Podcasts about scrum masters

Lai-Ling Su: What Scrum Masters Must Do More of in 2026—Think Like a Business Owner 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.   "Success is so contextual. And I think the definitions and measurements of success also change over time. So, only you can definitively say what success is at any given time and how to appropriately measure it for your situation." - Lai-Ling Su   Lai-Ling frames success for Scrum Masters around what she'd love to see more of in 2026: smart, strategic, and commercial decision-making. She observes a distinct gap in the business landscape—too few people are making decisions that balance customer value, revenues, expenses, and long-term sustainability.  This could mean reducing SKUs to enhance operational flow and reduce burnout, investing in change management from day one of a transformation, or cutting unused software licenses to save a colleague's job or fund product innovation. To help Scrum Masters develop this capability, Lai-Ling puts them in the shoes of a business owner—whether through simulations, shadowing business leaders, or pairing with product owners to understand the business side of products beyond just the build side.  She emphasizes the difference between learning strategy through theory (like an MBA) versus learning it through actually operating a business, where consequences are real and immediate.   Self-reflection Question: When did you last consider how a decision in your domain impacts the broader commercial viability of your organization? Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: LEGO Serious Play Lai-Ling loves using LEGO for deeply reflective retrospectives, and she's a certified LEGO Serious Play facilitator. The approach works beautifully for tender and courageous conversations because building with LEGO does several things simultaneously: it's fun, the physical act of building helps process and articulate thoughts you didn't have words for, and it depersonalizes what's said because participants talk about a physical object rather than directly about people. You don't need expensive certified kits—just grab basic bricks from a local shop, pose a reflective question, and let people build.  Lai-Ling notes that her best retrospectives have often been the most deeply uncomfortable ones for participants, because of how much personal and emotional truth emerges when you create that safe space for constructive dialogue. The kinetic and visual elements help crystallize ideas that would otherwise not come out so easily.   [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends]

Lai-Ling Su: When Leadership Changes—Supporting Teams Through the Uncertainty 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.   "We have a once in a generational or once in a lifetime type of opportunity to fundamentally work with these leaders to shift the workplace environments and the workplace dynamics in the way that we've been trying to craft in the world of product and agile for the last few decades." - Lai-Ling Su   Lai-Ling brings a systems-level challenge that has profound implications for Scrum Masters everywhere. Australia is on the brink of its largest intergenerational wealth transfer in history—$3.5 trillion over the next couple of decades—with 70% of private and family businesses planning to sell or succeed as part of this generational change.  This creates leadership vacuums as business leaders transition out and new ones step in. Some are family members stepping into roles without the full capability to lead; others are external CEOs facing resistance when they do things differently.  These transitions stall decisions, lose customer confidence, and fracture once tight-knit teams. Lai-Ling sees this as an unprecedented opportunity for Scrum Masters to support both outgoing and incoming leaders through succession planning, capability uplift, and protecting teams during the transition.  Teams need to be respected for what they've achieved, and Scrum Masters can serve as bridges—creating awareness about the team's strengths and facilitating dialogue between old and new leadership to ensure continuity.   Self-reflection Question: How might you proactively prepare your team to navigate an upcoming leadership transition, whether it's anticipated or unexpected?   [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends]

