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Lee Beckett: Using NoEstimates to Help Agile Teams Focus On Value, And Create Transparency - NoEstimates Unplugged Week   This is one of a series of episodes where Product Owners explain how they used, and benefited from #NoEstimates in their work with teams.  To know more about #NoEstimates, sign-up to get the first 3 chapters of the book here.   Exploring #NoEstimates Lee Beckett shares his journey from coder to Product Owner (PO), and how his diverse experience led him to question the effectiveness of traditional estimation techniques in agile environments. He discusses the adoption of a #NoEstimates approach, highlighting its benefits in simplifying processes and focusing on delivering value. Lee illustrates how abandoning estimates, except for significant items, streamlined project workflows and improved team dynamics. This approach fostered a culture of trust and transparency, crucial for managing stakeholder expectations and focusing on product delivery. Challenges and Solutions Implementing #NoEstimates was surprisingly straightforward for Lee's team, emphasizing the importance of establishing trust and transparency with stakeholders from the outset. Lee stresses honesty in forecasting and advises giving stakeholders meaningful insights rather than fixed dates to help manage expectations effectively. After adopting #NoEstimates, the team's planning focused on work discussion rather than assigning numerical values, allowing for more flexible and goal-oriented sprint planning. Measuring Success Without traditional estimates, the team measures progress through product delivery and stakeholder feedback, ensuring a focus on value creation. Lee advises teams to ensure open communication and clear prioritization with stakeholders before moving to #NoEstimates, ensuring a foundation for success. Recommended Resource For those interested in exploring #NoEstimates further, Lee recommends the "Agile for Humans" podcast, particularly the interview with Josh Anderson and Ryan Ripley. About Lee Beckett Lee Beckett, has over 17 years of experience in digital product development, and is a certified Product Owner and Lean Practitioner. Skilled in setting product goals and managing backlogs, Lee excels in guiding teams through the product lifecycle and fostering a culture of empiricism and learning in agile environments. You can link with Lee Beckett on LinkedIn.

Johannes Andersen: Ceremony Over Substance, The Scrum Master Trap, And How It Affects Teams And The Product Owner 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 Scrum Master: Beyond the Backlog, How a Great Scrum Master Helps Product Owners From a Product Owner's perspective, Johannes shares what an ideal Scrum Master looks like. This Scrum Master not only introduced him to Scrum but also focused on the underlying purpose beyond mere processes. His patience, clarity, and pragmatic approach in defining priorities and solving conflicts greatly facilitated the PO's understanding of product development challenges. This Scrum Master’s ability to foster meaningful conversations significantly helped Johannes in the PO role, highlighting the importance of a Scrum Master's soft skills in guiding and supporting the product vision. The Bad Scrum Master: Ceremony Over Substance, The Scrum Master Trap, And How It Affects Teams And The Product Owner From a Product Owner's perspective, Johannes highlights an anti-pattern where the Scrum Master becomes overly focused on ceremonies and strict adherence to Scrum guidelines, losing sight of the actual outcomes. This approach mistakenly centralizes process ownership with the Scrum Master, rather than distributing it among the entire team. Johannes advises addressing this issue by realigning the Scrum Master's role towards shared goals and understanding, using tools like Team Topologies for discussion. The key is moving beyond the "servant" aspect of "servant leader" to foster a team environment where understanding and self-direction are prioritized.   [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 Johannes Andersen Johannes comes from a finance and fintech background, and is now an enterprise agility maestro at a leading telco in Copenhagen! He focuses on optimizing the flow from strategy to execution, championing portfolio management with a keen eye on doing the right things, even if imperfectly. Johannes is an international speaker on product development topics. You can link with Johannes Andersen on LinkedIn.

Johannes Andersen: Autonomy as an Achievement, Empowering Self-Sufficient Scrum Teams Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes. When it comes to being a successful Agile Coach and Scrum Master, Johannes emphasises the goal of becoming unnecessary as the team matures. For Johannes, success is evident when the team autonomously conducts check-ins, engages in constructive debates, and effectively self-organizes while maintaining good relationships. The ability to request help and independently run retrospectives are signs of a well-functioning team that continuously challenges its own processes. Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: The Timeline Retrospective With a Twist Johannes shares a favorite retrospective format, focusing on flexibility and open dialogue. Starting with a timeline to objectively list events, the process encourages a shared understanding of recent activities. The team then categorizes experiences into "Well," "Not Well," and "Makes Me Wonder," before voting on action points. As familiarity grows, discussions evolve to directly address improvement areas. Johannes emphasizes the value of natural conversation over strict adherence to structured methods, suggesting that effective retrospectives can thrive on organic interaction.   [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 Johannes Andersen Johannes comes from a finance and fintech background, and is now an enterprise agility maestro at a leading telco in Copenhagen! He focuses on optimizing the flow from strategy to execution, championing portfolio management with a keen eye on doing the right things, even if imperfectly. Johannes is an international speaker on product development topics. You can link with Johannes Andersen on LinkedIn.

