oder-Fragen03:38 - 07:47 Spiel: Erklärs den Großeltern (Begriff: SAP CX)07:48 - 09:05 Bedeutung für SAP On-Premises Systeme 09:06 – 09:51 Handlungsbedarf und Optionen 09:52 - 11:40 Vorteile der SAP Cloud 11:41 – 13:03 Für wen die SAP Cloud empfehlenswert ist (Spoiler: für alle)13:04 – 15:01 Praxisbeispiele SAP Migrationsprojekte15:02 - 18:02 Herausforderungen & Lösungsansätze18:03 – 19:26 Lizenzmodelle 19:27 – 20:31 Was passiert mit der bestehenden Systemlandschaft? 20:32 - 22:35 Beratung & Tipps zum Umgang 22:36 – 24:13 Retro & Outro

What do you think about today's podcast?Are your Sprint Planning sessions setting your team up for success, or are they leaving you adrift without clear direction? In this episode of the Agile Matrix Podcast, we delve into the essential elements of Sprint Planning and how to optimize this crucial event to drive team success.Join us today, as we explore what Sprint Planning is all about, and discover actionable strategies to make your planning sessions more effective. We'll uncover three common pitfalls that can derail your sprints and offer practical solutions to overcome them. From setting clear sprint goals to fostering collaboration and avoiding overload, this episode is packed with insights to enhance your Agile practices.Engage with us as we pose socially engaging questions designed to spark conversation and sharing among our listeners. Share your own experiences, tips, and strategies on social media using #AgileMatrixPodcast, and become part of our Agile community.Plus, don't miss our top tip to keep your planning sessions efficient and focused, and a thought-provoking quote from Ken Schwaber on the importance of Sprint Planning. Whether you're a Scrum Master, Product Owner, or Agile enthusiast, this episode will equip you with the tools you need to transform your Sprint Planning and deliver exceptional results.Tune in now to ensure your next sprint sets sail with purpose and direction!Support the Show.Support the show via Patreon:https://www.patreon.com/TheAgileMatrixPodcastExplore our website to discover our comprehensive course and training schedule.https://www.agilematrix.org/upcoming-courses/Check out the Scrum Master Optimisation self-paced course here: https://courses.agilematrix.org/courses/scrum-master-optimisationInterested in Agile themed Shirts? Check out our store:https://www.etsy.com/shop/TemmieDesigns?ref=search_shop_redirect

In dieser Podcast-Folge geht es um die optimale Sprintlänge. Marc erklärt, dass die meisten Scrum-Teams zweiwöchige Sprints machen, während vierwöchige Sprints eher die Ausnahme sind. Er betont, dass das Ziel immer sein sollte, den Feedback-Loop zu verkürzen. Die Sprintlänge sollte nicht verlängert werden, wenn der Sprint nicht geschafft wird, sondern es sollten die Aufgaben besser runtergebrochen oder das Sprint Planning verbessert werden. Marc empfiehlt in der Regel eine Sprintlänge von zwei Wochen, aber es gibt Ausnahmefälle, in denen kürzere oder längere Sprints sinnvoll sein können.   Takeaways: Die meisten Scrum-Teams machen zweiwöchige Sprints Das Ziel ist immer, den Feedback-Loop zu verkürzen Die Sprintlänge sollte nicht verlängert werden, wenn der Sprint nicht geschafft wird Es gibt Ausnahmefälle, in denen kürzere oder längere Sprints sinnvoll sein können Zu meinen Onlinekursen: https://marcloeffler.eu/minikurse/

In this episode of Arguing Agile, Brian and Om dive into the seedy reality of the "shadow backlog." Defined as all the hidden work and side projects that don't make it into the "official" backlog, shadow backlog items end up consuming significant time and effort from development teams. From personal passion projects to break fixes to exploratory work, we discuss the many forms the shadow backlog can take and how it impacts planning, productivity and team focus. Listen to  learn how to spot the signs of a growing shadow backlog in your own teams!agile, scrum, product management, backlog, sprint planning, technical debt, exploratory testing, side projects, passion projects, scope creep, team productivity = = = = = = = = = = = =Watch it on YouTube= = = = = = = = = = = =Subscribe to our YouTube Channel:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8XUSoJPxGPI8EtuUAHOb6g?sub_confirmation=1Apple Podcasts:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/agile-podcast/id1568557596Spotify:https://open.spotify.com/show/362QvYORmtZRKAeTAE57v3Amazon Music:https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/ee3506fc-38f2-46d1-a301-79681c55ed82/Agile-Podcast= = = = = = = = = = = =Toronto Is My Beat (Music Sample)By Whitewolf (Source: https://ccmixter.org/files/whitewolf225/60181)CC BY 4.0 DEED (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en)= = = = = = = = = = = =AA171 - The Shadow Backlog: How Invisible Work Derails Your Teams

It's the season finale of Elixir Wizards Office Hours! SmartLogic's Project Manager Alicia Brindisi and VP of Delivery Bri LaVorgna join host Dan to delve into the agile ceremony of retrospectives. They explore the vital role of retrospectives in Agile project management and unveil practical strategies for enhancing their effectiveness. Alicia and Bri break down the elements of a successful retrospective. They cover everything from meticulous preparation to facilitation techniques, and how to choose the best format for fostering open dialogue and actionable results. Learn how to navigate common obstacles and guide discussions toward productive, solution-focused outcomes. Throughout the episode, they emphasize the transformative potential of retrospectives within the Agile framework, portraying them not just as a procedural activity, but as a catalyst for continuous team growth and project success. Key topics discussed in this episode: Mastering the full potential of retrospectives in Agile environments Best practices for effective preparation and facilitation Choosing the right format to suit your team's dynamics Strategies for overcoming typical challenges during retrospectives Techniques for addressing and resolving interpersonal conflicts constructively The critical importance of valuing each team member's perspective Practical advice on applying insights from retrospectives to enact organizational changes Tailoring and refining retrospectives to meet your team's unique requirements Links mentioned: SmartLogic https://smartlogic.io/ SmartLogic LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/smartlogic-io Contact Bri Bri@smartlogic.io Retrium Retrospectives for Scrum & Agile Teams https://www.retrium.com/ 4Ls Retrospective Template https://www.retrium.com/retrospective-techniques/4ls Start Stop Continue Retrospective https://www.retrium.com/retrospective-techniques/start-stop-continue Sailboat Retrospective https://www.retrium.com/retrospective-techniques/sailboat Starfish Retrospective https://www.retrium.com/retrospective-techniques/starfish ClickUp Project Management Platform https://clickup.com/teams/project-management Asana Task Manager http://www.asana.com Jira Project Management Tool https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira  Special Guests: Alicia Brindisi and Bri LaVorgna.

