Stay ConnectedWe bring amazing agile minded individuals from product, coaching, entrepreneurship, and engineering space and bring you an immersive learning experience through stories and practices.
If you are an aspiring or new Scrum Master, Business Analyst, Product Owner, or Product Manager; you will take away a lot from these conversations!
Copyright: © Vivek Khattri
HIGHLIGHTS
QUOTES
Laxmi: "I don't find myself needing to jump in to fix things for my team. In the past, when I work with teams, I used to find myself in a situation that I'm sure a lot of scrum masters out there have felt this way at some point in their careers, where in the process of being helpful, you kinda create this need for your team to become excessively reliant on you."
Laxmi: "Allow the team to learn by doing something poorly. Let them have a bad daily scrum. We humans, I think, learn when we make mistakes. That's how I learn."
Laxmi: "First, it's really helping the team understand what we're tying to get out of by visualizing our work. What is the reason behind transparency."
Pabitra: "So it's not, you're not shoving and pushing, you're not a dictator. You're not saying, hey, like do this or do that. But you're really helping them come up with your own like ways in a way and saying, Hey, you know, I see like what you're doing here and that provides value, but here is like also by not having this in place, there's this here's what's causing us or here's the problem that's causing."
Laxmi: You really want to build out a one-to-one relationship and coach them a little to find out what is getting in the way of them being a better team member, right. What is that internal dialogue? And the biggest thing is you have to be open to the experiences of that person, without any judgment."
Laxmi: "I firmly believe our style and personality obviously plays an important role in our ability to effectively facilitate. However, as a scrum master, you shouldn't just subscribe to one way of facilitating team events. Yeah. So just like, you know, you're advocating to the team that, Hey, there is more than one way to achieve the same outcome. You also have to believe that there is more than one way to hold, for example, a daily scrum. If your team is still asking the same three questions, what did I work on yesterday, What am I working on today? What is progressing in my work? Then I believe you're just going through the motions and most likely, so is your team."
Laxmi: "As a facilitator, you have to create an environment for the team to perform at their best. And if you're not experimenting with your technique and, you know, doing what's necessary to provide, the setting that's needed, where the team can reflect, they can discuss and have fun, I don't think you're growing as a scrum master or caring enough to bring them, bring the group together."
Learn more about Laxmi in the link below:
HIGHLIGHTS
QUOTES
Matt: "It's been really nice to see how different people are doing things and learning from other people and different places and pick up bits and pieces. For me, an agile mindset is one of learning and so picking up bits and pieces where people are doing some interesting things, trying interesting things, and that's what I've just done. Very little of what I've done is my own novel idea. It's really just incorporating other people's ideas and making it work."
Matt: "Kanban helps us to see how our work works. It's really making visible the work systems that we work in."
Matt: In knowledge work, where we are in, intangible goods, it's harder to see the work. It's stuff that lives in our computers and in the cloud, and so it's not quite as transparent and visible as in a physical goods environment.
Matt: "It's a way of, I talk about humanizing work. For me, seeing how actual people were doing work can be overburdened and stressed out by having too much work to work on, or not having a visibility into how things are working. And so it's about the work's sake, but also the worker's sake that I really find Kanban to be a helpful way of thinking really about our work."
Matt: "The Kanban Iceberg metaphor that I've used in the past is, that which is seen at the top of the iceberg, which is the sign cards or the cork boards. But there's so much of the Kanban method that's below the surface. Not quite as easily seen. I think about the other practices, the principles, and the values."
Matt: "In my experience, I've experienced lots of different places that say Agile and do Agile. My very first experience was doing XP extreme programming orientation. My main experience is initially doing Agile stuff from an XP standpoint. For me that's really valuable because I understood the importance of engineering excellence and technical excellence as opposed to just the organizing principles of some methods that are useful but don't necessarily speak to what code looks like and what deliverable work should look like."
Matt: "Make it okay to fail. We talk a lot about psychological safety. Making it clear that it’s okay that you're not gonna get it right the first time. And being resilient in that experience and to learn from those things."
Matt: "If doing something fast is important, there's tradeoffs obviously, maybe the quality suffers but sometimes the customer's okay with that. It takes a very important conversation to make them aware of the implications of taking some shortcuts with code. But one of the things that I find useful, for example, is predictability. Being able to be predictable in delivery, to the extent that we have control over some of these sources of variation and impact."
Learn more about Matt in the link below:
In today's episode, we take a look back at some of our favorite tips we've received from our guests about how to conduct a great retrospective. Topics to be discussed include the five steps of a retro, meeting facilitation and making retrospectives fun.
Featuring clips from the following episodes (in order of appearance):
Ep. 16 | Agile Team Retrospectives (ft. Meghann Rudolph) Ep. 18 | Inspiration Behind Writing Agile Retrospectives (ft. Diana Larson) Ep. 18 | Step 1: Setting the Stage (ft. Diana Larson) Ep. 18 | Step 2: Gathering Data (ft. Diana Larson) Ep. 18 | Step 3: Gathering Insight (ft. Diana Larson) Ep. 18 | Step 4: Deciding What to Do (ft. Diana Larson) Ep. 18 | Step 5: Closing the Retrospective (ft. Diana Larson) Ep. 1 | What is Meeting Facilitation? (ft. Joe Ziadeh) Ep. 14 | Making a Retrospective Fun, Engaging & Effective (ft. Adam Miner)
In today's episode, we take a look back at some of our favorite tips we've received from our guests about what it means to be a business analyst. Topics to be discussed include the role of a business analyst, what a business analyst is expected to know starting out, and how to mitigate risk.