Johannes Andersen: The Critical Role of the Leap of Faith in Organizational Change Programs 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, Johannes discusses leading a small business unit through a change process to improve project flow and efficiency. Initially working in silos, the team aimed to reorganize around customer-focused products. Despite considering an outside-in model, they chose an inside-out approach for practicality. An off-site session helped visualize the workflow under the new structure, but progress in the change was slow due to overplanning. Johannes learned that successful change requires adaptability and a leap of faith, emphasizing the importance of navigating between complicated and complex models as reality shifts. In this episode, we talk about the importance of being able to differentiate between complex and complicated types of work and change.   [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 Johannes Andersen Johannes comes from a finance and fintech background, and is now an enterprise agility maestro at a leading telco in Copenhagen! He focuses on optimizing the flow from strategy to execution, championing portfolio management with a keen eye on doing the right things, even if imperfectly. Johannes is an international speaker on product development topics. You can link with Johannes Andersen on LinkedIn.

Johannes Andersen: Disjoint Silos, The Illusion of Teamwork and How it Affects Agile Coaches’ Work 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 segment, Johannes reflects on his transition from a business unit to an HR position, which initially seemed promising due to the team-based approach they embraced in HR. However, he soon discovered that the HR team lacked unity, with various small roles not functioning cohesively as a team. Tasked by his manager to enhance the HR team's effectiveness, Johannes found himself dedicating much of his time to internal issues rather than organizational improvement. The core issue was the absence of a shared goal, leading to misalignment and lack of collaboration within the team, effectively making them "disjoint silos" rather than a unified force. We discuss Vasco’s mnemonic of “One Team, One Goal” andthe importance of aligning around a single, shared goal to foster true teamwork. Featured Book of the Week: "The Goal" by Eliyahu M. Goldratt In this segment, Johannes discusses how "The Goal" by Eliyahu M. Goldratt profoundly influenced him. Appreciating its novel-based approach, he found it uniquely effective for teaching new concepts, allowing readers to empathize with the learning process. Johannes admires the book's focus on outcomes and its clarity on defining a company's "goal," highlighting its system thinking approach as a critical aspect of understanding and solving organizational problems.   [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 Johannes Andersen Johannes comes from a finance and fintech background, and is now an enterprise agility maestro at a leading telco in Copenhagen! He focuses on optimizing the flow from strategy to execution, championing portfolio management with a keen eye on doing the right things, even if imperfectly. Johannes is an international speaker on product development topics. You can link with Johannes Andersen on LinkedIn.

Johannes Andersen: Collaboration Over Isolated Performance, Lessons Learned as a Scrum Product Owner 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, Johannes shares a personal story of his struggles as a Product Owner (PO). In his early career, Johannes believed he needed to have all the answers and provide detailed requirements alone; but he quickly found that it was not so easy to define all the features by himself. This experience taught him the importance of involving the entire team in writing user stories, highlighting that collaboration, not individual effort, leads to success. Johannes emphasizes focusing on outcomes, encouraging POs to ask goal-oriented questions and to view technical solutions through the lens of their importance. He recommends resources like Mike Burrows' list of questions to foster effective communication and collaboration.   [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 Johannes Andersen Johannes comes from a finance and fintech background, and is now an enterprise agility maestro at a leading telco in Copenhagen! He focuses on optimizing the flow from strategy to execution, championing portfolio management with a keen eye on doing the right things, even if imperfectly. Johannes is an international speaker on product development topics. You can link with Johannes Andersen on LinkedIn.

