Lorraine Chambers: When Product Owners Are Spread Thin, And How To Overcome The Absent PO Anti-pattern Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes. The Great Product Owner: The Growth-Oriented PO This Product Owner (PO) ensured every team member had a voice, fostering an environment for experimentation and ideation. They facilitated developer participation in hackathons and effectively communicated the vision and roadmap. The backlog was consistently well-organized and prioritized. The PO actively shared feedback, motivating the team. They sought opportunities for recognition and took pride in sprint reviews. This PO's commitment extended to continuous learning and self-improvement through training, events, and meetups, reflecting a growth-oriented mindset nurtured through Lorraine's coaching. The Bad Product Owner: When Product Owners Are Spread Thin, And How To Overcome The Absent PO Anti-pattern Lorraine recounts an experience with a PO that was often absent. The Product Owner was spread thin across multiple teams, leading to scheduling conflicts with scrum events. This resulted in a disorganized backlog and a lack of a clear vision. Open, candid conversations were crucial in highlighting the impact on the team. Together, Lorraine and the PO adjusted the calendar to prioritize the team's needs. With improved availability, the team thrived. Lorraine also collaborated with the PO to advocate for more dedicated time from management.   [IMAGE HERE] Are you having trouble helping the team work well with their Product Owner? We’ve put together a course to help you work on the collaboration team-product owner. You can find it at bit.ly/coachyourpo. 18 modules, 8+ hours of modules with tools and techniques that you can use to help teams and PO’s collaborate.   About Lorraine Chambers Lorraine's vision of excellence is summed up in the words of philosopher, Lao Tzu -- “A leader is best when people barely know he exists ... " She's held several roles in the Fintech industry, including Product Owner and Quality Assurance. She's a native New Yorker that loves travel, music and museums. You can link with Lorraine Chambers on LinkedIn and connect with Lorraine Chambers on Instagram. 

Lorraine Chambers: How To Design Your Coaching Plan, And Progress Towards Successful Scrum Mastery 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, we explore what success means for Scrum Masters and Lorraine’s perspective. Lorraine suggests that success starts when both the team and customers are genuinely content and motivated. Key indicators include the team independently addressing anti-patterns, initiating discussions about their work, and requiring less assistance with basic tasks. Lorraine emphasizes the importance of a defined coaching plan (see the Agile Coaching Growth Wheel) and personal accountability. Conducting quarterly team health surveys provides concrete feedback for self-improvement, enabling Lorraine to track progress and address areas for growth effectively. Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: From Lean Coffee To The Simple DAKI Framework, Retrospectives For All Teams When it comes to retrospective formats, for mature teams, Lorraine favors the Lean Coffee approach, providing an informal setting where participants shape the agenda in real-time. This allows for open discussions on chosen topics within time constraints. Lorraine highlights how Lean Coffee often uncovers diverse team concerns. For less mature teams, she leans towards the Drop/Add/Keep/Improve framework (DAKI retrospective), emphasizing continuous improvement. She suggests that we use the "Improve" to inspire improvements that we keep an eye on during the Sprint. With remote teams, she utilizes MURAL's private mode for collaborative sticky-note sessions.   [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 Lorraine Chambers Lorraine's vision of excellence is summed up in the words of philosopher, Lao Tzu -- “A leader is best when people barely know he exists ... " She's held several roles in the Fintech industry, including Product Owner and Quality Assurance. She's a native New Yorker that loves travel, music and museums. You can link with Lorraine Chambers on LinkedIn and connect with Lorraine Chambers on Instagram. 

Lorraine Chambers: Using Experiments To Drive Agile Change, Lessons from a Test Automation Initiative 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. This story starts with an agile transformation featuring a shift-left initiative. The team faced challenges in implementing test automation due to unclear policies and time allocation. Recognizing the challenges faced by the teams, Lorraine engaged with managers and leaders, advocating to give teams the support they needed. Through that, it was possible to help the teams with guidance on Test-Driven Development and support in using an internal testing tool. When it comes to helping teams adopt new practices, Lorraine advises identifying policy and decision-makers, gathering relevant data, and proposing time-limited experiments for major changes, culminating in retrospective evaluations.   [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 Lorraine Chambers Lorraine's vision of excellence is summed up in the words of philosopher, Lao Tzu -- “A leader is best when people barely know he exists ... " She's held several roles in the Fintech industry, including Product Owner and Quality Assurance. She's a native New Yorker that loves travel, music and museums. You can link with Lorraine Chambers on LinkedIn and connect with Lorraine Chambers on Instagram.   

Lorraine Chambers: Dismantling Silos, A Critical Aspect Of Helping Scrum Teams Succeed 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, Lorraine explores the story of a midsized team within a larger organization. Operating in silos, the team members juggled disconnected tasks, leading to significant carryover between sprints, and an inability to fulfill sprint commitments. The silos led to limited collaboration which, in time, further hindered progress. Lorraine addressed concerns with the Product Owner and manager, but changes were deemed unfeasible at the time. This situation impeded the team's ability to self-organize. As reflection for Scrum Masters, Lorraine advises reflecting on the organizational team model and strategizing how to foster collective participation in sprint planning, shared goals, and self-organization within the team. Featured Book of the Week: Radical Candor by Kim Scott Lorraine discusses a pivotal book in her career: "Radical Candor" by Kim Scott, emphasizing its guidance on effective communication and feedback provision for coaches. The book advocates candidness in delivering both praise and criticism, underscoring the significance of nurturing relationships. Lorraine recounts an illustrative story from the book where a lack of candor led to performance issues. The lesson: timely, candid feedback is crucial.   [IMAGE HERE] Do you wish you had decades of experience? Learn from the Best Scrum Masters In The World, Today! The Tips from the Trenches - Scrum Master edition audiobook includes hours of audio interviews with SM’s that have decades of experience: from Mike Cohn to Linda Rising, Christopher Avery, and many more. Super-experienced Scrum Masters share their hard-earned lessons with you. Learn those today, make your teams awesome!     About Lorraine Chambers Lorraine's vision of excellence is summed up in the words of philosopher, Lao Tzu -- “A leader is best when people barely know he exists ... " She's held several roles in the Fintech industry, including Product Owner and Quality Assurance. She's a native New Yorker that loves travel, music and museums. You can link with Lorraine Chambers on LinkedIn and connect with Lorraine Chambers on Instagram. 

Lorraine Chambers: Designing A Workshop To Help Agile Teams Overcome Conflict, And Learn To Communicate Effectively 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, Lorraine reflects on a pivotal early experience as a Scrum Master. Faced with communication breakdowns in her new team, exacerbated by disrespectful responses to a junior member, she initially hoped for resolution without intervention. However, tensions escalated. Seeking guidance from an agile coach, they conducted communication-focused sessions, delving into communication styles and sharing some active listening practices. Progress seemed slow, prompting Lorraine to shift her coaching approach. She designed a workshop on navigating disagreements, using role-playing exercises. Additionally, she emphasized creating a collaborative working agreement and proactive identification of anti-patterns. Ultimately, Lorraine emphasizes arming teams with tools for independent problem-solving.   [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 Lorraine Chambers Lorraine's vision of excellence is summed up in the words of philosopher, Lao Tzu -- “A leader is best when people barely know he exists ... " She's held several roles in the Fintech industry, including Product Owner and Quality Assurance. She's a native New Yorker that loves travel, music and museums. You can link with Lorraine Chambers on LinkedIn and connect with Lorraine Chambers on Instagram.