The Agile Coach Podcast

Today, we feature the best moments of our conversation with Richard Seroter, Director of Developer Relations and Outbound Product Management at Google Cloud. He discusses what it means to be a product owner and how to work with engineers, end users, and everyone in between.

Richard shares how to exercise leadership as a product owner and work with stakeholders not as a boss but as a member of the team. He also talks about using data points to prioritize feature decisions, instilling self-governance and accountability, and promoting continuous improvement in the team.

HIGHLIGHT QUOTES

A product owner leads through influence - Richard: "A good product owner leads through influence. They don't have direct authority. They don't have a management staff of people. The engineers don't report to them. But you are leading often by showing that you have their back. And, for me again, that was a very underrated aspect that if you're a good product owner, the engineers think you are covering for them in a good way."

Don't procrastinate and always ship at the end of each release - Richard: "I don't think you're going to have a good time if you don't force your team to ship after the end of each release, each sprint, because if you don't ship, what's really easy to do? Let's just roll it into the next one. If you have that failsafe, you're going to use it versus like nope, we ship at the end of each release."

Get to know Richard and what he’s up to:

• About Richard
• Twitter
• Website

Connect with Vivek and find out more about what he’s up to:

• About Vivek
• About The Agile Coach
• Agile Coach Website

If you enjoy The Agile Coach and are interested in learning more, you can check us out at the link below:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-agile-coach-llc

A TEAM THAT GROWS TOGETHER, STAYS TOGETHER

In this special episode of The Agile Coach, Pabitra goes solo to discuss the 5 stages of team development. As a scrum master, it is very important to be intact with your team and Pabitra is here to help you. Tune in to find out which stage is most crucial, and how you can get more ideas and feedback from your team.

AGILE HIGHLIGHTS

• The 5 Stages Of Teams
• The Forming Stage
• The Storming Stage
• The Norming Stage
• The Performing Stage
• The Adjourning Stage

AGILE MOMENTS

Pabitra - The most crucial stage of a team

“Second is storming stage two of the five and it's considered the most critical and also the most difficult stage to go through. It can be riddled with conflicts such as individual personalities and working styles really clashing within the team.”

Pabitra - Empower your team and let them be heard

“Instead of thinking you have to have all the answers and give it to them, empower them to come up with your own answers, and do it as a team to facilitate those conversations. That way the team feels like they're being heard. And they feel like they can come and share their ideas and feedback.”

Connect with Vivek & Pabitra and find out more about what he’s up to:

• About Vivek
• About Pabitra
• About The Agile Coach
• Agile Coach Website

If you enjoy The Agile Coach and are interested in learning more, you can check us out at the link below:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-agile-coach-llc

HIGHLIGHTS

• Jess’ definition of Networking
• How Jess got her skill in networking
• Why networking is powerful
• Navigating job seekers and recruiters in networking
• Desperation vs. Urgency
• Best practices for job seekers can network
• Best approaches in Jess’ experience in recruitment
• Working on limiting beliefs and self doubt
• Dealing with imposter syndrome
• Recommended habits for people in the job market

QUOTES

Jess: “But I think today, you know, if we really look at the word networking, and how I see it is really just making connections with people, connecting other human beings, learning about them, sharing your own experiences, you could be networking all the time.”

Jess: “I think networking is powerful, because you never know who's going to open what door”

Jess: “I really love the magic and the idea of like, wow, you never know what's gonna happen. You never know what piece of information this person could give you that could shift your whole path or your whole world”

Vivek: “The world is so vast, there's so many interesting people, there's so many interesting things.”

Jess: “Show up in curiosity, say, Hey, I'm really interested in the work that you're doing. I'm really curious to know about what your day to day has been like, you know, what thoughts are on working for this company? Being curious works, because people want to share about their experience”

Jess: “What's happening in your mind is going to affect how you show up, right? And how you up is going to affect the results that you get. So if you're reaching out to people with this super needy, desperate energy, you're going to get a different result than if you are standing in your power and saying, I know I offer value, right. And I'm curious and open to learning, that's going to get a different response. So I would say be aware of what's happening in your mind, get curious about the dialogue that you have with yourself, that's a good place to start, looking at literally what are your thoughts saying to you, is kind of where you could start diagnosing where you're at shift from there.”

Vivek: “Most of the recruiters or hiring managers, like they hire people, because they want to solve a problem, they have a vacancy, they don't really hire because they're nice people, and they want to give me an opportunity.”

Jess: “I will have limiting beliefs my whole life, right? They're gonna, they're gonna change and they're gonna be there. And that's okay. We can still be successful. Even with them there, I guess, is a message that I would want people to know, too, right. Like, think of all the things that you have achieved, even when you were feeling like not 100% Confident? Yeah. Once they were like, Jess, you feel like crap. And look what you've created in that feeling. Imagine what you could create, if you elevate out of this, right?”

Jess: “The first thing (habits) that comes to mind is self care. We can totally burn ourselves out, especially when it comes to job searching.”

Jess: “Networking is really powerful. These people have the power to like when you get in connection with people, they can give you feedback on your resume. They can tell you what to expect in the interview process. They can refer you to their companies, which is really powerful if you're making a transition.”