In Episode 9 of Elixir Wizards Office Hours, we dive into task writing and backlog grooming, transforming ideas from the discovery phase into actionable tickets. Join SmartLogic Developer Camber Griffin and hosts Dan Ivovich and Owen Bickford as they explore the intricacies of task writing, ticket grooming, estimation, and backlog management in the software development lifecycle. They emphasize crafting clear, detailed tickets that act as comprehensive guides for development teams. A well-written ticket does more than outline what needs to be built—it facilitates collaboration by including entry points, linking to essential documentation, defining acceptance criteria, detailing QA steps, and identifying potential risks and future hurdles. Key topics discussed in this episode: Crafting actionable development tickets from inspiration Achieving the optimal level of detail in tickets Tailoring ticket content for developers, QA, and stakeholders Standardizing ticket format with templates Structurally breaking down tasks into manageable sections Ensuring flexibility in implementation while maintaining clear specifications Proactively discussing architectural and design approaches Incorporating related documentation within tickets Clarifying acceptance criteria and QA procedures Accurately estimating task effort and complexity Collaboratively grooming tasks with cross-functional teams Adjusting tickets to evolving requirements Strategically planning for uncertainties and out-of-scope concerns Managing and versioning ongoing documentation Keeping the backlog clean, prioritized, and relevant Mapping dependencies among interconnected tasks Links mentioned: Jira Work Management https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira ClickUp Project Management Platform https://clickup.com/teams/project-management GitHub Projects https://docs.github.com/en/issues/planning-and-tracking-with-projects Zube Agile Project Management https://zube.io/ Pivotal Tracker Agile Project Management Tool https://www.pivotaltracker.com/ Trak Portfolio Management System https://pd-trak.com/ ClearCase Software Configuration Mgmt www.ibm.com/products/devops-code-clearcase Oban Job Processing in Elixir https://github.com/sorentwo/oban Special Guest: Camber Griffin.

Mike Lyons: The Humility to Listen, A Sprint Planning Turnaround Story 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 Mike took on one of his early projects, a seemingly small requirement during sprint planning sparked an epiphany about Agile workflows. Mike's story unfolds as he learns that dictating tasks isn't always the best approach, and he realized the importance of listening and empowering those who do the work. What crucial lessons did Mike learn about intellectual humility and creating space for his team to excel? Discover how these insights transformed his approach to sprint planning and why the Toyota Production System might hold secrets to doing your best work.   [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 Mike Lyons After reading the Agile Manifesto in 2006, Mike focused on making teams and organizations more adaptive and efficient. Despite facing failures and mistakes, these experiences provided him with valuable lessons that enhanced his ability to achieve tangible results with Agile. You can link with Mike Lyons on LinkedIn.

Join Brian and Sumeet Moghe as they discuss transforming the focus and efficiency of Agile teams in our always-on world. Discover how to master asynchronous work to enhance decision-making and improve team dynamics. Overview On this episode of the Agile Mentors Podcast, Brian welcomes Sumeet Moghe, author of the Async First Playbook, in this enlightening episode as he explores the pivotal role of asynchronous work within Agile frameworks. Sumeet shares his insights on fostering deep focus, enhancing decision-making, and pragmatically adapting Agile practices to meet unique team needs. Delve into the challenges and strategies for securing team buy-in, balancing synchronous with asynchronous tasks, and building cohesion in distributed teams. This episode is packed with actionable advice on creating a supportive, safe, and productive environment through intentional communication and strategic face-to-face interactions. Tune in to reshape your team's approach to collaboration and productivity in the asynchronous era. Listen Now to Discover: [1:15] - Brian welcomes Sumeet Moghe, Transformation Specialist and Product Manager at Thoughtworks and author of The Asynch-First Playbook. [2:18] - Dive into Sumeet's captivating journey to mastering asynchronous work, exploring how his deep-seated passion sparked innovative approaches in his professional life. [5:11] - Brian expertly connects Agile principles to the unique challenges of asynchronous work, offering insightful solutions for today’s distributed work environments. [7:32] - Sumeet unveils critical insights from his extensive experience in asynchronous work, offering valuable lessons for mastering remote collaboration. [10:57] - Highlighting the challenges that conventional Agile practitioners encounter in asynchronous environments, Brian turns to Sumeet for practical solutions to address these issues constructively. [16:26] - Are you ready to take your Asynchronous work to the next level? Consider taking Mountain Goat Software’s Advanced Certified ScrumMaster® (ACSM) class to dive deeper into facilitating and thriving with an asynchronous team. To learn more, check out the Mountain Goat Software Certified Scrum and Agile Training Schedule. [19:28] - Sumeet outlines effective strategies for conducting Sprint Planning sessions with asynchronous teams, ensuring smooth collaboration and productivity across different time zones. [24:32] - Sumeet addresses team building on asynchronous teams, highlighting and walking through the asynchronous application of the work of Amy Edmonson and Google’s Project Aristotle, developing psychological safety. [32:52] - To foster deeper trust and reduce conflicts, Sumeet advises using the cost savings from asynchronous work to facilitate in-person team interactions. [35:20] - Brian shares a big thank you to Sumeet for joining him on the show and bringing his unique experience to the conversation. [36:10] - If you enjoyed this topic, we invite you to share the episode with a friend or on social media. And don’t forget to subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast on your podcast platform of choice. [37:19] - Do you have feedback or a great idea for an episode of the show? Great! Send us an email. [36:10] - If you’d like to continue this discussion, join the Agile Mentors Community. You get a year of free membership into that site by taking any class with Mountain Goat Software. References and resources mentioned in the show: Sumeet Moghe The Asynch-First Playbook by Sumeet Moghe Thoughtworks Sumeet's Photography The Fearless Organization by Amy Edmondson Advanced Certified ScrumMaster® (ACSM) Mountain Goat Software Certified Scrum and Agile Training Schedule Mountain Goat Software Subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast Join the Agile Mentors Community Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. Got an Agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He's passionate about making a difference in people's day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work. Sumeet Gayathri Moghe is a product manager, and design nerd at Thoughtworks, and author of The Asynch-First Playbook. Sumeet has worked on building software products and improving teams’ engineering effectiveness over diverse environments, building an approach that is versatile and can be effectively adapted across various industries to meet diverse needs. When he’s not at work building software, you’ll find him discovering the world through a camera’s eyepiece, photographing wildlife and wilderness.

