scrum master – Connexxo GmbH | Agile Excellence

Digital Tools for Sprint Backlog

A while ago, I ran into a couple of posts written by Bas Vodde on the LeSS blog in January 2020: Digital tools considered harmful – Sprint Backlog (https://less.works/blog/2020/01/10/digital-tools-considered-harmful-sprint-backlog.html) Digital tools considered harmful – Jira (https://less.works/blog/2020/01/16/digital-tools-considered-harmful-jira.html) These posts were written just as COVID was beginning to explode worldwide, so while what is written in there … Read more

The case for a dedicated Scrum Master role

by Pierluigi Pugliese

A pretty common question I get asked when teaching Scrum is about the Scrum Master as a second role for a Developer or the Product Owner. While this is a typical implementation, and several other authors are arguing for the Scrum Master to be a temporary, part-time or rotating role among the rest of the … Read more

A conflict of interests

by Pierluigi Pugliese

It starts in the usual way: You’re having a discussion with somebody from your current client and he/she tells you that agile practice X is bogus/useless/… and that that person is not going to use it/apply it/promote it to others. Now… what do you do? Before you realise it, you are having a conflict of … Read more

The retrospective: is not about you, dear facilitator!

by Pierluigi Pugliese

This is the fourth article in a mini-retrospectives series. In the previous ones I wrote about how retrospectives should be done at regular intervals, but also in other occasions and how the retrospective could be done in different groups than just the team and that sometimes changes happen even without an action item being clearly … Read more

Retrospectives: “Tunes and adjusts its behaviour accordingly”…

by Pierluigi Pugliese

This is the third article in a mini-retrospectives series. In the previous ones I wrote about how retrospectives should be done at regular intervals, but also in other occasions and how the retrospective could be done in different groups than just the team. In this post I will continue to challenge the 12th principle of … Read more

On refactoring and the organisation

by Pierluigi Pugliese

I often get questions about how to approach refactoring at the cultural level, i.e. how to promote it in the organisation. This post is an adaptation of some advises I gave to a customer of mine… The best way is to have refactoring done as part of the story development, so during the sprint. It’s … Read more

“Scaling” the team – part one

by Pierluigi Pugliese

No, this post is not about increasing the size of your development team, but about how to establish some measurements in your team – typically during the retrospectives, but not only – to support continuous improvement: let’s talk about Solution Focused Scales. I already discussed this technique in my Solution Focus presentation, but listening to … Read more

The best way to coach a team is…

by Pierluigi Pugliese

…to coach its individuals one-to-one! Contradiction? Well, some time ago I thought so as well, but… Over the last years I had a few clients where, because of some constraints in the setting I was working with, I needed to “speed up” with the coaching program and “deliver” a high-performance team faster than I usually … Read more

How do you choose the ScrumMaster?

by Pierluigi Pugliese

Suppose you need to choose the ScrumMaster for your team and there is no “natural” candidate available. Suppose you have two alternatives who could do the job, but you are not sure who fits best? I got a similar question proposed some time ago by one of my customers. Instead of giving my answer, I … Read more

Coming attractions

by Pierluigi Pugliese

This time I will use this space for some shameless self-promotion about the upcoming public speaking events I will be part of. After the good resonance for the “Solution Focused Coaching in Agile” presentation I gave at XP Days Benelux, I will bring it again on tour during April: April 7th and 8th in … Read more

Coaching Teams, remotely

by Pierluigi Pugliese

So the definition of done of a Scrum team is sick and you, dear agile coach, are intervening on the team to get them to fix it. Easy, isn’t it? Either you tackle the issue during a retrospective or on in ad-hoc discussion, point out the symptoms, ask the team how they plan to fix … Read more

Lifetree

by Pierluigi Pugliese

Here’s a metaphor I use often when coaching people. It is called the lifetree and I use it as a tool to raise awareness of the resources of the past and the possible futures and to identify strengths and weaknesses and learning paths. It has a lot of applications in career coaching and in coaching … Read more