BONUS: Beyond Profit, How Happy Office Is Redefining Success in the Workplace, with Maartje Jansen and Fennande van der Meulen 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. Maartje and Fennande's journey into the realm of happiness at work began with a blend of personal insight and professional evolution.  A conversation with a neighbor about the  innovative step of hiring the Netherlands' first Chief Happiness Officer, led them to the realization that prioritizing worker happiness is not just beneficial but essential for business success.  This revelation was the cornerstone for founding Happy Office, the consultancy they work for. Both had always valued engagement and purpose in their work, but now they were seeing the business world through a new lens: one that focuses on harnessing the full potential of employees, beyond just profit generation.  Their early skepticism from academic circles about influencing work culture was overturned by practical experiences. The Four Pillars of Workplace Happiness They define happiness at work simply by saying: “it’s when you find yourself whistling on the way to and from work!” They use four ideas to help describe how to achieve that outcome, the four Ps of Purpose, People, Progress, and Positivity.  These pillars serve as the foundation for creating a work environment where employees feel energized rather than drained.  At the core of their definition lies the basic human needs for meaningful relationships and contributions, suggesting that true happiness at work is about finding the right balance that fulfills these needs. The Critical Role of Happiness in Today's Workplace This episode’s conversation underscores the heightened relevance of workplace happiness in the contemporary world, noting a discernible difference in organizations that take it seriously.  The emphasis on happiness is linked to broader trends in recognizing the value of positive work culture in fostering creativity, cooperation, productivity, and resilience among employees.  They also touch on the preventative role of a positive culture in reducing stress and burnout, supported by data and practical experience from their consulting work. Fostering Happiness at Work: Practical Strategies Offering actionable advice, Maartje and Fennande highlight the importance of starting with a clear understanding and discussion of what happiness means to a team.  They advocate for evaluating and improving upon the four pillars, emphasizing that cultural change should be incremental rather than big-bang.  Their approach is against the notion of rapid, transformative programs, suggesting instead a step-by-step experimentation to cultivate a lasting positive culture. Making Change Last: The Role of Leadership The challenge of ensuring lasting change is met with strategies rooted in engaging employees in meaningful conversations about their best work experiences and needs to flourish.  Despite initial resistance, these discussions pave the way for practical, tangible steps towards happiness.  The importance of leadership in modeling desired behaviors and the agile approach to HR are highlighted as critical factors in making happiness at work a sustainable reality. About Maartje Jansen and Fennande van der Meulen Fennande van der Meulen is an expert in workplace happiness and positive culture, co-leading Woohoo Unlimited. Utilizing the Happy Office method, she offers online training, workshops, and in-depth programs to enhance work happiness, culture, and productivity. Her approach is evidence-based, rooted in science, and internationally recognized. You can link with Fennande van der Meulen on LinkedIn. Maartje Jansen specializes in improving work culture using the Happy Office method, emphasizing posi

Freddie Brown Jr: Inspiring Excellence, How the Commitment and Clarity Transforms the Performance of the Scrum Product Owner 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: Inspiring Excellence, How the Commitment and Clarity Transforms the Performance of the Scrum PO In this segment, Freddie highlights the exceptional qualities of a great Product Owner (PO), Sara. She exhibited visionary leadership, with a clear and effectively communicated product vision. Her ability to inspire the team and her commitment to the product's success were some of the most important qualities highlighted by Freddie. Sara's enthusiasm for the work, skill in defining and explaining requirements, and prompt feedback to the development team set her apart as an exemplary PO. The Bad Product Owner: Collaboration Over Dictation, Tackling the Micro-Manager Scrum PO Challenge In this segment, Freddie discusses the challenges of dealing with a micro-managing Product Owner (PO) who dictates team processes and avoids accountability. This PO type often over-commits work, ignoring team capacity. Freddie suggests that Scrum Masters should foster a collaborative environment, seek to understand the team's feelings towards the PO's behavior, and communicate with the PO to get to the root cause of their behavior's. He emphasizes the importance of helping the PO explain their goals to the team, to create alignment and avoid misunderstandings.   [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 Freddie Brown Jr. Meet Freddie Brown Jr, the Agile Genie! With a magic brain that grants your corporate wishes faster than Aladdin's lamp, he transforms chaos into strategic brilliance. He’s the genie you never knew you needed, making agile dreams come true – all with a sprinkle of humor that's truly magical! 🪔🚀😄 You can link with Freddie Brown Jr. on LinkedIn and connect with Freddie Brown Jr. on Twitter. 

