The Liberators Podcast

When we started as #ScrumMaster, the thing that scared us the most was how to translate those lofty ideals into actual down-to-earth behavior. While it sounded great that #Scrum is about #empiricism”, we had no idea what that should look like with our teams, how we should behave to support that and how flexible we could be with the framework of Scrum.

In this episode of our #podcast, we collected five practical insights that we think every starting Scrum Master should know, and that are inspired by mistakes I made over the years. If anything, we wish we would’ve realized these when we started. For this episode, we also asked our growing community of experienced Scrum practitioners on Discord for help.

• A transcript for this episode is available here (Medium account required, unfortunately):
• Here are some helpful exercise materials for starting Scrum Teams
• We designed a bunch of do-it-yourself workshops to start Scrum Master communities in your own area or organization

Enjoy!

Support the show

We're building Columinity to help teams improve continuously based on scientific insights:
https://columinity.com

Check out our webshop for tons of powerful exercises and workshops to run with your team(s):
https://shop.theliberators.com

The music for episodes 91 and onward was written and produced for us by Basanite. The music for episodes 1-90 was acquired through Yummy Sounds. Post-production by Jasper Huiskamp.

Even when we don't want to admit it, the Covid-19 pandemic changed how we work. Even after the pandemic ends, it is likely that many Scrum Teams will continue to work from home. Or at least, more often than before the pandemic hit.

What is the impact of working from home on productivity and personal well-being? How can organizations support it well? And what can Scrum Masters do?

We invited Daniel Russo, assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science from the University of Aalborg to talk about his research that was funded by the Carlsberg foundation. During the pandemic, he and three colleagues had a unique opportunity to follow a group of developers during the early months of the pandemic. Their research gives us compelling insights into how working from home impacts productivity and well-being - often in surprising ways. It also gives us a handle on what we can do to support developers that work from home during pandemics, and hopefully also outside of pandemics.

Read the entire study online here:
https://www.danielrusso.org/files/2021EMSE_RemoteWork.pdf

Support the show

We're building Columinity to help teams improve continuously based on scientific insights:
https://columinity.com

Check out our webshop for tons of powerful exercises and workshops to run with your team(s):
https://shop.theliberators.com

The music for episodes 91 and onward was written and produced for us by Basanite. The music for episodes 1-90 was acquired through Yummy Sounds. Post-production by Jasper Huiskamp.

This episode is all about what is impossible when you work with Scrum. Deliver a new and working version of the product every Sprint? Impossible! Give a Product Owner mandate over how to spend the product budget? Impossible! Have only one Product Owner for several Scrum Teams? Impossible!

But is it really impossible?

In this episode we look at how self-limiting beliefs can impede potential improvements. And how those beliefs tend to spread in organizations. At the same time, we offer you an alternative approach to investigate with your team where these beliefs came from. Or which decisions were made somewhere in the past that makes it seem impossible today.

Enjoy!

A transcript of this episode is available here.

Support the show

We're building Columinity to help teams improve continuously based on scientific insights:
https://columinity.com

Check out our webshop for tons of powerful exercises and workshops to run with your team(s):
https://shop.theliberators.com

The music for episodes 91 and onward was written and produced for us by Basanite. The music for episodes 1-90 was acquired through Yummy Sounds. Post-production by Jasper Huiskamp.

This episode is all about that dreaded question: "When is it done and what will it cost?". Its also one of the most natural questions for customers and managers to ask. After all, they're either investing their own money or they will be held accountable when the product fails to return on its investment.

So what can you do? In this episode, we draw from personal experience and what - after many experiments - worked for us. Will you play along in "risk management theater"? Or will you offer your customers and other stakeholders an approach that has unique benefits that they don't otherwise have? 

The blogpost this episode is based on can be found here (a Medium account is required):
https://medium.com/the-liberators/so-when-will-it-be-done-and-how-much-will-it-cost-a49d14c61250

An older - and admittedly rougher - version of the post is also available here:
https://medium.com/the-liberators/the-agile-response-to-how-much-will-it-cost-and-when-will-it-be-done-86d907573871

You can also support at patreon.com/liberators.

Support the show

We're building Columinity to help teams improve continuously based on scientific insights:
https://columinity.com

Check out our webshop for tons of powerful exercises and workshops to run with your team(s):
https://shop.theliberators.com

The music for episodes 91 and onward was written and produced for us by Basanite. The music for episodes 1-90 was acquired through Yummy Sounds. Post-production by Jasper Huiskamp.

We often talk about how "Zombie Scrum" lacks frequently releases. Teams are not shipping fast. And while people often easily recognize this in their own team, what does it actually look like on the other side?

In this episode, we take a close look at shipping fast. Why is it important? And how can it be turned into the competitive advantage - or asset - that it really is? We also offer some of the strategies that healthy Scrum Teams use to make releases as effortless as possible, and reduce the stress and pressure that often accompanies "big bang releases".