Learn more about Jess in the link below:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesssmithcoaching/
• Email: [email protected]
• Website: jesssmithcoaching.com

HIGHLIGHTS

• Working as a scrum master in Mayo Clinic and acquiring an Agile mindset
• Empower your team by not making them excessively reliant on you
• Learn how to ask the right questions, then ask some more
• How to create transparency in your team
• Working with leader to develop an agile mindset
• Handling a difficult member in the team
• What is the biggest hurdle to success?
• Good leadership is largely about building good rapport with co-workers
• How to be an effective facilitator
• Don't be afraid to change things up if you're not achieving the desired outcome
• How to make retrospectives fun, engaging, and productive

QUOTES

Laxmi: "I don't find myself needing to jump in to fix things for my team. In the past, when I work with teams, I used to find myself in a situation that I'm sure a lot of scrum masters out there have felt this way at some point in their careers, where in the process of being helpful, you kinda create this need for your team to become excessively reliant on you."

Laxmi: "Allow the team to learn by doing something poorly. Let them have a bad daily scrum. We humans, I think, learn when we make mistakes. That's how I learn."

Laxmi: "First, it's really helping the team understand what we're tying to get out of by visualizing our work. What is the reason behind transparency."

Pabitra: "So it's not, you're not shoving and pushing, you're not a dictator. You're not saying, hey, like do this or do that. But you're really helping them come up with your own like ways in a way and saying, Hey, you know, I see like what you're doing here and that provides value, but here is like also by not having this in place, there's this here's what's causing us or here's the problem that's causing."

Laxmi: You really want to build out a one-to-one relationship and coach them a little to find out what is getting in the way of them being a better team member, right. What is that internal dialogue? And the biggest thing is you have to be open to the experiences of that person, without any judgment."

Laxmi: "I firmly believe our style and personality obviously plays an important role in our ability to effectively facilitate. However, as a scrum master, you shouldn't just subscribe to one way of facilitating team events. Yeah. So just like, you know, you're advocating to the team that, Hey, there is more than one way to achieve the same outcome. You also have to believe that there is more than one way to hold, for example, a daily scrum. If your team is still asking the same three questions, what did I work on yesterday, What am I working on today? What is progressing in my work? Then I believe you're just going through the motions and most likely, so is your team."

Laxmi: "As a facilitator, you have to create an environment for the team to perform at their best. And if you're not experimenting with your technique and, you know, doing what's necessary to provide, the setting that's needed, where the team can reflect, they can discuss and have fun, I don't think you're growing as a scrum master or caring enough to bring them, bring the group together."

Learn more about Laxmi in the link below:

• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laxmi-khanal-921687100/

HIGHLIGHTS

• A lifetime of learning
• What is Kanban?
• The Kanban Iceberg: it's not just about sign cards
• Explaining Flow
• What does a flow manager do?
• Measuring Cumulative Flow Diagram (CFD)
• The Agile Manifesto
• How to coach a team on XP (Extreme Programming)
• On Service Delivery Review
• Measuring outcome vs output

QUOTES

Matt: "It's been really nice to see how different people are doing things and learning from other people and different places and pick up bits and pieces. For me, an agile mindset is one of learning and so picking up bits and pieces where people are doing some interesting things, trying interesting things, and that's what I've just done. Very little of what I've done is my own novel idea. It's really just incorporating other people's ideas and making it work."

Matt: "Kanban helps us to see how our work works. It's really making visible the work systems that we work in."

Matt: In knowledge work, where we are in, intangible goods, it's harder to see the work. It's stuff that lives in our computers and in the cloud, and so it's not quite as transparent and visible as in a physical goods environment.

Matt: "It's a way of, I talk about humanizing work. For me, seeing how actual people were doing work can be overburdened and stressed out by having too much work to work on, or not having a visibility into how things are working. And so it's about the work's sake, but also the worker's sake that I really find Kanban to be a helpful way of thinking really about our work."

Matt: "The Kanban Iceberg metaphor that I've used in the past is, that which is seen at the top of the iceberg, which is the sign cards or the cork boards. But there's so much of the Kanban method that's below the surface. Not quite as easily seen. I think about the other practices, the principles, and the values."

Matt: "In my experience, I've experienced lots of different places that say Agile and do Agile. My very first experience was doing XP extreme programming orientation. My main experience is initially doing Agile stuff from an XP standpoint. For me that's really valuable because I understood the importance of engineering excellence and technical excellence as opposed to just the organizing principles of some methods that are useful but don't necessarily speak to what code looks like and what deliverable work should look like."

Matt: "Make it okay to fail. We talk a lot about psychological safety. Making it clear that it’s okay that you're not gonna get it right the first time. And being resilient in that experience and to learn from those things."

Matt: "If doing something fast is important, there's tradeoffs obviously, maybe the quality suffers but sometimes the customer's okay with that. It takes a very important conversation to make them aware of the implications of taking some shortcuts with code. But one of the things that I find useful, for example, is predictability. Being able to be predictable in delivery, to the extent that we have control over some of these sources of variation and impact."

Learn more about Matt in the link below:

• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewphilip/
• Website: http://mattphilip.wordpress.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattphilip