Unravelling an Agile Team's Struggle with Overcommitment, And The Inevitable Consequences | Drew Craig
01/16/24 • 14 min
Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes.
In this episode, Drew delves into the common pitfall of teams overloading their backlog, leading to failed sprints and destroyed team morale. The challenge lies in helping teams realize the importance of realistic commitments. Drew suggests analyzing data, considering historical averages, and aligning discussions with product goals and roadmaps. Addressing the fear of reducing commitments due to leadership pressure, he emphasizes the need to collaborate with leadership and focus on data-driven decision-making.
Featured Book Of The Week: Multipliers, by Liz WisemanIn this episode, Drew shares pivotal books shaping his career as a Scrum Master. "Drive" by Dan Pink offers clarity with easy-to-understand insights about motivation, grounding practitioners in their roles. Drew appreciates its ability to simplify complex concepts. "Multipliers" by Liz Wiseman provides insights on strengthening teams and shifting from doing to enabling. Drew's takeaway involves pondering, "How can I be a multiplier?"
[IMAGE HERE] Do you wish you had decades of experience? Learn from the Best Scrum Masters In The World, Today! The Tips from the Trenches - Scrum Master edition audiobook includes hours of audio interviews with SM’s that have decades of experience: from Mike Cohn to Linda Rising, Christopher Avery, and many more. Super-experienced Scrum Masters share their hard-earned lessons with you. Learn those today, make your teams awesome!
About Drew Craig
Drew calls himself an Agile Coach for humans; inspiring growth for individuals, teams, and systems to be better together. In all of his roles, the connection has been the people. He is passionate about establishing sustainable and simple processes, techniques, or insights as mechanisms toward self-sufficient and empowered systems.
You can link with Drew Craig on LinkedIn and connect with Drew Craig on Twitter.
Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes.
In this episode, Drew delves into the common pitfall of teams overloading their backlog, leading to failed sprints and destroyed team morale. The challenge lies in helping teams realize the importance of realistic commitments. Drew suggests analyzing data, considering historical averages, and aligning discussions with product goals and roadmaps. Addressing the fear of reducing commitments due to leadership pressure, he emphasizes the need to collaborate with leadership and focus on data-driven decision-making.
Featured Book Of The Week: Multipliers, by Liz WisemanIn this episode, Drew shares pivotal books shaping his career as a Scrum Master. "Drive" by Dan Pink offers clarity with easy-to-understand insights about motivation, grounding practitioners in their roles. Drew appreciates its ability to simplify complex concepts. "Multipliers" by Liz Wiseman provides insights on strengthening teams and shifting from doing to enabling. Drew's takeaway involves pondering, "How can I be a multiplier?"
[IMAGE HERE] Do you wish you had decades of experience? Learn from the Best Scrum Masters In The World, Today! The Tips from the Trenches - Scrum Master edition audiobook includes hours of audio interviews with SM’s that have decades of experience: from Mike Cohn to Linda Rising, Christopher Avery, and many more. Super-experienced Scrum Masters share their hard-earned lessons with you. Learn those today, make your teams awesome!
About Drew Craig
Drew calls himself an Agile Coach for humans; inspiring growth for individuals, teams, and systems to be better together. In all of his roles, the connection has been the people. He is passionate about establishing sustainable and simple processes, techniques, or insights as mechanisms toward self-sufficient and empowered systems.
You can link with Drew Craig on LinkedIn and connect with Drew Craig on Twitter.
Previous Episode
Empowerment Struggles, The Unintended Consequences of Scrum Masters Focusing On Process Implementation | Drew Craig
Drew Craig: Empowerment Struggles, The Unintended Consequences of Scrum Masters Focusing On Process Implementation
Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes.
In this episode, we discuss a story of how sometimes, the process focus for Scrum Masters can lead to trouble. Focused on solving problems through processes, Drew introduced a rigid framework to a new digital marketing team without understanding their unique, team-specific challenges. Unintentionally disempowering the team, Drew realized the need for a reset. This highlights the importance of fostering open communication and understanding a team’s context on their own terms.
[IMAGE HERE] Recovering from failure, or difficult moments is a critical skill for Scrum Masters. Not only because of us, but also because the teams, and stakeholders we work with will also face these moments! We need inspiring stories to help them, and ourselves! The Bungsu Story, is an inspiring story by Marcus Hammarberg which shows how a Coach can help organizations recover even from the most disastrous situations! Learn how Marcus helped The Bungsu, a hospital in Indonesia, recover from near-bankruptcy, twice! Using Lean and Agile methods to rebuild an organization and a team! An inspiring story you need to know about! Buy the book on Amazon: The Bungsu Story - How Lean and Kanban Saved a Small Hospital in Indonesia. Twice. and Can Help You Reshape Work in Your Company.
About Drew Craig
Drew calls himself an Agile Coach for humans; inspiring growth for individuals, teams, and systems to be better together. In all of his roles, the connection has been the people. He is passionate about establishing sustainable and simple processes, techniques, or insights as mechanisms toward self-sufficient and empowered systems.
You can link with Drew Craig on LinkedIn and connect with Drew Craig on Twitter.
Next Episode
Adapt and Evolve, Navigating Change in Agile Digital Marketing | Drew Craig
Drew Craig: Adapt and Evolve, Navigating Change in Agile Digital Marketing
Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes.
In this episode, Drew shares insights on leading change in a non-technical domain, specifically digital marketing transformation. Recognizing the mismatch in training materials, he advocates tailoring content to the industry's needs. Drew emphasizes the importance of adapting roles, seating layouts, and collaborating with local process teams to align with agile principles. Working closely with leadership, he underscores the significance of feedback loops for refining strategies. The episode explores how a system-wide transformation, including process owners, led to accelerated delivery cycles.
[IMAGE HERE] As Scrum Master we work with change continuously! Do you have your own change framework that provides the guidance, and queues you need when working with change? The Lean Change Management framework is a fully defined, lean-startup inspired change framework that can be used as the backbone of any change process! You can buy Lean Change Management the book at Amazon. Also available in French, Spanish, German and Portuguese.
About Drew Craig
Drew calls himself an Agile Coach for humans; inspiring growth for individuals, teams, and systems to be better together. In all of his roles, the connection has been the people. He is passionate about establishing sustainable and simple processes, techniques, or insights as mechanisms toward self-sufficient and empowered systems.
You can link with Drew Craig on LinkedIn and connect with Drew Craig on Twitter.
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