Lai-Ling Su: Why the Us-Versus-Them Mentality Is the Fastest Path to Team Self-Destruction 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.   "The quickest way to self-destruction is to have an us-versus-them mentality. Because it permeates into every behavior, every action or inaction, and it impacts every single outcome as a result of it." - Lai-Ling Su   Lai-Ling shares a compelling story about a leadership team in healthcare technology that was self-sabotaging their way into non-delivery—so much so that critical commercial outcomes were at serious risk. Yet the team themselves couldn't see it; it was invisible to them. She identifies three layers of the us-versus-them dynamic that needed unpicking.  First, recent M&A activity had merged a larger corporate entity with a smaller, more nimble one, and people remained ferociously loyal to leaders from their old organizations.  Second, business goals were separate from technology goals, causing people to fall back to people-pleasing within their direct reporting lines rather than collaborating on shared purpose.  Third, the tension between growth ambitions and addressing legacy activities created another divide. What struck Lai-Ling most was how these "classic" patterns were invisible to those experiencing them—they just accepted it as part of doing business. The destruction wasn't always stormy and visible; sometimes it was silent, with work piling up, nothing getting done, yet no one overtly upset.   In this segment, we talk about the importance of creating awareness and how Scrum Masters must be willing to point out these patterns, even at the risk of being seen as the odd ones out.   Self-reflection Question: What "classic" anti-patterns might be invisible in your organization right now because everyone has accepted them as just part of doing business? Featured Book of the Week: The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande Lai-Ling approaches the book recommendation differently—she believes no single book has fundamentally influenced her, but books as a collective have made her who she is. She emphasizes reading far and wide across all topics and genres, looking for patterns in unexpected places. One standout is The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande, which challenges the perception that checklists take away autonomy. Gawande writes about how checklists are a rapid-fire communication tool that can mean the difference between a seriously injured soldier dying on the battlefield or making it to a hospital with a good chance of survival. Lai-Ling also recommends When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi, about a surgeon who became a cancer patient and had to navigate a massive identity shift—much like the identity shift we ask leaders to make during transformations.   [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends]

Lai-Ling Su: The Product and Service Story That Every Scrum Master Needs to Hear 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 was kind of at that moment that I realized, like, community was about providing people with the opportunities that they otherwise wouldn't have had. And whilst you could technically execute your product or service well, the customer experience is fundamentally a deeply emotional one." - Lai-Ling Su   Lai-Ling shares a powerful story from when she was just 11 years old, running front of house at her family's restaurant inside an Australian workers' club. When a popular band was booked to play on a Saturday night, the venue reached max capacity—and almost everyone wanted food. With no ticketed order system and only her memory to match orders to customers, chaos ensued.  One father approached her, yelling about how long his food was taking. At the end of the night, Lai-Ling mustered the courage that only an 11-year-old possesses and asked him point-blank why he had reacted so strongly. His answer floored her: he only got to see his son every other weekend, and this evening was supposed to create a cherished memory together. Instead, they were hangry most of the night.  This moment taught Lai-Ling that customer experience is fundamentally emotional—it's not about the food, but about what the interaction means to the people we serve. For the next decade, she continuously inspected every aspect of their restaurant operations, always seeking to improve how they served customers while remaining commercially viable. In this episode, we refer to the "Scrum Masters are the future CEO's, and a podcast by the Lean Enterprise Institute" blog post by Vasco.    Self-reflection Question: When was the last time you paused to understand the deeper meaning behind a stakeholder's frustration, rather than just addressing the surface-level complaint?   [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends]