Featuring clips from the following episodes (in order of appearance):
Ep. 2 | Role of a Business Analyst in Scrum (ft. Jeff Bubolz) Ep. 31 | What are You Expected to Know? (ft. Zach Klipsch) Ep. 31 | What is a BA Supposed to Do? (ft. Zach Klipsch) Ep. 24 | Communicating And Mitigating Risk (ft. Banu Raghuraman) Ep. 24 | How to Give Bad News or Say "No" (ft. Banu Raghuraman) Ep. 31 | Understanding Business Partners and Stakeholders (ft. Zach Klipsch)
A common misconception is that agile is a process, but it's not; it's a way of thinking. You're not just repeating steps, you're continuously inspecting and adapting and looking for ways to create a better team and a better product. In today's podcast, we sit down with director of product management, Alex Courtney, and discuss topics such as how to teach kanban, what makes a good agile candidate and solving the problems of a team.
Our Speaker: Alex Courtney
Alex received his bachelor's in business administration and management from University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point and his MBA from the University of Central Missouri. Since graduation, Alex has worked in many agile roles including those of a product manager, scrum master, and agile coach. He is currently working as the Director of Digital Product for BJC HealthCare. We are proud to introduce Alex Courtney.
In February of 2001, seventeen individuals came together to create a people-first approach to software development. These ideas are now known as The Agile Manifesto and have been summarized by twelve principles. In today's podcast, we sit down with Jeremy Aschenbrenner and dissect these principles, looking into how each one compliments the other and the core concept of empathetic product development.
Our Speaker: Jeremy Aschenbrenner
With a rich background in management and IT, Jeremy now acts as the chief instructor at The BA Guide where he helps other achieve their goal of becoming a business analyst. We are proud to introduce Jeremy Aschenbrenner.
To become a business analyst, there's a lot you have to learn, even after you've obtained the title and role. Aside from writing user stories and representing the end user for the development team, the role of a business analyst is really what you make of it. You're constantly learning and growing, better understanding the business practices and the people who make up the foundation of the organization. In today's podcast, we sit down with business analyst, Zach Klipsch, and discuss topics such as the BA interview process, the role of a BA and what it's like working with integrated teams.
Our Speaker: Zach Klipsch After a high school injury cost him the ability to play soccer in college, Zach worked with a physical therapist who helped show him the value of determination and helping others. This inspired Zach to attend and graduate from Maryville University in Saint Louis, Missouri. Through their dual degree program with Washington University, he was able to major in biomedical engineering. After spending 6 to 8 hours per week working for the university as an analyst and technical expert, Zach discovered that he had many of the skills and tools needed to become an entrepreneur. This led him to pursue full time employment at Bayer, Centene Corp, and presently Quanterix. We are proud to introduce Zach Klipsch.
In today's episode, we take a look back at some of our favorite moments from interviews we've had with scrum masters here on The Agile Coach Podcast! Topics to be discussed include scaling scrum, adding value to a new team, psychological safety and unlocking intrinsic value.
Featuring clips from the following episodes (in order of appearance):
Ep. 13 | Facilitation from a Modern Agile Perspective (ft. Barbara Kryvko) Ep. 14 | Growing as a Scrum Master & Coach (ft. Adam Miner) Ep. 19 | Harnessing the Power of the Team (ft. Lakshmi Ramaseshan) Ep. 16 | Vulnerability & Courage (ft. Meaghann Rudolph) Ep. 9 | Mastering the Art of Scrum & Building High-Performing Teams (ft. Adam Miner) Ep. 2 | Scrum, UX Integrations & Leading Teams (ft. Jeff Bubolz) Ep. 6 | Deconstructing ScrumBan & Going from Control to Trust (ft. Andrew Stellman) Ep. 5 | Scaled Agile (SAFe) Deep-Dive for Scrum Masters (ft. Venkat Bagayat) Ep. 17 | Transparency, Collaboration & SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) (ft. Hari Khanal)
In a product-producing organization, although the vision comes from the top down, the value goes from the bottom up. This is is why empathy for all and a willingness to change are key concepts to display within a business reaching for success. In today’s podcast, we sit down with scrum master Athulya Mohanan and discuss topics such as defining Agile, challenges in Agile transitioning and what it’s like being a modern scrum master.
Our Speaker: Athulya Mohanan
Athulya began her career at Reiotech, a small startup in India, where she worked as a design engineer. It was here that she was introduced to Agile principles by some external consultants, but it wouldn’t be until after finishing her masters in the US and starting her PhD in electrical engineering that she’d realize her passions lied not in a research lab, but in helping individuals achieve success through Agile. Athulya has since worked as an Agile Coach and scrum master for about 6 years, transforming teams and training others in Agile boot camps. She is currently employed as a Technical Delivery Manager at OpenTable. We are proud to introduce Athulya Mohanan.
Scrum is a behavioral framework that stands upon three core pillars: transparency, inspection and adaptation. As a scrum master, it’s important to not only ensure that these pillars apply within your team, but also yourself as a leader as you strive to focus on people first. In today’s podcast, we sit down with scrum master Hari Khanal and discuss topics such as the Agile manifesto, dealing with internal and external challenges and how to empower your team.
Our Speaker: Hari Khanal
Hari has a passion for serving others and bringing people together, and it was this passion that drove him to leave his job in sales to pursue a career in Agile. He currently works as a scrum master, coach and facilitator for multiple organizations as well as runs his own companies outside of his career. We are proud to have Hari Khanal back on the podcast.
Our TOPPODCAST Picks 
