Advanced Certified Scrum Product Owner

I am VERY happy to be able to share that I am now offering Advanced Certified Scrum Product Owner classes.  If you are a CSPO and are looking for a way to raise your game or demonstrate an advanced level of proficiency in your craft, Advanced CSPO is a great way to do that. The course is two full days of highly interactive group work that will help you raise your PO game to a new level.

You can find my upcoming A-CSPO classes here.

And you can find ALL my upcoming classes and workshops here.

Advice for a Wayward Scrum Master with Jeff Howey

Jeff Howey is back to help me out with a sort of a case study that came from a former student. The story involves a Scrum Master who seems to have seriously lost their way... or their copy of the Scrum Guide, or their understanding of servant leadership. Jeff and unpack the variety of issues and steps that could be taken to reset the role.

You can check out the podcast here.

Can AI Replace a Scrum Master? with Zach Stone

Zach Stone joins me to explore how AI is going to impact the work of the Scrum Master and Scrum Team Members. 

• Will the SM be replaced? 
• What parts of the work can be offloaded onto AI? 
• What can a Scrum Team member do to get ready for AI? 
• Once AI fully arrives... what the hell am I going to do all day?

You can listen to the podcast here.

The transcript is here.

Getting Your First Scrum Master Job with Richard Cheng

So you’ve made the decision that you want to get a job as a Scrum Master. Maybe you’re working on an agile team and want to switch roles, or maybe you’re moving from a field where agile has no presence. If you don’t already have experience working in an environment that has adopted Scrum, then the big question is… how do you land the gig.

In this episode of the podcast my good friend Richard Cheng joins me to talk about how to get started working as a Scrum Master - even when you don't have any experience working in Agile.

You can find the podcast here.

What do you do after certification? w Jeff Howey

Jeff Howey joins me to talk about what to do after you get CSM or CSPO Certification? How do you get started using what you learned? This can be especially challenging when you don't have an opportunity at work to test out the things covered in your Scrum Training class. 

During this interview, we cover that and more!

You can find the interview here.

Leading Teams In Crisis with Zach Stone

What’s it like to be a remote Scrum Master for a team in Ukraine whose town is being attacked by Russia? Zach Stone shares stories about serving as a Scrum Master for teams in crisis as well as stories about how the pandemic led him to completely rethink his approach to how to best serve his team as a Scrum Master. 

You can find the interview here.

Career Refactoring - Find the Gig that Sparks Joy w/ Luis Garcia

The pandemic has caused many of us to reassess how we spend our days. After years of climbing to the top of the ladder from his start as a Project Manager, Luis Garcia realized he was missing the thing about work that he loved most - working with teams to build products that impact the lives of others. This interview is about how Luis chose to return to the gig that brings him the most joy.

You can find the interview here.

Do We Actually Need A Scrum Master?

In a class recently, a student asked a question that caught me by surprise. He asked if Scrum Master was a necessary role. If the team was fully engaged in approaching the work with an Agile mindset, inspecting, and adapting from one Sprint to the next both with respect to the deliverable AND the way they work together, AND they were self-organizing, then why would they need a Scrum Master? And, if management was imposing a Scrum Master on a team that was functioning this way, wouldn’t that indicate a lack to trust in the team?

These are good questions, and while we discussed the topic during class, I found myself returning to it over and over. What I love about this question is that even though I have an answer to it in my head, the asking the question challenged that. 

In this episode of the podcast, I’m joined by the person who asked the question, Kyle Macey, who works as a Senior Backend Engineer at Chow Now. And, because I wanted to do my best to keep my bias in check during the conversation, I asked a friend, Bjorn Jensen, if he’d be willing to lead the discussion. Bjorn and I volunteer for the Scrum Alliance TAC together. He’s not only a CST with a background in development, Bjorn has a level of openness and calmness that I only wish I could achieve.

drunkenpmradio · Do We Really Need A Scrum Master?

Contacting Kyle Macey

• Twitter:  https://twitter.com/itskylemacey
• Web: https://kylemacey.com/

Contacting Bjorn Jensen

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/mirouhh
• Web: https://jensen-und-komplizen.de/
• Email: mail@jensen.coach

Making Your Non-Agile Experience Count w/ Merchi Reyes

Q: How do I get a job as a Project Manager, Product Owner, or ScrumMaster if I have no experience?

or more specifically....

Q: How do you go from Event Promoter to DJay to Tree Services worker to working at a consulting agency as a ScrumMaster/Product Owner?

Answer... listen to this fascinating interview with Merchi Reyes to find out.

When they ask you to be ScrumMaster AND Product Owner...

In every class I teach, there are people who tasked with being ScrumMaster AND Product Owner at the same time for one team working on one product. 

I have very strong feelings about this, and realizing that my responses to this situation are maybe not so flexible and not practical for everyone, I reached out on the Agile Uprising Discord channel if there were people who had succeeded in being SM and PO at the same time, AND if they would be willing to join me for a podcast and share some of their experiences around making the SM/PO gig work. 

This episode of the podcast features Andrew Leff, Chris Murman, and Mike Caddell. Over the course of the interview, we discuss the reasons why trying to be SM and PO at the same time is not advised, ways they found to survive it, and it some cases, actually make it work well.

You can find the podcast here.

Understanding Trauma w/ Brandon Brown

Regardless of whether you are a traditional PM or you are working in Agile, topics like emotional intelligence, creating safety and self-care are part of the current conversation about how we approach our work. This podcast presents another side of that discussion and focuses on how different experiences and events result in trauma that can leave lasting scars that we carry with us as we interact with others. Becoming more aware of different types of trauma, how it shows up in you as well as others, will help you become a more valuable and effective leader for your teams and organizations.

You can find the interview here - on The Reluctant Agilist

The Art of Mentoring with Brandon Brown

One of the things a Project Manager and a ScrumMaster have in common is that at times, they are both called upon to act as a coach and act as a mentor. For anyone in a leadership role, creating clarity around the difference between the two can be challenging. And even for seasoned pros, knowing when to act as a mentor and when to act as a coach is not always easy.

In this Reluctant Agilist podcast I had the chance to interview Brandon Brown, who has spent his career mentoring others. His personal mission, in his words, is "creating, ensuring and sustaining safe places for young people to flourish and ultimately replace me." During the interview Brandon and I discuss what mentoring is and how it is different from coaching, what it takes to be a mentor and a mentee, and why being a mentor is not the right choice for everyone.

You can find the podcast here: https://www.projectmanagement.com/blog-post/54859/The-Art-of-Mentoring-with-Brandon-Brown

Sprint Planning - How it works.. Why it works

This is a SoundNotes podcast that we just put up on LeadingAgile. The intent is to provide a basic foundational explanation of what Sprint Planning is, why it is so important, how it works, etc. (And why no one should be trying to do it before the Sprint starts.)

Click here to check it out

Meet Chief Scrum Master Melissa Boggs!

I had the opportunity to interview the Scrum Alliance's new Chief Scrum Master, Melissa Boggs. If you'd like to learn more about Melissa, her background and what it is like to be the first Chief Scrum Master at one of the world's largest Agile organizations, you can find it here.

How to Stop Treating People as Resources w/ Mika Trottier

If you'd prefer an audio version of the podcast, you can find it here.

In this interview, Mika Trottier and I talk through a subtle but significant shift that has to occur in the mindset of a traditional PM who is trying to adopt an Agile mindset. How do you flip that switch in your brain that thinks of the people who do work as resources and make them start thinking of them as people?

During the conversation, Mika and I also dig into some of the challenges facing introverts who become project managers and some of the coping mechanisms that have aided each of us.

If you’d like to get in touch with Mika, you can reach her via LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mika-trottier-848a7525/

Jurgen Appelo - How to Measure ScrumMaster Performance

One of the questions I have been asked with increasing frequency in the Certified Scrum Master and Certified Scrum Product Owner classes I teach is:

How do we measure the effectiveness of the ScrumMaster?

When this question is asked what people are often looking or is a way to evaluate ScrumMaster performance (separate from the Product Owner and the Developers). This is not an easy thing to do.

Whenever I have brought up this question with other folks who teach or coach Agile teams, the conversation always finds it way back to Jurgen Appelo’s work. A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to interview Jurgen on his new project AgilityScales. After the interview Jurgen was kind enough to let me also ask him the question about ScrumMaster performance.


Jurgen is an entrepreneur and management thought leader who focuses his work on helping organizations change how they approach work management in order to support greater business agility.  He is the CEO of Happy Melly,   co-founder of the Agile Lean Europe  network and the author of a number of books including “Managing for Happiness”

His latest project AgilityScales is focused on inventing the future of organizational Agility. You can learn more about it by checking out the Agility Scales website or by watching the interview we did on the topic.

If you’d like to lean more about Jurgen, here are some links to check out.

• Web: http://jurgenappelo.com/
• AgilityScales: https://www.agilityscales.com
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/jurgenappelo
• Medium: https://medium.com/@jurgenappelo
• Amazon: http://amzn.to/2hZD5Vb