Breaking the Blame Cycle in Agile Teams With Coaching and Customer Collaboration | Stella Ihenacho

Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile storytelling from the trenches

Stella Ihenacho: Breaking the Blame Cycle in Agile Teams With Coaching and Customer Collaboration

Stella shates the story of a high-stakes project team plagued by blame-shifting and management interference. The project’s tight deadlines and high complexity led to fear and blame culture in the team. Upon investigation, Stella became aware of some customer agreements made without team input. To overcome these anti-patterns, Stella’s strategy involved separate retrospectives for different groups and resetting customer expectations. Listen in to learn about fostering a blame-free culture and aligning team and customer expectations.

Featured Book of the Week: Atomic Habits by James Clear

Stella shows how transformative power of small, incremental changes helped her. She found out about that approach from the book "Atomic Habits" by James Clear. She explains how these principles apply to agile transformations, emphasizing that success is built over time, not through quick fixes. Stella shares tips on focusing on small wins, the importance of vision, and the need to explain metrics clearly.

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About Stella Ihenacho

Stella is the Manager of the Continuous Improvement and Agility team at RedHat and Agile Faculty Lead at NSTAR Technologies. Dedicated to transforming organizations and individuals through an agile mindset, she believes there's always room for improvement, even when things aren't broken.

You can link with Stella Ihenacho on LinkedIn and connect with Stella Ihenacho on Instagram.