Gosia Smoleńska: Coaching Agile Teams Beyond The Resistance Threshold

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.

Gosia recounts a time when her team, acting as a vendor for a large pharmaceutical client, faced severe alignment issues. With three teams and one Product Owner, goals often diverged, and communication barriers arose. A key challenge emerged when the dev lead, fearing judgment over code quality, began personally reviewing code before client submission. This approach, initially manageable with five members, became overwhelming as the team grew. Despite efforts to coach the dev lead, the fear-driven behavior persisted, revealing the difficult balance of knowing when to push for change versus when to accept limits.

Self-reflection Question: When coaching others, how do you recognize the point at which your influence may no longer be effective?

Featured Book of the Week: The Culture Map by Erin Meyer

Gosia highlights The Culture Map as an essential read for understanding and navigating cultural differences within diverse organizations. This book provides insights into contrasting practices, such as giving and receiving feedback or varying perspectives on punctuality. For teams working globally, it’s a valuable resource for fostering effective communication and collaboration.

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About Gosia Smoleńska Gosia has worked in IT since 2013, starting as a manual tester and transitioning into roles like QA, project management, and scrum mastery. She focuses on agile knowledge sharing and building cultures in start-ups, with expertise in Scrum, Kanban, NEXUS, and Lean.

You can link with Gosia Smoleńska on LinkedIn.