Agile Unboxed: Practical Tools for Breaking Down Barriers in Scrum Events (With Evelien Acun-Roos): Scrum Day London 2024

Scrum Day London is our second conference of the year, and we’re thrilled to bring you more exciting episodes from this renowned event!

Continuing our TalkInTen series, we present Evelien Acun-Roos, an experienced Agile trainer, discussing practical tools for enhancing Scrum events in her talk 'Agile Unboxed: Practical Tools for Breaking Down Barriers in Scrum Events'.

Evelien on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/4c6tTaX

Here is the synopsis of Evelien's Talk:

While Agile is all about being adaptive and responsive, Agile teams often find themselves ensnared by invisible barriers that hinder innovation and efficiency. This talk embarks on a practical journey through interactive exercises and real-world case studies, focusing on enhancing the effectiveness of Scrum events. Participants will explore strategies aimed at promoting critical thinking, fostering open communication, and stimulating creative problem-solving in agile environments.

Key Takeaways:

- Strategies to enhance engagement and participation in Scrum events.
- Techniques to apply the 5P’s of Personal Engagement.
- Practical methods to build trust and boost collaboration within teams, grounded in the latest findings from neuroscience and behavioural science.

You will be equipped with a set of actionable tools and insights, ready to transform your Scrum events and elevate your teams’ performance. This session is designed not just to inspire but to empower attendees with the knowledge and skills to foster an environment where critical thinking and innovative problem-solving thrive in alignment with agile values.

Episode Highlights:

- Practical Strategies: Enhance engagement and participation in your Scrum events.
- 5P’s of Personal Engagement: Learn techniques to apply these principles effectively.
- Building Trust: Discover methods to boost collaboration within teams.
- Customising Agile: Gain insights on adapting agile practices for your team’s unique challenges.

If you enjoy the show, please leave a review!

Use code PRODUCTAGILITY24 for 15% off training courses at Sheev.

Sheev - https://www.sheev.co.uk

Host Bio

Ben is a seasoned expert in product agility coaching, unleashing the potential of people and products. With over a decade of experience, his focus now is product-led growth & agility in organisations of all sizes.

Stay up-to-date with us on our social media📱!

Ben Maynard

🔗 http://bitly.ws/GFwi

🐦 http://bitly.ws/GFwq

💻 http://bitly.ws/GFwz

Product Agility Podcast

🔗 http://bitly.ws/FdVJ

🐦 http://bitly.ws/FdVT

🤳 http://bitly.ws/FdW9

🎶 http://bitly.ws/FdWj

🎥 http://bitly.ws/FdWy

💻 http://bitly.ws/GFuS

👤 http://bitly.ws/GFvy

Listen & Share On Spotify & iTunes

• Spotify - https://spoti.fi/3XzuzND
• iTunes - https://apple.co/3YvTX8p

Want to come on the podcast?

Want to be a guest or have a guest request? Let us know here https://bit.ly/49osN80

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the product agility podcast. I'm your host, Ben Maynard, and for the next few days, we have extra special episodes coming to you from scrum day London, 2024 this event is a beacon for agile enthusiasts and professionals, and I'm thrilled to bring you insights and new ideas from some of the brightest minds in the agile and product community. For those of you who are new to the podcast, the product agility Podcast is your go to resource for practical tips, strategies and stories from world class products and agile thought leaders. Our goal is to increase your knowledge and motivation to experiment so together we can create ever more successful products before we dive in, I'd like to thank our sponsor for this episode, sheave. Sheave is my company, and we specialise in helping organisations simplify focus and align through embracing a product mindset and using agile as a means to drive success, whatever your product or agile challenge, learn about how sheave can help your organisation thrive or accelerate your own agile journey@www.sheev.co.uk that's S, H, E, E, V, and to get a whopping 15% off of all of our courses, use the code product agility 24 at the checkout. Now we have an exciting lineup of speakers from scrumday London, 2024 who will be sharing valuable insights and practical tips for you to experiment with. So grab a pen and paper, perhaps a hot drink, and let's dive into a talking tent. And we are here still at strumday London, 2024 I've got my second guest of the day, Evelyn, yes, who I was around at lean agile London this year, but didn't get this picture, and I'm really sorry about that, but sorry about that, but it's great to have you here today to talk about your talk at scrum day London, which is different than what you did at lean agile London. If you wouldn't be adverse to it, could you introduce yourself and your talk to our listeners? Please? Yes.
I'm avine. I work as a trainer at CBS Academy dedicated to teaching Scrum and Agile trainings and doing conference talks. I've been involved in the agile environment, in Agile space, for 15 years, and I have last three years. I'm focusing on sharing knowledge. And my talk will be about engaging other people, so that can be in scrum events, that can be in PI planning, that can be in your regular, weekly, monthly, other meetings. And it's about how to keep your people, keep your attendees, keep your learners, your students, engaged and involved throughout your whole session.
Amazing. I mean, it's a crisis. I think we have an organisation of engagement, because I think engagement can have so many fantastic rewards if we can achieve it. But I don't think that collectively, people have hit on that secret sauce which keeps people engaged in throughout their workshops, their meetings, whatever it might be. So I guess during your talk, you can be sharing some very practical tips from your toolbox.
Yes, well, I will be sharing some, but to involve your attendees as much as possible they need to be doing also stuff themselves. So it will not be a 40 minute talk in sharing practical tips or tips and tricks, but it will also be the participants coming up with stuff themselves.
I would say the participants in your talk, the average people sitting in their seats, coming up with ideas.
Yes, that's the idea. So we will use pairs, and we will use groups of four, and that will stimulate the engagement.
So kind of a bit of a recursive loop. There you're engaging, getting the people engaged to then talk about engagement. So they come up with their own ideas for engagement, to keep people engaged, exactly
yes, and we're using the collective wisdom of the crowd. So it's not just me sharing from my perspective, but it's also other people sharing their favourite activities, what they think is important to create a safe space, for instance. So we will use all that, and at the end, I hope we have a collection of inputs from from the crowd, too.
Awesome. So how is this the talk structured? Okay, are you going to be covering me, introducing any concepts as well as kind of getting people engaged, and talking about few practical tips. So how are you going to take people through that journey?
All my talks and all my trainings are using the structure of training from the back of the room going through the four C's map, where we always start with connections, connecting people to each other or to. Topic. And then we go into concepts. So what are the things that you want to share, what are the things that you think are important, that people know, then they have to practice with it. And then we have a conclusion. So every all the talks that I do and all the training that I do are set up that way, and then I think the most valuable part is where people apply the knowledge that they just gained, because then, you know, they they got it, then you know, they can do something with it, even after the talk.
Are you training from the back of the room? Trainer? Or you just, you are trained? Yeah. Okay, so that makes two train from the back of the room trainers on this interview, then, which is nice, yeah.
So I don't have to explain that how that works for the listeners, it might be interesting to to catch what the four C's are. Absolutely
no it's always worth covering it. I think the four C's are great, great tool for many things over and above this simple kind of classroom environment. We've had JP Bailey on the podcast before talking about it, as well as a guy called Ali Ezzedine who uses training from the back of the room and teach people languages. And he a fascinating guy, but anyway, I tried to get Sharon on, but Sharon doesn't do podcasts anymore. I was quite disappointed.
Yeah, and the training from the back of the room concepts, I took those and put them in scrum events. I put them in conference talks. So I use them everywhere. So I've also done talks about how to use brain science principles or the Trumps in your scrum events. So I'm trying to get that knowledge from training, from back to room, into different areas. Fantastic.
So going back to your talk, look down the train from the back of the room, rabbit hole too deeply. I look at the talk overview, and you're saying that some of the key takeaways will be strategies to enhance engagement and participation. So could you share one of those strategies with our listeners?
They are just simple, small things, having people walk around, having people contribute, writing things on sticky notes and adding them to the wall, having opening and closing activities, as introduce yourself to your partner, buy your key, house keys, or make a lineup from from people with the amount of experience that you have in a certain area that gets them up and moving, and it's not as As scary as like these introductions, going round robin introductions or something. So it's usually it's just small things. It's not like changing the world. But I think in every session or scrum event or whatever you're trying to do, if you add some of those small things, it will make them better. There's a
great line in the train from the back of the back of the room, course, which I think is just change anything. Which I did say even to my son last night, is I'm probably sleeping at the moment, just change something, change anything. Dismissed all of my ideas, but did his own, and it worked. So that's fantastic. Now, you mentioned as well in one of the key takeaways about the five P's of personal engagement is that, right? I can't say I've heard of those before. Could you just give us little a little taster of what they are? Yeah,
it might have you might have not heard of them before, because I introduced them, and it's a collection of things that I well, that I think are important in engaging people. So it's broader than the six brain science principles of training from the back of the room. It connects certain areas of I don't want to say neuroscience, because that's too complex, but it takes some concepts of neuroscience, and we try to share that in an easy way. So during the talks that I gave before, I saw some similarities or some big chunks, and then I said, hey, it started with four P's, and now it's 5p so maybe it will ever be six P's, I don't know, but yeah, that's that's and they are easy to remember. Yeah,
what are they? We have stories, just a couple of it, maybe so
primacy, recency, effects, participate, actively, pay attention, play and the fifth one, psychological safety, that
last one's hard because it doesn't actually begin with a pup, does it begins of a sigh. So I think I would find that hard to remember. And
when I was thinking about it, I was maybe I should. I was thinking about a fifth or sixth, about about a sixth. One purpose. Hmm, but it also might be in the other five.
I'm a big fan of purpose, but let's end it there. Just really don't then go deeper on purpose, because I will not shut up. Thank you so much for taking this time. I know it's kind of early in the day and the conference is just getting started, and I know that time zones affect calendars and stuff, so I really appreciate your time. This morning, I will put your LinkedIn profile into the show notes so people can find you on LinkedIn. If people wanted to contact you and ask any questions about the five P's or six P's, as it might be, or anything else, are they okay to contact you on LinkedIn? Sure,
anytime I'm I'm I'm on LinkedIn every day, and you can also find me on Instagram and Tiktok.
Oh, fantastic. We'll have to get your Instagram and Tiktok IDs from you, because we'll make sure we tag you on there as well. Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for your time, everyone. Thank you so much for listening. Stay tuned for more talks in 10 coming direct from scranda London over the next few days. Thank you for listening.
Thank you Ben.