If you're excited about unleashing organizational superpowers, then this is the podcast for you. We talk about Scrum, Liberating Structures, and creating better workplaces. This podcast is created by Christiaan Verwijs and Barry Overeem. Both are Professional Scrum Trainers for Scrum.org and stewards of the Professional Scrum Master II class they created. Aside from their extensive background and experience with Scrum, they are very excited about Liberating Structures and are active members of this worldwide community. We publish a new episode every first Friday of the month.
10 Powerful Strategies To Break Down Product Backlog Items
Great Scrum Teams know that refinement is one of the best ways to optimize the flow of work and deliver more value to stakeholders. Refinement is the act of breaking down and clarifying work for this and upcoming Sprints. We also know this from our research with 1.200 Scrum Teams; teams that actively refine also release more frequently. And they have more satisfied stakeholders and higher morale.Sounds good! But how? It is often surprisingly hard for teams to break down large chunks of work in such a way that the smaller pieces still deliver value on their own. Often, work is broken down across technical layers (horizontal) instead of functional layers (vertical).In this podcast, we share the 10 strategies that have worked well for us, and the Scrum Teams we've been part of. Each strategy breaks work across functional layers. We give examples for each strategy and explain how they support your team and the Product Owner. We still actively use them for our work on the Scrum Team Survey too! We apologize for the length. You can easily listen to the episode in parts though.Download the cheatsheet (it is free):https://shop.theliberators.com/collections/free-downloads/products/experiment-10-powerful-strategies-to-break-down-product-backlog-itemsGet the Powerful Questions deck:https://shop.theliberators.com/collections/scrum-teams/products/powerful-questionsRead the original post this podcast is based on:https://medium.com/the-liberators/10-powerful-strategies-for-breaking-down-user-stories-in-scrum-with-cheatsheet-2cd9aae7d0ebSupport the show
9/17/2021 • 43 minutes, 18 seconds
Organizational Learning; Why Single-Loop Learning Isn't Enough In Scrum
At its core, Scrum is a framework for learning. But learning is hard when what you learn remains superficial and never challenges existing rules and beliefs. In this episode, we talk about the foundational work by theorist Chris Argyris on organizational learning. He developed a model for organizational learning that distinguishes between single- and double-loop learning. Where single-loop learning concerns itself with correcting mistakes in the actions that you take, double-loop learning takes it several steps deeper and challenges why you're even taking those actions. In our own work, we recognize that Scrum doesn't work when there is only single-loop learning. For example, many Scrum Teams struggle to find the best way to estimate their work and experiment with story points, t-shirt sizing, or functional points. But the deeper question is; why are we estimating work that we know is inherently unpredictable? What existing beliefs are making us estimate our work, that we should revisit and change?The Liberating Structure "Myth Turning" is all about double-loop learning:http://bit.ly/2JOmr9PWe developed a deck of Powerful Questions to help you challenge existing beliefs:https://bit.ly/3o6HaaSSupport the show