Kate and Ryan discuss various ways Sprint Planning can be derailed and how teams might get it back on track

Paul Jarvis: Key Indicators of Success for Agile Teams and Their Scrum Masters That You Can Reflect On 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. Investigate Paul's perspective on what defines success for Scrum Masters, from the smooth running of refinement sessions to the collaborative maintenance of the Product Backlog. This episode provides practical tips for Scrum Masters to assess their impact, emphasizing the importance of team collaboration, effective backlog management, and the ease of sprint planning. Discover how to assess success in the Agile world through a blend of team dynamics, process efficiency, and shared responsibility. Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: The Sailboat Retrospective and Other Formats Paul emphasizes the critical role of retrospectives in enabling relentless improvement, highlighting formats like the Sailboat retrospective, Celebration Grid, and the high-performance tree to encourage experimentation and self-assessment within teams. These retrospective formats are not just reflective exercises but strategic tools that prompt teams to align their values with their Agile practices, ensuring continuous growth and alignment with business goals. [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 Paul Jarvis Paul is a seasoned Enterprise Lean Agile Coach, Trainer, RTE, and Scrum Master with a decade of experience in the FinTech sector, focusing on banking, payments, and e-commerce. Recently, he completed a 3.5-year tenure at a key player in investment banking. You can link with Paul Jarvis on LinkedIn and connect with Paul Jarvis on Twitter.

Sprint planning is probably one of the most underutilized ceremonies that we have in our toolbelt. This episode will focus on the inputs and output of sprint planning and would be a great episode for the entire agile scrum team to listen to. I'll share some thoughts around the format of the event, some tips for agility and some interesting ways to help you set and manage expectations. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/planetproductowner/message

#5amMesterScrum Lightning Talk 1,181 Live - Sharing Quasi Roadmap at Reviews don't loose the Opportunity (3R Thursdays) - Today's topics: (1) So many teams miss out on the opportunity to share quasi Roadmaps at Sprint Reviews.  The sad part it is a chance to get feed back from customers on what is up next for the team and look for an priority changes that could be made before Sprint Planning. Plus it can be reused at Sprint Planning if done right. Please like and subscribe and share 5amMesterScrum.  Please send me your topics.   You are are doing Great Please Keep on Sharing. 5am Mester Scrum 5am Mester Scrum Lightning Talk 1,181 went live on Youtube, LinkedIn and Facebook 3R (Requirements, Reviews, Retros) Thursday 4/18/2024 from Philadelphia, PA  Happy Scrumming, Please Don't forget to sign up to our 5amMesterScrum newsletter for freebies.  Watch the video in our YouTube Library as well. Social Media: - search 5amMesterScrum or #5amMesterScrum  and you should find us and if not please let us know LinkedIn, Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok     Podcasts: (search 5amMesterScrum) 

Join Brian and Stefan Wolpers as they explore the labyrinth of Scrum anti-patterns, shedding light on the crucial shifts needed in communication, event understanding, and organizational empowerment for Agile success. Overview Brian welcomes special guest Stefan Wolpers as they explore the maze of Scrum anti-patterns. Discover the art of tackling communication breakdowns, unravel the misunderstandings that plague Scrum events, confront the systemic issues of organizational anti-patterns, and challenge the rigidity of dogmatism in Agile practices. Whether you're a seasoned Scrum practitioner or new to the Agile philosophy, this conversation between Brian and Stefan will arm you with the insights needed to navigate the complexities of Scrum, enhance team collaboration, and drive successful Agile transformations. Tune in to transform your understanding and practice of Scrum, and take a step towards mastering the dynamic world of Agile. Listen Now to Discover: [1:06] - ​​Join Brian as he sits down with Stefan Wolpers, a seasoned Professional Scrum Trainer and the mastermind behind ‘The Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide,’ for a deep dive into the pitfalls to avoid for Scrum success. [2:33] - Discover the power of inversion with Stefan, as he elucidates this groundbreaking learning principle, challenging traditional methods and revolutionizing our approach to personal and professional development. [5:21] - Stefan delves into the critical issue of communication breakdown and assumptions among teams, revealing effective strategies to address and navigate these common pain points. [10:01] - Listen as Stefan highlights the transformative impact of trust building and team bonding, revealing their significance as key elements in bridging cultural differences and bringing remote teams closer together. [12:02] - Brought to you by Mountain Goat Software, the Agile Mentors Podcast invites you to enhance your Scrum skills through the Certified Scrum Product Owner® course. Explore a world of Agile learning opportunities by checking out Mountain Goat Software's extensive training schedule. [13:03] - Join Stefan as he delves into the Scrum framework, highlighting the Daily Scrum and Sprint Planning as events ripe with anti-patterns, and providing guidance on overcoming these obstacles for smoother sprints. [18:10] - Listen as Stefan illuminates the critical anti-pattern of lacking empowerment within organizations, emphasizing its widespread impact and proposing pathways to cultivate a more empowered workforce. [22:08] - Explore with Brian the significance of an anti-dogmatic stance, highlighting its role as a pivotal anti-pattern in fostering innovation and adaptability in Agile environments. [26:14] - Brian shares a big thank you to Stefan for joining him on the show. [29:01] - If you’d like to continue this discussion, join the Agile Mentors Community. [30:01] - We invite you to subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast. Do you have feedback, a question, or a great idea for an episode of the show? Great! Just send us an email. References and resources mentioned in the show: Stefan Wolpers The Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide by Stefan Wolpers Certified Scrum Product Owner® Training Mountain Goat Software Certified Scrum and Agile Training Schedule Mike Cohn’s Letting Go of Knowing Join the Agile Mentors Community Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. Got an Agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He's passionate about making a difference in people's day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work. Stefan Wolpers is the author behind "The Scrum Anti-Pattern Guide" and a celebrated Professional Scrum Trainer known for his unparalleled expertise in Agile methodologies. Stefan has dedicated his career to empowering professionals around the globe.

#5amMesterScrum Lightning Talk 1,171 Live - 45 min Sprint Planning (3R Thursdays) - Today's topics: (1) I was surprised yesterday at a Sprint Planning Session when the PO did a Planning by Feature and we finished in 45 minutes.  How did we get there? Please like and subscribe and share 5amMesterScrum.  Please send me your topics.   You are are doing Great Please Keep on Sharing. 5am Mester Scrum 5am Mester Scrum Lightning Talk 1,171 went live on Youtube, LinkedIn and Facebook 3R (Requirements, Reviews, Retros) Thursday 3/28/2024 from Philadelphia, PA  Happy Scrumming, Please Don't forget to sign up to our 5amMesterScrum newsletter for freebies.  Watch the video in our YouTube Library as well. Social Media: - search 5amMesterScrum or #5amMesterScrum  and you should find us and if not please let us know LinkedIn, Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok     Podcasts: (search 5amMesterScrum) 

If you are on one of those teams that has made a habit of dragging unfinished work from one Sprint to the next... YOU NEED TO STOP!   When you get to the end of a Sprint and have work that isn't done, you can't show it to the stakeholders in the Sprint Review. If you don't show it to Stakeholders in the Sprint Review, you can't get feedback. And if you can't get feedback, you can't inspect and adapt, and you negate the entire point of working in a Sprint. This podcast offers five things that you and your team can do right now to stop carrying over unfinished work and start enabling Scrum to provide you with the results you and your organization were hoping for when you headed down the path to agility. This podcast was originally recorded in video. You can find that version here: https://youtu.be/df8Ig_KYPUg If you liked this podcast, please click subscribe and let me know so I keep adding more. If you are interested in attending one of my upcoming CSM or CSPO classes, just follow this link: https://tinyurl.com/yc5k84z5 And if you'd like to contact me, you can find all my links right here: https://linktr.ee/mrsungo

What do you do when your Scrum Master's understanding of their role seems to be less about acting as a servant leader to the Scrum Team and more about making the team to work in a way that is most convenient for them? In this episode of the podcast, Jeff Howey joins me to talk through the real-life case of a Scrum Master who seems to have lost their way. Here are some of the concerns shared in the podcast: - Dev Team is offshore and holds a Daily Scrum before 8 AM in Scrum Master's time zone. Scrum Master requires that they hold a second Daily Scrum to provide status to Scrum Master. - SM does not attend Sprint Planning. They require the PO to run it. - SM requires the PO to run the Retrospective. All topics must be submitted in advance of the meeting and must be positive comments (not negative). - Scrum Master does not like the way the Developers have set up their Task Board and requires that they change it to a format that works better for the Scrum Master. During the conversation, Jeff and I unpack these and a number of additional concerns, talk through how they are out of alignment with Scrum and the role of the Scrum Master, and discuss suggestions we'd offer to help reset the understanding of what it means to be a Scrum Master who acts as a servant leader for a Scrum Team. If you'd like to contact Jeff Howey. LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jeffhowey/ Newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/the-agile-alchemist-7018992829091778560

Kate and Ryan discuss Sprint Planning, different ways of conducting it while keeping the why, what, and how in mind.

Aki Salmi: Working With BDD To Help Agile Teams Understand And Deliver On Business Needs 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. In this episode, Aki shares two impactful stories of change. Firstly, he recounts a scenario as a scrum master in a team with two-week sprints. Because the team was “ok” with letting a feature slip from one sprint to the other, that feature eventually took four weeks to deliver, after which the team found out that they implementation did not align with the business. Implementing Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) with tools like Specflow facilitated better communication with the business, ensuring subsequent deliveries met business needs. Aki's second story reflects his realization about strong opinions and conflicts. Aki learned the value of active listening and being open to others' perspectives. In this episode, we refer to Chris Argyris' "Knowledge for Action" [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 Aki Salmi Aki is a software crafter and shares the joy of coding and the value of empathy at work. That is, Aki works on ones and zeros (code) and everything else (humans). You can link with Aki Salmi on LinkedIn.   

In der heutigen Folge erläutert euch Christian Bosold von der #agileleaderinitiative kurz und knapp das Sprint Planning. Warum planen wir überhaupt und worauf gilt es zu achten. Schaut rein und gebt gerne eure Meinung ebenfalls wieder. Dir hat diese Folge gefallen? Dann liken, kommentieren, weitersagen! Nur so können viele andere Hörer auch von diesem kostenlosen Mehrwert profitieren. --- Du möchtest mit uns sprechen oder in Kontakt treten? Kein Problem! Website: www.agileleaderinitiative.com.com E-Mail: office@agileleaderinitiative.com Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sascha-oehlbrecht-gmbh/?viewAsMember=true Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saschaoehlbrecht/- Direkt einen kostenlosen Strategie-Call buchen: https://agileleaderinitiative.com/kontakt --- Wer sind wir? Die Agile Leader Initiative ist ein Unternehmen im wunderschönen Südniedersachsen bei Göttingen. Wir sind ein Team von Experten für Agilität in Zusammenarbeit, Führung und Projektmanagement. Gemeinsam mit unseren Kunden lüften wir dadurch die Geheimnisse für wahre Umsetzungsstärke und ermöglichen erfolgreiche Teams. Dies tun wir mit unseren einzigartigen Trainings-, Coachings- und Projektbgeleitungsangeboten sowie Vorträgen. Die (Arbeits-)Welt ist unsicherer, sprunghafter und komplexer denn je, mit unseren Ansätzen führen wir unsere Kunden zum Erfolg. --- Bis bald und alles Gute das Team der Agile Leader Initiative

Weddings, a celebration of love, commitment, and the joining of two lives. For most couples, this is a once-in-a-lifetime event, meticulously planned and carefully orchestrated. But what happens when a Scrum Master takes charge of the wedding planning, armed with an arsenal of sticky notes and a burning desire to apply Agile principles to the most romantic day of their lives? Let's find out. The Backlog: From Venue to Vows, All on Sticky Notes: It all begins with the backlog — a towering mountain of sticky notes covering every inch of the Scrum Master's home office. Each note details a crucial element of the wedding, from choosing the venue to writing the vows. The sheer amount of sticky notes is overwhelming, but the Scrum Master is determined to stay true to Agile methodologies. Sprint Planning: A Series of Unfortunate Wedding Tasks: With the backlog in place, the Scrum Master gets to work on Sprint Planning. They divide the wedding preparations into a series of two-week sprints, tackling tasks such as booking the band, selecting the menu, and finalizing the guest list. The Scrum Master's ambition is admirable, but their commitment to Agile principles quickly starts to unravel the wedding plans. Daily Stand-Up: Sticky Notes, Stress, and Stalemates: As the big day approaches, the Scrum Master enforces daily stand-up meetings with the wedding party, the soon-to-be-married couple, and anyone else involved in the planning process. These 15-minute check-ins are meant to keep everyone on track and identify obstacles, but the sheer number of sticky notes quickly becomes a source of confusion and frustration. With each passing day, the wedding party's patience wears thin, and the Scrum Master's grand plan starts to crumble. The Sprint Review: Tasting Cake and Collecting Regrets: Sprint Reviews, meant to be an opportunity for feedback and adjustment, turn into a parade of disasters. During one particularly memorable session, the Scrum Master presents a half-baked wedding cake to the couple, resulting in a messy and unsatisfying cake tasting. Sticky notes cover the cake like confetti, each one representing a different flavor, frosting, or decoration suggestion from the ever-growing list of stakeholders. The Sprint Retrospective. A Tangled Web of Sticky Notes and Blame: As the sprints progress, the Scrum Master conducts Sprint Retrospectives to evaluate the success (or lack thereof) of each phase. However, instead of offering constructive feedback, these sessions devolve into a blame game, with the Scrum Master desperately trying to salvage their Agile wedding plans. Sticky notes are swapped, shuffled, and discarded, as the Scrum Master attempts to regain control over the chaos they've created. The wedding: In the end, the wedding day arrives, complete with a cacophony of mismatched decorations, last-minute cancellations, and a cake that looks like it survived a sticky note explosion. Despite the Scrum Master's best intentions, their fervent adherence to Agile methodologies has resulted in a wedding day that is unforgettable for all the wrong reasons. As the dust settles and the sticky notes are peeled away, one thing becomes abundantly clear: some things, like love and weddings, simply don't fit into a neat, Agile framework How to connect with AgileDad: - [website] ⁠https://www.agiledad.com/⁠ - [instagram] ⁠https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/⁠ - [facebook] ⁠https://www.facebook.com/RealAgileDad/⁠ - [Linkedin] ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/leehenson/⁠

Agile World 1 Minute 1 Question answers audience questions about Agile practice. One of us asks a question about an Agile topic and the other has 1 minute on the timer to answer the question in a meaningful way. It's fast and fabulous! Today's question: What happens at Sprint Planning? Co Hosts ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Minaxi Punjabi⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ is a multifaceted, professional services leader with 16+ years of experience. She has led Agile Teams at several US Federal Agencies, established and nurtured Agile communities of practice and Agile Center of Excellence for Organizations resulting in delivering impactful outcomes consistently. She is a co-creative-leader and community builder. She is currently serving Agile 2022 on the Enriching Organizations Track amongst her many other volunteering commitments.As a lifelong learner of the disciplines of neuroscience and anthropology she uses her coaching competencies to bring about a strong collaboration within team members of diverse strengths to collectively deliver value incrementally. Her way of working is going to the Gemba before making any presumptions and recommendations for change. This has resulted in her successfully implementing change for adoption and use, impacting and improving metrics across the board for the business, people, processes, and technology involved.She practices empowering individuals to self-organize into teams via facilitating and coaching. She has created spaces of trust for conflict resolution, open dialog and discussions leading to healthy collaborations and alignment of values. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Cynthia Kahn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ wouldn't it be awesome if we could take the essence of the agile practices we apply to software development and change our approach to business and life in general? Cynthia Kahn knows it's possible. For over 20 years, she's been helping software companies apply agile concepts to set goals, create action plans, and achieve the results they want. Now, she applies the same agile techniques as she coaches businesses on how to focus on what's important, reduce overwhelm, and remain competitive.In 2016, Cynthia co-founded GSD Mindset, an agile consultancy. GSD stands for Get Stuff Done She helps businesses clarify their objectives, then plan and build products customers love. Cynthia also co-authored the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠GSD Scrum Handbook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and created the popular Scrum in 1 Day workshop. Big Thank You to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Sabrina C E Bruce⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Karl A L Smith⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Agile World ® ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠News and Broadcast Network⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ © 2023 California, USA --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/agile-world/message

Agile World 1 Minute 1 Question answers audience questions about Agile practice. One of us asks a question about an Agile topic and the other has 1 minute on the timer to answer the question in a meaningful way. It's fast and fabulous! Today's question: How can my team be more prepared for Sprint Planning? Co Hosts ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Minaxi Punjabi⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ is a multifaceted, professional services leader with 16+ years of experience. She has led Agile Teams at several US Federal Agencies, established and nurtured Agile communities of practice and Agile Center of Excellence for Organizations resulting in delivering impactful outcomes consistently. She is a co-creative-leader and community builder. She is currently serving Agile 2022 on the Enriching Organizations Track amongst her many other volunteering commitments.As a lifelong learner of the disciplines of neuroscience and anthropology she uses her coaching competencies to bring about a strong collaboration within team members of diverse strengths to collectively deliver value incrementally. Her way of working is going to the Gemba before making any presumptions and recommendations for change. This has resulted in her successfully implementing change for adoption and use, impacting and improving metrics across the board for the business, people, processes, and technology involved.She practices empowering individuals to self-organize into teams via facilitating and coaching. She has created spaces of trust for conflict resolution, open dialog and discussions leading to healthy collaborations and alignment of values. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Cynthia Kahn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ wouldn't it be awesome if we could take the essence of the agile practices we apply to software development and change our approach to business and life in general? Cynthia Kahn knows it's possible. For over 20 years, she's been helping software companies apply agile concepts to set goals, create action plans, and achieve the results they want. Now, she applies the same agile techniques as she coaches businesses on how to focus on what's important, reduce overwhelm, and remain competitive.In 2016, Cynthia co-founded GSD Mindset, an agile consultancy. GSD stands for Get Stuff Done She helps businesses clarify their objectives, then plan and build products customers love. Cynthia also co-authored the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠GSD Scrum Handbook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and created the popular Scrum in 1 Day workshop. Big Thank You to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Sabrina C E Bruce⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Karl A L Smith⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Agile World ® ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠News and Broadcast Network⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ © 2023 California, USA --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/agile-world/message

@your Agile Coach Thank you all for watching To sign up for my upcoming coaching program- click here .https://www.scrummasteryplaybook.com/courses/copy-of-scrum-mastery-playbook-course-1 interested in joining the inner circle agile community? a community for aspiring scrum masters and new scrum masters to collaborate and practice on a daily basis? then click here to join https://www.paypal.com/webapps/billing/plans/subscribe?plan_id=P-5TD8616732895651VMRLUY4Q for monthly membership or click here and join the yearly membership and get instant access to a full library of Agile resources https://www.scrummasteryplaybook.com/courses/inner-circle-agile-community if you have any questions, kindly drop in the comment section or send an email to onlineagilecoach@gmail.com if you want to connect on other platforms, we are on LinkedIn and Instagram IG: @youragilecoach LinkedIn- Yinka Okunlade

Craig Harkins, Director of SEO and Content at CoStar, talks about sprint planning for SEO success. Have you ever wondered why some companies consistently succeed in their SEO efforts, while others struggle to make an impact? It's not just about having the right tools and resources - it's about establishing a successful ecosystem within your company, and sprint planning is a vital part of that. Today, Craig discusses sprint planning for success in SEO. Show NotesConnect With: Craig Harkins: Website // LinkedInThe Voices of Search Podcast: Email // LinkedIn // TwitterBenjamin Shapiro: Website // LinkedIn // TwitterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Get access to the Most Successful PMP Exam Prep Course.  Free trial Accelerator Join Trial – PM Master Prep   (NO credit card required) Let me help you!.  Just click this button and tell me your story!  Contact | PM Master Prep OR Email me directly at scott@pmmasterprep.com OR Call me directly 757-759-5282 www.pmmasterprep.com

Ryan and Todd discuss whether it is acceptable for Scrum teams to work overtime to reach a Sprint goal. They believe working overtime can be okay if the Scrum Team misses something significant during Sprint Planning. However, it should not become a regular occurrence, as studies have shown that overtime can negatively impact quality and morale. They suggest that if overtime becomes excessive, the team should focus on product backlog refinement and their Sprint Planning practices. Leave us a comment and let us know what you think!  ⏩ Join Ryan and Todd for a Scrum.org course: https://buytickets.at/agileforhumansllc Todd and Ryan also co-authored a book - Fixing Your Scrum: Practical Solutions to Common Scrum Problems.

#5amMesterScrum Show 1,006 Live - Over Commitment Test with Fun and Fortune Cookie Friday - Today's topics: (1) While thinking about Fun things to do on the show I was thinking about a recent Sprint Planning where the team has highly likely over committed.  And a simple test for over commitment came to mind. Please like and subscribe and share 5amMesterScrum.  Please send me your topics.   You are are doing Great Please Keep on Sharing. 5am Mester Scrum 5am Mester Scrum Show 1,006 went live on Youtube, LinkedIn and Facebook Friday 4/21/2023 from Philadelphia, PA  Happy Scrumming, video version: https://youtube.com/live/tjMix2TIofc Social Media: - search 5amMesterScrum or #5amMesterScrum  and you should find us and if not please let us know LinkedIn, Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok     Podcasts: (search 5amMesterScrum) 

60 Second Sprints on The 5 Scrum Events... Ready? GO! The first event is the Sprint. The Sprint is a time-boxed period where the team works to deliver a potentially releasable product increment. A Sprint usually lasts between one and four weeks. During the Sprint, the team plans, designs, develops, and tests the product increment. The Sprint is a crucial event because it provides a fixed time frame for the team to work within and allows them to focus on delivering a specific set of features. The second event is Sprint Planning. Sprint Planning is a time-boxed meeting where the team plans the work they will do during the upcoming Sprint. During this meeting, the team decides what items from the Product Backlog they will work on and how they will achieve their Sprint Goal. The Sprint Goal is a statement that describes what the team will accomplish during the Sprint. Sprint Planning helps the team understand what they need to do and how they will do it. The third event is the Daily Scrum. The Daily Scrum is a daily meeting where the team comes together to plan their work for the day. During this meeting, each team member answers three questions: What did I do yesterday? What will I do today? Are there any impediments in my way? The Daily Scrum is a quick meeting that helps the team stay focused and aligned on their work. The fourth event is the Sprint Review. The Sprint Review is a time-boxed meeting where the team demonstrates the product increment they have built during the Sprint. The team presents the product increment to stakeholders and receives feedback. The feedback is used to help the team improve the product increment and plan for the next Sprint. The Sprint Review is a crucial event because it provides an opportunity for the team to receive feedback and make changes to the product. The fifth and final event is the Sprint Retrospective. The Sprint Retrospective is a time-boxed meeting where the team reflects on the Sprint and identifies what went well and what could be improved. During this meeting, the team discusses their processes and identifies areas where they can make changes to improve their performance. The Sprint Retrospective is an important event because it helps the team continuously improve their processes and work together more effectively.

The video is about flow metrics in Sprint Planning on a Scrum Team. The speaker is joined by Pratik Singh, Head of Learning and Development at ProKanban.org, to discuss how flow metrics can be used in Sprint Planning. Todd and Ryan mention that many people have debated the usefulness of story points and how flow metrics can be a better solution. They mention that throughput is the most suitable flow metric for Sprint planning as it measures the number of things getting done per unit of time. The conversation also discusses how throughput can replace story points and velocity in Sprint planning. ⏩ Join Ryan and Todd for a Scrum.org course: https://buytickets.at/agileforhumansllc Todd and Ryan also co-authored a book - Fixing Your Scrum: Practical Solutions to Common Scrum Problems.

Sprint Planning - Should Teams Sign Up For Tasks? This is a GREAT Question.. Join Agile Coach Keis Kostaqi as we explore what she feels is best for teams to do at Sprint Planning! What a way to kickoff International Women's Month!

