Bob Hartman
Forum Replies Created
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Any Product Owners out there want to jump into this thread? I’ll have to take some time in the next couple of days to find the books I really like. It’s been a while since I made a list of them and some new ones have popped up. And I’m really interested in what the community has as ideas!!!
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You can just start a thread, like you did with this message. Feel free to ask your question right here!
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1. A metric answers a question.
2. The answer is accurate.
3. The answer confirms or changes behavior.
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A fun Certified Scrum Product Owner class this week!
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New Certified ScrumMaster candidates! And no, my cat is NOT going to be a CSM, even though she’s been in at least 10 classes!!!
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I got to spend time with a great group of people last week. This crew was doing team based learning in an Agile for Teams class. A lot of fun and laughter had by all!
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Welcome another group of CSMs!
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A group of happy CSM’ers!
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A great group that went through the Agile for Teams class together. Working on teams and learning Scrum together. That’s the way to learn!
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Great to have you hear @Manny! Also interesting that you found us on LinkedIn. That is good information for us to know.
– Bob –
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@Jeffrey Middaugh it is good to have you as a member of the community. It will be fun having you in class this week. Hopefully I’ll do a good job!
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@Brad Bell I’m glad you enjoyed the last course you took from us. Hopefully I can do as well or better with the CSPO class this coming week! See you soon.
– Bob –
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@tim CSPO is Certified Scrum Product Owner, a certification available through the Scrum Alliance. It is one of the courses listed on our website at https://agileforall.com/upcoming-courses. An ADO board is an Azure DevOps board, which I think is specific to using Microsoft products to track sprints instead of something like Jira.
I did respond to at least one of your messages. If you go to your timeline (menu item near the top of the left hand menu) you should see my response.
As an FYI, 2021 is a year of making sure this community is set up in a way that works and doesn’t generate too much spam as well as surviving cyberattacks (we get hundreds per hour!!!). We’re pretty close now, but some spam got through and I had to take more action to suspend the user. As this community grows we’ll start adding more and more content and I’m sure more people will interact. In 2022 we anticipate having some more active community management to make it even more worthwhile for the members. Until then, you can (and should) continue to post messages. You have been getting responses, so hopefully you will see them going forward.
– Bob –
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It seems to be a pretty bland class with no picture!
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@Chrisco leaders understand dollars and sense. How can you turn this into a fiscal problem? For example, is there a way to quantify how much it is costing in extra support or rework? Is there a way to figure out how much other work isn’t able to be done because of this extra support burden? Can you calculate the cost of turnover or burnout? These are just probing questions to get you started. If you can turn a problem into a dollars and sense problem you can get the attention of any leader. Their bonuses are often tied to numbers and if you can help them get numbers better, then it is in their best interest to listen! Always remember the phrase “WII-FM” What’s In It For Me. If you can help them see it is in their best interest to solve the problem then they will. Until then it is all just hot air they can ignore. 😉
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@James here are a couple of things I’ve heard that other teams are using to get people in the mode of more frequent communication:
1. As @Chrisco mentioned, using Slack can be useful, but sometimes our goal is to just get people to “yell across the room” more often. In the virtual world we have to get them habitually using a tool. One way to do this is to make the tool fun. I have some clients that have set up a “Watercooler” channel in Slack, where almost anything goes. It is place to brag about your kid winning an award, a cool recipe you made and loved, posting a funny video of your pet. It is just a place to be yourself and let others see the real you.
2. Some clients are having a daily “game” of sorts. Each day the ScrumMaster sets out a task and the team members show their results. It is always something that is simple so you aren’t taking a ton of time away from work. One is giving prizes to the “overall winner” each week as voted upon by the group. Tasks are things like “Upload a picture of the funniest orange thing in your home” or “Take a picture of a left-handed coffee mug”. It lets people be creative and express themselves. Again, around the theme of letting them be human!
3. Some clients are scheduling watercooler times on Zoom. One has 10:00-10:20 and 2:30-2:50 each day blocked out as an open Zoom for anyone to get on and chat. They have Zoom set up so people can go in and out of breakout rooms for more private conversations if needed. One has created some standard breakout rooms like “Music discussions”, “Sports discussions”, and “Video game discussions”. Again, getting people interacting together.
4. One client simulates “yelling across the room” by having one channel in whatever their collaboration platform is (whether Slack or Teams or whatever) that is deemed the emergency channel. If something comes through that channel it is treated like someone needs help right now. You can ignore discussions in every other channel, but not that one. If a message comes through that channel, someone is drowning and needs to be saved right this minute. The channel is rarely used, but it gets everyone’s attention when it is.
Maybe some of these ideas can help you out. Others of you, please add more ideas!
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I’m going to go grab some popcorn 🍿 and watch what happens here. It will be interesting to see if there are responses to your questions, or more sharing of what is happening. C’mon everyone, chip in here!
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Laura, when I hold trainings for my clients, I am often surprised by how few people really understand how Agile came about in the first place. We have a short (free!) course available with some background. Go to https://agileforall.com/courses and take the “Discovery of Agile” course. I’m pretty sure you will find some interesting nuggets there. You did say you wanted to keep learning, right??? 🙂
– Bob –
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Love it Mark! Some other terms I like to change:
Priority -> Order
Fail Fast -> Learn Fast
xxxx, but -> xxxx, AND
In my experience, those changes really help ScrumMasters and teams be more successful.
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Tommie, while the book Jeff Sutherland wrote has really helped the Scrum community, I’m not so sure I really like the title. Check out this #AgileDailyDose video for why:
