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.

Sprint Goals and Sprint Planning with Chris Li

Chris Li is back for a conversation about Sprint Goals. While Chris and I both agree they are critical, we approach creating them very differently. If you are trying to get your head around when and how to create a Sprint Goal that can work for your team, you'll get plenty of ideas from this conversation.

Video Version

Audio Version

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.

Sprint Capacity Calculator 2.0

I've updated the Sprint Capacity Calculator and I'll be posting a video on how to use it shortly. In the meantime, you can download it here.

I'm also going to be doing a demo of it during my "Getting Better at Sprint Planning" webinar which is being hosted by the Bureau of Digital today (6/25/20) at 2PM. If you'd like to attend, click here.

Melissa Watts - Tips for ScrumMasters

Over the past two years, Melissa Watts, who is a Technical Project Manager at Major League Baseball, has been making her bones as a ScrumMaster. She and her team work  in a very complex environment, tightly coupled with external and legacy systems, supporting a wide range of platforms, in which downtime is not really an option.

In this episode of the Reluctant Agilist, Melissa shares some of her experiences over the past two years, offers advice for those dealing with similar challenges and explains why cat meme's are so very critical to her survival.

Making the Case for the Role of Agile Project Manager

For a long time now I have held strongly to the opinion that there is no such thing as an Agile Project Manager. There are Project Managers and there are ScrumMasters but the value systems they serve are different and at odds.  I am comfortable playing either role, but I cannot do them both at once. (That is based on personal experience as well as observation.)

Mike Anderson gave a presentation at a PMI event in New York where he made the case for the role of Agile Project Manager as a next evolutionary step. Mike makes a compelling argument and he completely changed my opinion on the topic. I think this is an important conversation that I hope will continue to grow.

You can check out the interview here. (And after you listen, please post comments - I'd love to hear people's thoughts on this topic.)

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

How Buzzwords and Jargon Impact Your Team w/ Tyler Grant

I have a new episode of The Reluctant Agilist that features Tyler Grant in a conversation on how using buzzwords and jargon can negatively impact your team members and their ability to deliver.

You can find the podcast on my Reluctant Agilist blog on ProjectManagement.com

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

Tracking Scrum Master Performance w/ Troy Lightfoot

Troy Lightfoot joins Dave Prior to respond to a recurring student question “How can I track the performance of a ScrumMaster using metrics which are different form the ones I use to track the performance of the team?” Using the LeanAgile Intelligence tool he co-authored, Troy walks Dave through a few options that can be used to collect data that could provide clarity on performance of an individual ScrumMaster.

For more information on LeanAgile Intelligence: https://www.leanagileintelligence.com/
You can follow Troy Lightfoot on Twitter at https://twitter.com/g4stroy
You can follow Dave Prior on Twitter at https://twitter.com/mrsungo

Tips for New ScrumMasters with Richard Cheng

You’ve taken CSM Training and passed the Exam. Now what?
In this podcast Certified Scrum Trainers Richard Cheng and Dave Prior share their thoughts on most important things that Certified Scrum Master students can do to be successful Scrum Masters once they have completed the training and passed the CSM Assessment Exam. The podcast includes an exploration of why each of the recommendations is critical to making Scrum work and both Richard and Dave share examples from their experiences in the field working with teams who did, and did not have these practices in play.


Links Mentioned in the Podcast
Geoffrey Moore Vision Statement https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/05/09/product-vision/
Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore http://amzn.to/2h3ruRS
Roman Pichler’s website (where you can find the tools we mentioned) http://www.romanpichler.com
Roman Pichler’s books https://www.amazon.com/Roman-Pichler/e/B00359XCV2/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1482305119&sr=8-1

Contact Info
Richard Cheng
Works for Excella Consulting https://www.excella.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/RichardKCheng
Email: richard.cheng@excella.com


Dave Prior
Works for LeadingAgile http://www.leadingagile.com
Twitter https://twitter.com/mrsungo
Email: mrsungo@gmail.com
Blog: http://drunkenpm.blogspot.com

Music
The music featured in the podcast was downloaded from The Free Music Archive http://freemusicarchive.org
Intro Song
Cash Rules by Ari de Niro. For more info: http://www.needledrop.co/wp/artists/ari-de-niro/ or http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ari_de_Niro/
Outro Song
Cherry Skies  - The New Mystical Troubadours. Find them here: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/The_New_Mystikal_Troubadours/

Agilistocrats Episode 4 Giant Mistakes New ScrumMaster's Take

Episode 4 of The Agilistocrats!

Click here to go straight to the podcast

Richard, Dhaval and Dave discuss the biggest mistakes they each made when starting out as a Scrum Masters and what they learned from those mistakes.

Agilistocrats Episode 3 - How Do I Become A Really Good ScrumMaster

Click here to go straight to the podcast

How Do I Become A Really Good Scrum Master?

In Episode 3 of The Agilistocrats, Dhaval Panchal, Richard Cheng and Dave Prior discuss how you can go from being a good Scrum Master to a great Scrum Master.