7 great ScrumMaster Interview questions: Question 1: How would you organize the Sprint Planning? Question 2: What factors should a Scrum Team consider at the Sprint Planning to determine a feasible Sprint Goal? Question 3: Is it acceptable for the Product Owner to introduce a business objective for the upcoming Sprint that resembles a list of random work items? Question 4: Is it okay to use a ‘Definition of Ready?' Question 5: Is it a helpful idea for the Developers to plan all work for the whole length of the Sprint during Sprint Planning? Question 6: Your organization highly values when deliveries match forecasts. Is that something worrisome? Question 7: Should a Scrum Master worry about the utilization rate of the Developers?

Have you ever been asked to invite someone outside of the Scrum Team to one or more of the Scrum Team's Events?On this episode, Product Manager Brian Orlando and Enterprise Agile Coach Om Patel go event by event to talk about when it is right to invite stakeholders to your Scrum Events, and when it is "not right!"0:00 Topic Intro0:20 Daily Scrum, by the Book2:48 Daily Scrum, the Real World6:49 Uninvited Guests9:58 Disciplined & Undisciplined Stakeholders14:35 Sprint Retrospective16:56 Outsiders in the Retro18:51 Sprint Review23:03 External vs Internal Stakeholders26:48 Sprint Planning, by the Book28:05 Sprint Planning, the Real World31:47 Backlog Refinement34:42 Optional Scrum Team Attendees at Refinement37:22 Wrap-up= = = = = = = = = = = =Watch it on YoutubePlease Subscribe to our YouTube Channel:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8XUSoJPxGPI8EtuUAHOb6g?sub_confirmation=1= = = = = = = = = = = =Apple Podcasts:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/agile-podcast/id1568557596Google Podcasts:https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5idXp6c3Byb3V0LmNvbS8xNzgxMzE5LnJzcwSpotify:https://open.spotify.com/show/362QvYORmtZRKAeTAE57v3Amazon Music:https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/ee3506fc-38f2-46d1-a301-79681c55ed82/Agile-PodcastStitcher:https://www.stitcher.com/show/agile-podcast-2= = = = = = = = = = = = AA84 - Stakeholders in the Scrum Events

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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. Robbie was working with a large organization, and helping a team. But he quickly noticed that there was a wider, systemic impact for the change they were asked to do. When working with the team, he suggested that they consider the stories in a “3 amigos” session before Sprint Planning. When this new practice was adopted, it was clear that a simple change like adopting the “3 amigos session” had had a large impact on the team, and the surrounding environment. Listen in, to learn how the “3 amigos” session can help your team collaborate, and define better stories. Learn more about the 3 amigos meeting from Steve Thomas and the 3 amigos session strategy by George Dinwiddie, who were some of the first to propose the practice in the agile community.   About Robbie Ross Robbie is an Agile Practice Manager at Jumar Technology with a passion for working with and empowering teams to foster an Agile environment at scale. He's also a Certified Scrum Master, Kanban practitioner and Agile community member helping teams release their genuine potential to deliver value. Quite a career shift since completing a Sports Science degree at University. You can link with Robbie Ross on LinkedIn and connect with Robbie Ross on Twitter. 

Today's episode is with Snir Kodesh, Head of Engineering at Retool, which is a development platform for building custom business tools. Before joining Retool, Snir spent six years as a Senior Director of Engineering at Lyft. In our conversation, we cover some of the biggest differences between leading engineering teams for a consumer product versus an enterprise platform — and the things that are consistent across both orgs. First, Snir pulls back the curtain on the software development cycle, starting with setting the product roadmap while balancing a diverse set of customer needs. He outlines who's in the room to represent product, engineering and design, and what those meetings actually look and sound like. Next, he dives into how engineering actually starts taking that product roadmap and making a plan of action using the “try, do, consider” framework. He makes the case for leaning on QBRs instead of OKRs, why scope creep gets a bad rap, and his advice for getting better at estimating how long a feature will actually take to complete. Finally, we zoom out and cover his essential advice for engineering leaders — especially folks who are scaling quickly from leading a small team to a much bigger one. You can follow Snir on Twitter at @snirkodesh You can email us questions directly at review@firstround.com or follow us on Twitter @ twitter.com/firstround and twitter.com/brettberson

TOP 10 REWIND: What Does a Scrum Master Do During Sprint Planning? Let's explore the options this situation presents. All of this and more are discussed in today's episode of Your Daily Scrum with Todd Miller and Ryan Ripley. ⏩ Check out the Full Scrum Framework course with added bonus materials, guides, murals, resources, and LIVE INTERACTION with Ryan, Todd, and Daria: https://community.agileforhumans.com/share/z2K_YMahKAiXn9T9?utm_source=manual

IT'S ALL ABOUT THE PLAN.Vivek and Pabitra will be sitting down today to discuss the ins and outs of sprint planning. Tune in and learn how sprint planning is done, what challenges you may face and the best methods to use straight from our hosts, only here in the latest episode of The Agile Coach. HIGHLIGHTSThe art of sprint planningThe definition of readyAutonomy defines the team's capacityThe purpose of backlog refinementThe best method of conducting a standupQUOTESPabitra - The importance of goal-writing:“Coming up with goal-writing the goal based on what the team is committing to a lot of times it's not just like the user story, but the outcome is if we complete this set of a user story or this functionality.”Pabitra - Why autonomy is needed in a team:“We're trying to create self-organizing autonomous teams, and so if I don't give that autonomy to the team, we don't know what our capacity is yet.”Pabitra - The purpose of backlog refinement:“The way I see the purpose of backlog refinement is to look at the product backlog and create that shared understanding more than anything.”Pabitra - Best way of doing a stand-up:“The best method to conduct a stand-up, I found is to kind of walking the board. So instead of like calling on each person and making it seem like that person is giving a status.”Get to know Pabitra and what she's up to:About PabitraConnect with Vivek and find out more about what he's up to:About VivekAbout The Agile CoachAgile Coach WebsiteIf you enjoy The Agile Coach and are interested in learning more, you can check us out at the link below:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-agile-coach-llc

