Balancing Team Protection and Stakeholder Engagement | Karen Suarez

Summary

Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile Storytelling from the Trenches

Episode: Balancing Team Protection and Stakeholder Engagement | Karen Suarez
Host: Vasco Duarte
Guest: Karen Suarez
Release Date: March 18, 2025

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Introduction

In this engaging episode of the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast, host Vasco Duarte, a seasoned Agile Coach and Certified Scrum Master, delves into the delicate balance between protecting Agile teams and maintaining robust engagement with stakeholders. Joining him is Karen Suarez, an experienced Scrum Master who shares her firsthand experiences and insights on navigating team dynamics and stakeholder interactions.

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Guest Background and Inspiration

Karen Suarez begins by discussing the pivotal resources that shaped her career as a Scrum Master:

• The Scrum Guide: Emphasized its importance as a foundational text, encouraging regular reading and reinterpretation to deepen understanding.

  "I learned something new on how I interpreted this Scrum guide at some point... I encourage people to keep doing it on a regular basis." [01:28]

• "How to Create Tech Products Customers Love" by Marty Kagan: This book broadened her perspective on supporting Product Owners, especially from her technical background as a QA Engineer transitioning into Scrum Master roles.

  "This book really helped me to understand how I can help the product owner, how to relate with their responsibilities and this role." [01:28]

Karen highlights the importance of empathy in the Scrum Master's role, particularly in understanding and alleviating the challenges faced by Product Owners. She underscores the necessity of effective communication and collaboration between the Scrum Master, Product Owner, and development teams to ensure cohesive product delivery.

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Case Study: Protecting the Team While Engaging Stakeholders

Karen recounts two significant scenarios from her career, focusing on her early experiences as a Scrum Master:

1. Initial Approach to Team Protection:

   • Context: Managing a team of approximately 15 members in an open office environment.

   • Challenge: Frequent interruptions from business stakeholders seeking quick answers or new topics, disrupting the team's focus and workflow.

   • Initial Strategy: Adopted a rigid protection stance, limiting stakeholder interactions exclusively to Scrum events (e.g., refinement, sprint planning, reviews).

     "I started mostly becoming like a guardian dog... closing every other space of dialogue." [04:29]

   • Outcome: While team focus improved, the relationship between the team and stakeholders suffered, leading to uncertainties about whether the team was progressing on the right objectives.

     "We were focused, but were we doing the right things." [06:09]

2. Revised Strategy for Balancing Protection and Engagement:

   • Adjustment: Introduced designated "office hours" on specific days and times (e.g., Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays between 3-5 PM) where stakeholders could approach the team with questions or requests.

     "We decided... we're open. You can come whenever you want." [06:50]

   • Implementation: Allowed stakeholders to submit non-urgent queries via Slack or email, creating a backlog of requests to be addressed during Sprint Planning or Refinement meetings.

     "We have a backlog of requests... to work on that kind of topics." [08:37]

   • Result: Enhanced communication channels maintained team focus while fostering better relationships with stakeholders. This approach prevented frequent disruptions and ensured that the team could prioritize effectively.

     "This allowed us to use really the focus time on developing to stay focused and improve the relation between these other worlds." [08:22]

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Key Takeaways and Insights

1. Balancing Protection and Communication:

   • Protecting the Team: Essential to minimize unnecessary interruptions and allow teams to maintain focus on their tasks.
   • Engaging Stakeholders: Vital for ensuring that the team remains aligned with business goals and customer needs.

2. Flexible Engagement Strategies:

   • Office Hours Model: Establishing specific times for stakeholder interactions can mitigate constant disruptions while keeping lines of communication open.
   • Digital Backlogs: Utilizing tools like Slack or email to collect non-urgent requests helps prioritize and manage stakeholder inputs systematically.

3. Continuous Improvement Through Retrospectives:

   • Organic Issue Identification: Initially, interruptions were not a primary discussion point in retrospectives. Over time, as the volume of requests increased, it became a focal topic, emphasizing the importance of addressing emerging challenges proactively.

     "Once we started having a lot of requests, we said, okay, there's something to improve here." [11:48]

4. Collaborative Response to Stakeholder Requests:

   • Team Involvement: Ensuring that relevant team members, including Product Owners and QA Engineers, participate in addressing stakeholder requests fosters a comprehensive and unified approach to problem-solving.

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Notable Quotes

• "I encourage people to keep doing it on a regular basis." — Karen Suarez [01:28]
• "We were focused, but were we doing the right things." — Karen Suarez [06:09]
• "We decided... we're open. You can come whenever you want." — Karen Suarez [06:50]
• "This allowed us to use really the focus time on developing to stay focused and improve the relation between these other worlds." — Karen Suarez [08:22]
• "Once we started having a lot of requests, we said, okay, there's something to improve here." — Karen Suarez [11:48]

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Conclusion

In this episode, Karen Suarez effectively illustrates the intricate balance between safeguarding team productivity and fostering meaningful stakeholder engagement. Her proactive strategies, such as implementing office hours and creating digital backlogs, serve as practical solutions for Scrum Masters facing similar challenges. Vasco Duarte and Karen Suarez emphasize the importance of adaptability, continuous improvement, and empathetic leadership in driving Agile success.

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About the Global Agile Summit

At the episode's conclusion, Vasco Duarte promotes the Global Agile Summit scheduled for May 18-20, 2025, in Tallinn, Estonia. The event promises a diverse lineup of Agile thought leaders and practical workshops aimed at revitalizing Agile practices and combating Agile fatigue. Attendees can expect insights from renowned speakers like Clinton Keith, Jurgen Apelo, and Sven Dietz, among others, across three focused tracks: Agile Business, Agile Product, and Agile Developer.

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Join the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast for more insightful conversations and practical advice to enhance your Agile journey.

Transcript

[Vasco]

Have you ever wondered what it really takes to make Agile work well? At the Global Agile Summit, we're bringing you real life first person stories of Agile succeeding out there in the real world that will inspire you to take action. Whether you're a leader, a product innovator, a developer, you'll hear practical insights from those who've done it. They'll be telling their own stories from the stage. I'll tell you more about this at the end of this episode. So stay back and listen to the full detailed description of what we have in store for you at the Global Agile Summit. But if you can't wait, you can go right now to globalagilesummit.com and check out our full schedule for now onto the episode. But I'll see you at the end of this episode with more details on the Global Agile Summit. Talk to you soon.

[Unknown Host]

Hello everybody.

[Vasco]

Welcome to our Team Tuesday this week.

[Unknown Host]

Joining us is Karen Suarez.

[Vasco]

Hey Karan, welcome back.

[Karen Suarez]

Hi Vasco. Thank you for having me again.

[Vasco]

Absolutely.

[Unknown Host]

So Tuesday is of course Team Tuesday. We'll talk about a self destructing team in a second, but before that, do share with us. Karen, what was the book that most inspired you in your career as a Scrum Master?

[Karen Suarez]

I didn't want it to be a cliche, but I want to say either way, the Scrum Guide was not the book but the first reference and it's something I really recommend reading and rereading several times because I learned something new on how I interpreted this Chrome guide at some point and so I just encourage people to keep doing it in a regularly basis and to something to talk. Something more elaborated was inspired how to Create Tech Products Customers Love by Marty Kagan. This book really helped me to understand how I can help the product owner, how to relate with their responsibilities and this role. Because since I'm coming from the technical team, I was a developer, I was actually in engineering. Sometimes it's hard for me to understand the frustrations and the context of the product owner. And this book really helped me to understand this world and gave me tools on how I can help him do better on his job, on his role.

[Unknown Host]

Yeah, absolutely. And the product owner is a critical role for us as Scrum Masters to connect with, not necessarily understand fully, but to empathize.

[Vasco]

Right.

[Unknown Host]

To understand what are the challenges that they face because we do need to help them overcome those challenges. Whether it may be how to communicate information to the team or how to collect information from customer interviews or just have ideas on what kind of experiments we could run to understand how our product is perceived by our customers. It's really important that we understand the challenges that product owners face so that we can help them and also help them work better with our teams.

[Karen Suarez]

Yes, yes. And also the part when we believe the product owner is really the owner of the product, sometimes it doesn't, is not the case. So this book helped me to understand the whole context and why sometimes some stuff are imposed on how to do it to the team when we are supposed to deliver the how to. And the product owner just bring us the why. Sometimes it doesn't work that way. And so, yes, it helped me to empathize with this role and.

[Vasco]

A critical.

[Unknown Host]

Role it is for us. All right? And obviously product owners work with teams and so do we. And sometimes the teams, of course, create their own problems. So, Karen, let's explore the story of a team. Tell us a little bit about the context. You know, is it a small team, a big team, what kind of delivery are they working on? And then let's dive into the anti patterns and how they started emerging and over time became a problem for the team.

[Karen Suarez]

All right, so. So I was working. I have two situations. The first one was when I was younger and I took the role of SCRUM Master for the first time. We were like 15 people. The beginning, sometimes 20, between developers and QA engineering. And since I started working as a QA engineer, sorry, then I become the Scrum Master. I tried to do what I was told, which was protect the team. Carry you must protect the team. We're having too much disturbance during the day. Protect them from the external war. So we were having the whole 15 people sitting in an open space and people from the business were coming to. Hey, can I take your. You're thinking for five minutes, can we see a new topic? Can we? And they were really being interrupted during the whole day. So I started mostly becoming like a guardian dog and say, no, no, right now we are. We are busy. We have the refinement event, we have the spring planning event. You can come then. We have the review. You can come then. But it was closing every other space of dialogue. And those events of SCRUM were really limited to improve the communication between the business and the tech world.

[Unknown Host]

So this was starting to create barriers between the team and the stakeholders. Is that what you mean?

[Karen Suarez]

Yes. At first the goal was to protect focus and to let the team work on what they were already working. But it was hurting the relationship between them too. So at the end we were working. Okay, we were focused, but were we doing the right things. It was hard to tell because we were cutting this communication.

[Unknown Host]

And when you think about this situation, like if you had to go back and kind of relive the same, kind of go through the same with the team being interrupted all the time, like what would you do differently?

[Karen Suarez]

What I did actually was later when I noticed I didn't want that kind of situation, was opening some spaces where the team can be interrupted. And we decided, for example, Monday, Wednesday, Fridays, between let's say three and five, we're open. You can come whenever you want. Plus the Scrum events when we can dialogue. But we open some more spaces where we can sporadically come with questions and leave the team concentrate between the others.

[Unknown Host]

So this was like office hours, right? Like at those times anybody could come in and talk to. But there wasn't like one person that was in the office hours space. It was the whole team.

[Karen Suarez]

The whole team, yes. And we were having like 20 stakeholders coming in the space of one month. So we were, we were having a lot of people coming with questions. So that's why at first I was guarding the team, but then I say we have to be open and we have to do something. I started with that and also not increasing emails, but every not, not urgent topic, you can write it on Slack on email if you want. So we have a basis to discuss later. So okay, so.

[Unknown Host]

So kind of like, like a Slack channel or something to collect items that are important but they are not urgent. They can be discussed, you know, whatever Sprint planning or in the refinement meeting or something like that, kind of creating.

[Karen Suarez]

A backlog or requests and even making some space in our Sprint backlogs to work on that kind of topics. We had our questions from the legal team, the legal team. We have questions from the marketing team. We have to do some discovery on this topic. So we were adding at that to our Sprint backlog equal. So yeah, that help and that allowed us to use really the focus time on developing to stay focused and improve the relation between these other worlds. Because there was many business people coming to us.

[Unknown Host]

And this really highlights a very important kind of balancing act for us as Scrum masters, which is to make sure the team is talking to the stakeholders enough but that they are not being interrupted all the time. Right?

[Karen Suarez]

Yes. Or even influence and changing the product owner vision. Because sometimes can you change this? But it actually sometimes had some really big impact on the product. It was something easy to do but with high value on customers and it was in the right direction or the direction the product owner was bringing the product. So sometimes hearing these suggestions during the day was making us as a team taking the wrong decisions about the product.

[Unknown Host]

Yeah. And this also highlights the importance of having the right people involved, even from the team side. Right. Like having the product owner to discuss certain items. Did you, in these office hours, did you have like, I don't know, like, you know, a list of people that should be involved, like, or how did you end up deciding who would need to be part of those conversations? When a stakeholder came in with a question or a request at the beginning.

[Karen Suarez]

We let it just open and then we started seeing the impact of implementing something right away. And what we talk with the team is, was whenever there's a change in the product, to do it immediately we must reunite at least with the product owner, QA Engineering usually, and maybe some other colleague with the same role, same, some other developer, for example, that it was, it was young, our solution wasn't perfect, but we started with something, we started opening and then we were saying, I'm not sure I'm going to take that topic. Let me call my, my colleague, let me have a discussion with my teammate.

[Unknown Host]

Did you, did you have like a regular conversation in the retrospectives to analyze the type of requests or interruptions that was coming, or was this much more organically, like just talk talking as the requests emerged?

[Karen Suarez]

At first he didn't came up in the retrospective, but by default it was present on the Sprint planning. Since we were talking about new topics, what are we going to work on the next Sprint? So it came, ah, somebody told me we needed to do this. Okay, so it's a new topic. And once we started having a lot of requests, we said, okay, there's something to improve here. And then we started talking in the retrospective.

[Unknown Host]

Absolutely. And that's definitely a great way to start, right? Like just start organically and then as if the item becomes. Or the topic becomes big enough, then make it a topic in the retrospective. Thank you for sharing that, Karen.

[Karen Suarez]

Thank you.

[Vasco]

Hey friend. Thank you for staying here. Is all you need to know about the Global Agile Summit. If you've ever suffered or know people who are suffering from Agile fatigue, this event is for you. Agile fatigue is that feeling that settles in when we can't really see a light at the end of the tunnel. We get discouraged, especially when conversations revolve, revolve around the same old frameworks, the same old buzzwords and theories. We don't feel that energy anymore. Well, the Global Agile Summit is a different kind of event. We're bringing you real life first person stories of Agile succeeding out there in the real world that will inspire you to take action and transform the way you work. The Global Agile Summit will happen in Tallinn, Estonia May 18th. That's the workshop day, then 19th and 20th, the conference day. And Talinestone is one of the most innovative tech hubs in Europe. The Global Agile Summit is hosted together with Latitude 59, which is kind of a citywide celebration of software startups and groundbreaking ideas. And we'll have a shared ticket for you to attend attend those events as well. So who will be speaking? Well, we've got an incredible lineup of thought leaders in software and agile. For example, Clinton Keith, the person who wrote literally wrote the book on game development with Scrum and is busy bringing Agile to the world of game development. You must check his session. The very famous and well known Jurgen Apelo, author of Management 3.0, will be talking and exploring about AI's impact on leadership. We also have Goiko Adsic, who's taking an unconventional look at product growth with his Lizard Optimization keynote. Other speakers include, for example Sven Dietz, who's challenging everything we know about software development by ditching, literally ditching contracts and estimates. Can you imagine his teams deliver software before their competitors are even done with the contract negotiation? How agile is that? But there's more. We'll cover engineering practices in our developer track with talks on, for example AI assisted test driven development, developing products in minutes with a different approach to how we develop, configure, deploy platforms, and much more. We also have a product track where we cover cutting edge ideas around product discovery, delighting customers with product delight frameworks. We'll have a talk about that. And we also have an Agile business track where we will talk about, for example Open Strategy, a very agile approach to managing organizations and delivering software faster to clients faster than you can even write a contract. Literally. I mean, I already told you about Svendit's story is amazing. It definitely is a must see. I'm sure you'll be inspired and get a lot of ideas for your own software projects and software delivery. Now, whether you're a business leader, a product innovator or a developer, you'll definitely find value in our three focused tracks. That's Agile Business for those working with businesses and organizations, Agile Product for product managers, product owners and innovators, and Agile developer for the builders making agile work in practice. The coders, the testers, the designers, the producers, the Scrum masters, you name it. If you join, you will meet over 200 agile professionals from all over the world. People who just like you, want to grow, want to share and want to learn. By challenging the ideas that don't work anymore at the Global Agile Summit, you'll get new connections, fresh ideas, and the energy to take your own Agile to the next level level. And who knows, maybe even find your next career opportunity. So don't miss out. Check out the full program and grab your ticket now@globalagile summit.com I'm really looking forward to seeing you all in Tallinn, Estonia in May. I'll see you there.