Author: jcdejong

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Five Reasons Why Batman Would Be a Great Scrum Master

Mike Cohn realized that the perfect Scrum Master has been right in front of us for many years: Batman. Batman probably does not want to quit his crime-fighting ways and take the job of being a Scrum Master. But if he’s willing, there are five reasons why Batman would be the ideal Scrum Master.

Read the complete article here: https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/five-reasons-why-batman-would-be-a-great-scrum-master

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Peer coaching with a 2-hour string of Liberating Structures

In this blog post, The Liberators shared the string of Liberating Structures they used for peer coaching sessions after trainings they provided. The focus of the string was to refresh learning goals, to identify personal improvements related to those goals and give and get help in achieving them.

Read the complete post here: https://medium.com/the-liberators/peer-coaching-with-a-2-hour-string-of-liberating-structures-6b5a4ea46808

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Innovation Accounting in Scrum

Innovation Accounting in Scrum

Abstract: In Scrum a Product Owner can be described as a “value maximizer”…but how is value calculated? In this presentation we consider how empiricism ought to underpin any assessment, and at how the discipline of “Innovation Accounting” can challenge predictive value assumptions.

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A list of STAR Interview Questions for Managers

  1. Tell me about a time you had to change your behavior to get things done in an organization or project.
  2. Can give you an example of a situation where you had to motivate your colleague(s) to get something done?
  3. Tell me about a time you had to be creative to solve an issue.
  4. Describe a situation where you preferred to delegate something back to your manager.
  5. Give an example of a project where the goals were not clear and describe how you handled the situation.
  6. Tell me what you did to become a better professional last year.
  7. Tell me about a time when you had to rely on written communication to get your ideas across to your team.
  8. Give an example of how you contributed to an improvement.
  9. Tell me about a situation where you used visuals to explain something complex.
  10. Share an example where you stole an idea and tweaked it become useful for you.
  11. Describe how you apply feedback cycles in your work, and how you shorten them.
  12. Tell me a situation where you were not motivated and how you handled the situation.
  13. Describe a situation in a team, where you as a team had to come to an agreement.
  14. Can you give an example where you had to act not in line with the company/team values?
  15. Describe a situation where you helped someone else to become a better professional.
  16. Tell me about a situation where you helped someone in your team or organization not related to your profession.
  17. Describe an experiment you did at work.
  18. Tell me about a situation where the purpose of the organization was not in line with you as a person.
  19. Give an example of how you made a difference in a meeting.
  20. Describe a situation where you contributed to strengthening the relations within a team.
  21. Describe a situation where you contributed to strengthening the relationships between teams.
  22. Tell me about when you gave a compliment to a team member.
  23. What have you done recently that helped someone be happier in his or her job?
  24. Tell me about the last time you provided feedback to team members.
  25. Give an example of a situation where did management activities.

These questions have been copied from this article: https://management30.com/practice/star-behavioral-interview-questions/

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What are the Values Anyway? The Mark Manson-Inspired Version.

Ask any Agile practitioner these days what Agile values are and he, most likely, will recite you some lines from the Manifesto for Agile Software Development. As him the final line of the said Manifesto and the result might be quite different, but I digress right in the first paragraph.

Ask a Scrum practitioner and he’ll give you 3-4, maybe 5, if he’s real good, values Scrum holds dear.

Next ask a different question, “What ARE the values? What are we talking about here?” And you’ll be lucky if you hear a half-baked off-the-cuff answer. Sometimes it’s just like, “well, values are values, those are what’s valuable.” Duh…

A quite interesting viewpoint and a crisp definition comes from Mark Manson’s “Subtle Art of not Giving a Fuck”. Yeah, ain’t gonna “star” the “u” there.

Read the complete blog post here: https://scrum.courses/2019/04/02/values-giving-f/

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Predicting The Weather: A Weather Forecast Retrospective for Scrum Teams

Using different formats for your Sprint Retrospective is a great way to help a Scrum Team inspect their process through different lenses and perspectives. The Liberators came across the Weather Forecast Retrospective by Barry Heins and shared their experience and (slightly modified) approach here: https://medium.com/the-liberators/predicting-the-weather-a-weather-forecast-retrospective-for-scrum-teams-9bbb02105ea4

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How can you liberate a meeting without using Liberating Structures?

There is enough LS which you can use to make your meeting productive. However, if you have the feeling that they are overused or you are bored with them, think about the five elements and create your structure.

  1. Structuring Invitation
  2. How Space Is Arranged and Materials Needed
  3. How Participation Is Distributed
  4. How Groups Are Configured
  5. The sequence of Steps and Time Allocation

An example of a retrospective with a new team:
Situation: we have a team of 10 colleagues. A developer and I had just started on the team.

STEP 1:
Ask the group to create two teams and give them the following assignment per team:

Team 1: take 10 minutes to think of all the reasons why this team is the worst team ever. after the 10 minutes, try to convince me that I have made a bad choice to join the team.

Team 2: take 10 minutes to think of all the reasons why this team is the most impressive team ever. After 10 minutes, try to convince me that I have made an excellent choice to join this team.

STEP 2:
After both presentations, give the next assignment:

Team 1: take 15 minutes to discuss within your team what actions can be made to keep the most positive things that team 2 had mentioned.

Team 2: Take 15 minutes to think of actions we can take to dismiss some of the reasons that team 1 had mentioned.

STEP 3:
After both presentations, ask each one in the group to think about the actions mentioned in Step 3 and take five minutes individually to find out how they can contribute to making those actions a success. You can also participate in this. We then share our contributions. Asked them to memorize their contributions, and get back to them in a few sprints.

The original post from Ziryan Salayi can be found here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-can-you-liberate-meeting-without-using-liberating-ziryan-salayi/