Think you're just “not a people person”? Most tech leaders quietly believe this about themselves, and it's exactly what's holding them back.In this episode, Martijn Versteeg, founder of peer leadership community Group Effort and former CPTO with a background in organizational psychology, makes the case that it's not: human behavior follows predictable patterns you can understand and work with, just like any system. The conversation covers a six-variable model for understanding what drives behavior and disengagement on your team, why popular personality tools like MBTI and DiSC often do more harm than good, and a clear structure for delivering bad news without the usual stress buildup. We also get into what it really takes to let go of hands-on coding when you move into leadership, why developing a product mindset matters even if product isn't in your title, and the psychological risks of heavy AI use that most teams still aren't thinking about.Key topics discussed:The 6 human needs that predict human behaviorWhy MBTI and DiSC often do more harm than goodHow to stop avoiding difficult conversationsDeliver bad news clearly using a 10-second ruleWhy becoming a bottleneck is a slow career killerBuilding a product mindset when you're in techThe mental health risks of heavy AI useWhat peer groups give you that books can'tTimestamps:(00:00:00) Trailer & Intro(00:03:06) Why Small Steps Matter More Than Career Turning Points(00:05:11) About Martijn Versteeg(00:07:01) How Can I Learn People Skills Systematically?(00:13:19) Six Human Needs That Predict Behavior(00:17:28) How Does It Compare to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs?(00:19:49) Why Are Personality Tests Like MBTI Unreliable?(00:23:20) How Do I Use Pain and Pleasure to Drive Growth?(00:28:30) How Do I Handle Conflict and Difficult Conversations?(00:32:47) A Model for Delivering Bad News in 10 Seconds(00:36:12) How Do I Transition from Tech Lead to Engineering Leader?(00:41:12) How Do I Let Go of Coding as a Leader?(00:42:49) The Vanilla Orchid Story: Why Leaders Must Let Go(00:46:55) How Can Engineers Develop a Product Mindset?(00:53:17) What Are the Hidden Risks of AI for Mental Health?(01:02:19) What Is the Value of Learning Through Podcast Conversations?(01:07:19) Why Consuming Knowledge Is Not the Same as Producing(01:09:06) 3 Tech Lead Wisdom_____Martijn Versteeg's BioMartijn Versteeg is the founder of Group Effort, a Netherlands-based collective that empowers tech and product leaders across Europe through peer groups, offsites, and specialized training. As a key figure in the global product community, he is also an organizer of the Product Mastery Conference, where he helps curate insights for the next generation of product leaders.Before founding Group Effort, Martijn built and successfully sold an EdTech IT platform and spent over five years as an Agile coach and Scrum Master. His unique perspective on leadership is rooted in high-performance athletics; at just 22 years old, he served as the National Rowing Coach for Singapore.Today, Martijn is a vocal advocate for community-led learning. He frequently challenges leaders to move past the search for “golden nuggets” of wisdom and instead focus on the consistent, incremental iterations that solve the “hard people stuff” in scaling organizations.Follow Martijn:LinkedIn – linkedin.com/in/versteegGroup Effort – groupeffort.nlNewsletter – groupeffort.nl/newsletterFree training on Massive Action-Taking for Product Leaders – groupeffort.nl/actionLike this episode?Show notes & transcript: techleadjournal.dev/episodes/248.Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram.Buy me a coffee or become a patron.

Was steckt wirklich hinter agilem Arbeiten – und ist das ein Umfeld, in dem du dich wohlfühlen würdest? In dieser Folge vergleichen wir klassische Hierarchien mit agilen Ansätzen wie Scrum und erklären, warum langfristige Detailplanung in komplexen Zeiten oft einfach nicht mehr funktioniert. Stattdessen geht es in der Agilität um kurze Lernzyklen, schnelle Entscheidungen und die Bereitschaft, Verantwortung zu übernehmen. Wir sprechen über Rollen wie Product Owner und Scrum Master, über Kommunikation und das Loslassen von Kontrolle. Wenn du aus einem traditionellen Umfeld kommst und überlegst, ob Agilität zu dir passt, bekommst du hier eine ehrliche und praxisnahe Orientierung.