Do your sprint planning meetings drag on and on? Do you joke that the team must be trying to plan a marathon rather than a sprint? You are not alone. Some teams struggle with planning because they aren't taking the time to refine. You can read about some ways to tackle that problem in this blog. But today let's help the teams that struggle with planning because they are just trying too hard to get it perfect. There's no need to be perfect. Going into too much detail with each product backlog item or trying to estimate too precisely wastes everyone's time without adding value to the sprint. Perfect sprint planning does not mean the team has thought of every task. Perfect sprint planning means the team has perfectly figured out what set of product backlog items they can do during the sprint. Think about that for a moment and let it sink in. Being perfect is not thinking of every task. Being perfect is knowing the right set of product backlog items that can be delivered in a sprint. In my experience, a team doing a good job of sprint planning will identify only about two-thirds of all the tasks its members will do during the sprint. So the team leaves the meeting having failed to identify about one third of all the tasks they'll do that sprint. And this is a good thing. The team could spend more time planning the sprint and identify more of the work, but it's not worth the extra time. Teams typically don't miss the big to-dos, just the little ones. That's why there's no need to try to think of every small task. Here's something to try next sprint to see how you're doing. Start by measuring the percentage of tasks your team identifies during sprint planning. This is an easy metric to collect. Simply count the number of tasks identified during sprint planning and then count the number of tasks that have been identified by the end of the sprint. Divide, and you've got the percentage your team is identifying during sprint planning. Did you find your team is identifying more than two-thirds during sprint planning? First, congratulate them on doing such a great job of identifying work that needs to be done. Then try shortening their sprint planning meetings. They can probably get by with spending a bit less time in sprint planning. But if you do the math and find your team identifies only half of the eventual tasks during sprint planning, your team will probably benefit from spending a little more time in the sprint planning meeting. The team is underestimating the effort required to complete the product backlog items, which means they are probably bringing in more work than they can deliver. By knowing the percentage of tasks your team identifies during sprint planning and by remaining focused on the true purpose of sprint planning—selecting the right set of product backlog items to bring into a sprint and discussing them just enough to successfully implement them—you can help your team succeed with agile,

Brian and Kert talk about the final component of the Scrum Framework - Artifacts. Overview The term “artifact” seems a bit strange, doesn’t it? Why would the authors of Scrum include this as a component of the framework? What are the main artifacts that Scrum prescribes? And what are some of the other artifacts that are not required but many teams see as helpful to the running of a Scrum team? In this episode, Brian and Kert will discuss this final component of the Scrum framework in the Scrum Framework series and give you pointers on how to make the most out of the Scrum artifacts. Listen now to discover: 3:45 - hear Kert and Brian talk about the roots of this term 6:15 - Kert talks about his experience with documentation working at NASA 9:15 - Kert talks about the two backlogs in Scrum 12:30 - Brian and Kert talk about what level of detail is needed in backlog items 16:12 - Who is the therapist on a Scrum team? 19:00 Is tasking out everything required for Sprint Planning? 23:41 - Kert talks about how Ken Schwaber called Scrum, “The Art of the Possible” 31:27 Brian and Kert talk about the Definition of Done 33:24 Brian talks about a tool to facilitate the creation of a Definition of Done Listen next time when we’ll be discussing… Mike Cohn returns to discuss User Stories with Brian. Mike has literally written the book on User Stories (User Stories Applied) and shares his wealth of experience and knowledge on the subject. References and resources mentioned in the show Married at First Site - Lifetime TV Network Larry Maccherone talks about Kanban Metrics David A. Koontz’s exercise for creating a Definition of Done Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. ● Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. ● Got an agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He’s passionate about making a difference in people’s day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work. Kert began his professional career as a Software Engineer in NASA's Space Shuttle program, affording him practical insights into the daily challenges faced by engineers, designers, and testers. Driven by the belief that learning unlocks potential, Kert has pioneered educational programs for Dell, Rockwell Collins, Amazon.com, and Capital One Financial. Kert is one of the few trainers world-wide to be actively credentialed as both a Scrum and Kanban trainer by Scrum Alliance and Kanban University, respectively.

Brian and Kert talk about the final component of the Scrum Framework - Artifacts. Overview The term “artifact” seems a bit strange, doesn’t it? Why would the authors of Scrum include this as a component of the framework? What are the main artifacts that Scrum prescribes? And what are some of the other artifacts that are not required but many teams see as helpful to the running of a Scrum team? In this episode, Brian and Kert will discuss this final component of the Scrum framework in the Scrum Framework series and give you pointers on how to make the most out of the Scrum artifacts. Listen now to discover: 3:45 - hear Kert and Brian talk about the roots of this term 6:15 - Kert talks about his experience with documentation working at NASA 9:15 - Kert talks about the two backlogs in Scrum 12:30 - Brian and Kert talk about what level of detail is needed in backlog items 16:12 - Who is the therapist on a Scrum team? 19:00 Is tasking out everything required for Sprint Planning? 23:41 - Kert talks about how Ken Schwaber called Scrum, “The Art of the Possible” 31:27 Brian and Kert talk about the Definition of Done 33:24 Brian talks about a tool to facilitate the creation of a Definition of Done Listen next time when we’ll be discussing… Mike Cohn returns to discuss User Stories with Brian. Mike has literally written the book on User Stories (User Stories Applied) and shares his wealth of experience and knowledge on the subject. References and resources mentioned in the show Married at First Site - Lifetime TV Network Larry Maccherone talks about Kanban Metrics David A. Koontz’s exercise for creating a Definition of Done Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. ● Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. ● Got an agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He’s passionate about making a difference in people’s day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work. Kert began his professional career as a Software Engineer in NASA's Space Shuttle program, affording him practical insights into the daily challenges faced by engineers, designers, and testers. Driven by the belief that learning unlocks potential, Kert has pioneered educational programs for Dell, Rockwell Collins, Amazon.com, and Capital One Financial. Kert is one of the few trainers world-wide to be actively credentialed as both a Scrum and Kanban trainer by Scrum Alliance and Kanban University, respectively.

Today we're tackling an issue that many people in tech struggle with, Sprint Planning. If you ever find yourself wondering... What is Agile? What is a Sprint? And are we doing this right?! This is the episode for you. And we brought in the big guns - Mr. Agile himself, Pete Behrens.  Skip ahead to 8:43 for the Big Girl Skill or listen from the beginning for our usual shenanigans.