This episode draws from material in the Zombie Scrum Survival Guide. Get your copy here:
https://zombiescrum.org

You can also find a whole bunch of do-it-yourself workshops (some free, some for a small price) to improve your Scrum here:
https://shop.theliberators.com/collections/do-it-yourself-workshops-meetups-and-strings/Scrum

Support the show

We're building Columinity to help teams improve continuously based on scientific insights:
https://columinity.com

Check out our webshop for tons of powerful exercises and workshops to run with your team(s):
https://shop.theliberators.com

The music for episodes 91 and onward was written and produced for us by Basanite. The music for episodes 1-90 was acquired through Yummy Sounds. Post-production by Jasper Huiskamp.

The Scrum framework exists to deliver value to stakeholders sooner. Sounds good, right? But when is something “valuable”? For something that seems so central to Scrum, it is remarkably hard for many Scrum Teams to determine what the value of the work on their Product Backlog actually us.

In this episode, we offer a more fine-grained approach to understand what “value” means to your product and the items on your Product Backlog, and to start a conversation around that with your team and its stakeholders.

You can read a transcript for this episode here.

Or download a (free) poster of the five types here (PDF).

Or get a fully-prepared string of Liberating Structures to start a conversation around value, and the five types of value, with your team and stakeholders.

Support the show

We're building Columinity to help teams improve continuously based on scientific insights:
https://columinity.com

Check out our webshop for tons of powerful exercises and workshops to run with your team(s):
https://shop.theliberators.com

The music for episodes 91 and onward was written and produced for us by Basanite. The music for episodes 1-90 was acquired through Yummy Sounds. Post-production by Jasper Huiskamp.

How do you know that you're actually delivering value to your stakeholders? That you're responsive to their needs? And that the quality of your work is what they expect?

This episode is all about value and stakeholders. We introduce a new feature for the Scrum Team Survey that allows team invite their stakeholders for their perspective. And we share a great way to involve your stakeholders in the creation of product strategies.

Support the show

We're building Columinity to help teams improve continuously based on scientific insights:
https://columinity.com

Check out our webshop for tons of powerful exercises and workshops to run with your team(s):
https://shop.theliberators.com

The music for episodes 91 and onward was written and produced for us by Basanite. The music for episodes 1-90 was acquired through Yummy Sounds. Post-production by Jasper Huiskamp.

In today's episode, we make the connection between the Scrum Framework and continuous improvement. Few Scrum Teams start from a position where everything works smoothly. Often, you initially don't know very well who your stakeholders are, you don't have access to them or you can't release as frequently as you'd want to. So there's a lot to improve and to learn. And if that doesn't happen, you're bound to get stuck in deep Zombie Scrum.

At the same time we see many organizations engage in "Agile Transitions" that promise to change from one state (e.g. waterfall-based development) to another (e.g. Agile) in a short amount of time. But an exploration of organizations that have undergone such transitions shows that stakeholders are still not involved, releases still happen very infrequently and little value is delivered to stakeholders.

So we draw from two helpful perspectives - organizational learning by Chris Argyris and the force field model by Kurt Lewin - to understand how continuous improvement is vitally important to effective Scrum - and change in general - and unlikely to be rushed on by "Agile Transitions" and "mindset changes".

We apologize for the sound quality here and there. The gain of our microphone was a bit too high, which means that there are a few cracks here and there. The good news is that we've learned to reduce the gain now for the next recording :)

Support the show

We're building Columinity to help teams improve continuously based on scientific insights:
https://columinity.com

Check out our webshop for tons of powerful exercises and workshops to run with your team(s):
https://shop.theliberators.com

The music for episodes 91 and onward was written and produced for us by Basanite. The music for episodes 1-90 was acquired through Yummy Sounds. Post-production by Jasper Huiskamp.

Paul Klipp and Justyna Pindel recently reviewed our new book "The Zombie Scrum Survival Guide". They also graciously invited us to talk about our book with them. The ensuing conversation was so nice, that we asked them if we could also publish it as part of our podcast.

So here it is :) In it, we talk about how we've seen Zombie Scrum happen around us, how we wrote the book to help Scrum Teams and how our industry sometimes contributes to Zombie Scrum because it is so strongly focused on certificates.

Follow the Agile Book Club here:
https://www.agilebook.club/

Get your copy of the book here:
https://zombiescrum.org

Or diagnose your team for free here:
https://survey.zombiescrum.org

Support the show

We're building Columinity to help teams improve continuously based on scientific insights:
https://columinity.com

Check out our webshop for tons of powerful exercises and workshops to run with your team(s):
https://shop.theliberators.com

The music for episodes 91 and onward was written and produced for us by Basanite. The music for episodes 1-90 was acquired through Yummy Sounds. Post-production by Jasper Huiskamp.

We often talk about "resistance", and how to overcome it in others. But ironically, we often create resistance ourselves.

In this episode of our podcast, Christiaan shares one of his biggest lessons about change and resistance. With this in mind, we also explore how group dynamics helps us explain how we can easily create and amplify resistance through our own behavior.

If you like this podcast, and our content, please consider supporting us:
https://patreon.com/liberators

Support the show

We're building Columinity to help teams improve continuously based on scientific insights:
https://columinity.com

Check out our webshop for tons of powerful exercises and workshops to run with your team(s):
https://shop.theliberators.com

The music for episodes 91 and onward was written and produced for us by Basanite. The music for episodes 1-90 was acquired through Yummy Sounds. Post-production by Jasper Huiskamp.