Freddie Brown Jr: Beyond Project Completion Metrics, The Key Metrics 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. When it comes to defining success for Scrum Masters, Freddie invites us to go beyond conventional metrics like project completion. Key aspects include fostering collaboration, building high-performing teams, and enhancing organizational agility. Success encompasses team happiness and morale, creating a psychologically safe environment, encouraging innovation and efficiency, stakeholder feedback satisfaction, and effectively removing team impediments. Featured Retrospective Format For The Week: Simplifying Retrospectives for Impact When it comes to Agile retrospectives, Freddie emphasizes simplicity and effectiveness. He advocates for a straightforward approach, asking the team to reflect on what went well, what didn't, and potential improvements. The process begins with an icebreaker, like expressing feelings through a picture, to ease into the session. Freddie also recommends using MURAL as a tool to facilitate this simple yet impactful retrospective format.   [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 Freddie Brown Jr. Meet Freddie Brown Jr, the Agile Genie! With a magic brain that grants your corporate wishes faster than Aladdin's lamp, he transforms chaos into strategic brilliance. He’s the genie you never knew you needed, making agile dreams come true – all with a sprinkle of humor that's truly magical! 🪔🚀😄 You can link with Freddie Brown Jr. on LinkedIn and connect with Freddie Brown Jr. on Twitter. 

Freddie Brown Jr: From Assessment to Action, How Scrum Masters Can Start Their Engagement With A New Team 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, Freddie shares a story from his role as a change agent in a team engagement. He begins with 'CCC' - coffee, conversation, and candidness - to understand the team's dynamics. Following this, he conducts a thorough team and technical assessment to identify gaps. In one case, while noticing a lack of SAFe knowledge, Freddie designed a Scaled Scrum Master workshop and implemented a skill improvement plan. The process concluded with a retrospective on the training, emphasizing the importance of celebrating changes and achievements, guided by metrics.   [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 Freddie Brown Jr. Meet Freddie Brown Jr, the Agile Genie! With a magic brain that grants your corporate wishes faster than Aladdin's lamp, he transforms chaos into strategic brilliance. He’s the genie you never knew you needed, making agile dreams come true – all with a sprinkle of humor that's truly magical! 🪔🚀😄 You can link with Freddie Brown Jr. on LinkedIn and connect with Freddie Brown Jr. on Twitter. 

Freddie Brown Jr: Self-Organizing For Success, How Agile Teams Need to Define and Accept Roles and Responsibilities 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 segment features Freddie discussing challenges faced by a team with undefined roles and blurred responsibilities. He recalls an experience where QA personnel doubled as Scrum Masters, leading to role confusion. Freddie emphasizes the effectiveness of the RACI matrix in clarifying roles and responsibilities. He advises fostering discussions where teams define their own roles, thereby encouraging self-organization and clear understanding of each member's duties. Featured Book of the Week: Whiteboard: Business Models That Inspire Action by Daren Martin In this segment, Freddie discusses how "Whiteboard" by Derrin Martin profoundly influenced his approach as a Scrum Master. The book, renowned for its models that inspire action, offers simple yet powerful explanations on driving organizational change. Its use of illustrations effectively conveys messages, with a key takeaway being the philosophy of striving to improve by 1% daily.   [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 Freddie Brown Jr. Meet Freddie Brown Jr, the Agile Genie! With a magic brain that grants your corporate wishes faster than Aladdin's lamp, he transforms chaos into strategic brilliance. He’s the genie you never knew you needed, making agile dreams come true – all with a sprinkle of humor that's truly magical! 🪔🚀😄 You can link with Freddie Brown Jr. on LinkedIn and connect with Freddie Brown Jr. on Twitter. 

Freddie Brown Jr: From Chaos to Clarity, How A Process To Manage The Inflow Of Work to an Agile Team Transformed Their Performance 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 with Freddie, we explore the story of a team that was grappling with conflicting priorities. Freddie stepped in to shield the team and initiated a dialogue with the leadership, who were familiar with agile methodologies. The root cause of the problem seemed to be the absence of a structured process to integrate and prioritize new work that led to shifting priorities. Freddie worked with the stakeholders to create a clear process for leaders to introduce and manage new priorities effectively, without disrupting the team. This story highlights the need for clear processes that manage the “inflow” of work to the team.   [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 Freddie Brown Jr. Meet Freddie Brown Jr, the Agile Genie! With a magic brain that grants your corporate wishes faster than Aladdin's lamp, he transforms chaos into strategic brilliance. He’s the genie you never knew you needed, making agile dreams come true – all with a sprinkle of humor that's truly magical! 🪔🚀😄 You can link with Freddie Brown Jr. on LinkedIn and connect with Freddie Brown Jr. on Twitter.