About this episode

Alf Dobbert-Baums shares his experience with a two-country Scrum team and the challenges of building rapport remotely.

Alf Dobbert-Baums: The Two-Country Scrum Team and the Rapport That Never Showed Up Read the full Show Notes and search through the world's largest audio library on Agile and Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes . "It did not quite go as planned. I was really humbled." - Alf Dobbert-Baums Alf was new in the company. His boss walked over with a setup that already sounded like a warning: two development teams in two countries, two locations in Germany, a "difficult" Product Owner — and a quick "do you want to take it?" Alf said sure. Everything happened on video chat. Every meeting, every conversation, every attempt to read the room — through a window that closed the moment the call ended. The rapport never built. The PO stayed difficult. Alf eventually got pulled from the team. Looking back, he saw what the video chat had hidden: the crossed arms, the eyes drifting to email, the small in-between moments that turn coworkers into colleagues. The fix wasn't a tool — it was a flight. Visit the other location. Run a workshop with a real goal ("how do we want to work together?", "what's hard about our setup?"). Build a positive anchor…

People in this episode

Host: Vasco Duarte

Guest: Alf Dobbert-Baums

Topics covered

• Scrum
• Agile
• remote teams
• team dynamics
• communication
• working agreements

Keywords

• Scrum team
• remote work
• team rapport
• Agile coaching
• communication challenges

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Places: Germany

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