BONUS: From Combat Pilot to Scrum Master - How Military Leadership Transforms Agile Teams In this bonus episode, we explore a fascinating career transition with Nate Amidon, a former Air Force combat pilot who now helps software teams embed military-grade leadership principles into their Agile practices. Nate shares how the high-stakes discipline of aviation translates directly into building high-performing development teams, and why veterans make exceptional Scrum Masters. The Brief-Execute-Debrief Cycle: Aviation Meets Agile "We would mission brief in the morning and make sure everyone was on the same page. Then we problem-solved our way through the day, debriefed after, and did it again. When I learned about what Agile was, I realized it's the exact same thing."   Nate's transition from flying C-17 cargo planes to working with Agile teams wasn't as jarring as you might expect. Flying missions that lasted 2-3 weeks with a crew of 5-7 people taught him the fundamentals of iterative work: daily alignment, continuous problem-solving, and regular reflection. The brief-execute-debrief cycle that every military pilot learns mirrors the sprint cadence that Agile teams follow. Time-boxing wasn't new to him either—when you're flying, you only have so much fuel, so deadlines aren't arbitrary constraints but physical realities that demand disciplined execution. In this episode with Christian Boucousis, we also discuss the brief-execute-debrief cycle in detail.  In this segment, we also refer to Cynefin, and the classification of complexity.  Alignment: The Real Purpose Behind Ceremonies "It's really important to make sure everyone understands why you're doing what you're doing. We don't brief, execute, debrief just because—we do it because we know that getting everybody on the same page is really important."   One of the most valuable insights Nate brings to his work with software teams is the understanding that Agile ceremonies aren't bureaucratic checkboxes—they're alignment mechanisms. The purpose of sprint planning, daily stand-ups, and retrospectives is to ensure everyone knows the mission and can adapt when circumstances change. Interestingly, Nate notes that as teams become more high-performing, briefings get shorter and more succinct. The discipline remains, but the overhead decreases as shared context grows. The Art of Knowing When to Interrupt "There are times when you absolutely should not interrupt an engineer. Every shoulder tap is a 15-minute reset for them to get back into the game. But there are also times when you absolutely should shoulder tap them."   High-performing teams understand the delicate balance between deep work and necessary communication. Nate shares an aviation analogy: when loadmasters are loading complex cargo like tanks and helicopters, interrupting them with irrelevant updates would be counterproductive. But if you discover that cargo shouldn't be on the plane, that's absolutely worth the interruption. This judgment—knowing what matters enough to break flow—is something veterans develop through high-stakes experience. Building this awareness across a software team requires:   Understanding what everyone is working on Knowing the bigger picture of the mission Creating psychological safety so people feel comfortable speaking up Developing shared context through daily stand-ups and retrospectives Why Veterans Make Exceptional Scrum Masters "I don't understand why every junior officer getting out of the military doesn't just get automatically hired as a Scrum Master. If you were to say what we want a Scrum Master to do, and what a junior military officer does—it's line for line."   Nate's company, Form100 Consulting, specifically hires former military officers and senior NCOs for Agile roles, often bringing them on without tech experience. The results consistently exceed expectations because veterans bring foundational leadership skills that are difficult to develop elsewhere: showing up on time, doing what you say you'll do, taking care of team members, seeing the forest through the trees. These intangible qualities—combined with the ability to stay calm, listen actively, and maintain integrity under pressure—make for exceptional servant leaders in the software development space. The Onboarding Framework for Veterans "When somebody joins, we have assigned everybody a wingman—a dedicated person that they check in with regularly to bounce ideas off, to ask questions."   Form100's approach to transitioning veterans into tech demonstrates the same principles they advocate for Agile teams. They screen carefully for the right personality fit, provide dedicated internal training on Agile methodologies and program management, and pair every new hire with a wingman. This military unit culture helps bridge the gap between active duty service and the private sector, addressing one of the biggest challenges: the expectation gap around leadership standards that exists between military and civilian organizations. Extreme Ownership: Beyond Process Management "To be a good Scrum Master, you have to take ownership of the team's execution. If the product requirements aren't good, it's a Scrum Master's job to help. If QA is the problem, take ownership. You should be the vessel and ownership of the entire process of value delivery."   One of Nate's core philosophies comes from Jocko Willink's Extreme Ownership. Too many Scrum Masters limit themselves to being "process people" who set meetings and run ceremonies. True servant leadership means owning everything that affects the team's ability to deliver value—even things technically outside your job description. When retrospectives devolve into listing external factors beyond the team's control, the extreme ownership mindset reframes the conversation: "Did we give the stakeholder the right information? Did they make a great decision based on bad information we provided?" This shift from blame to ownership drives genuine continuous improvement. Building Feedback Loops in Complex Environments "In the military, we talk about the OODA loop. Everything gets tighter, we get better—that's why we do the debrief."   Understanding whether you're operating in a complicated or complex domain (referencing the Cynefin framework) determines how tight your feedback loops need to be. In complex environments—where most software development lives—feedback loops aren't just for reacting to what happened; they're for probing and understanding what's changing. Sprint goals become essential because without knowing where you're headed, you can't detect when circumstances have shifted. The product owner role becomes critical as the voice connecting business priorities to team execution, ensuring the mission stays current even when priorities change mid-sprint. Recommended Resources Nate recommends the following books:  Team of Teams by General McChrystal Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink   About Nate Amidon   Nate is a former Air Force combat pilot and founder of Form100 Consulting. He helps software teams embed leadership at the ground level, translating military principles into Agile practices. With a focus on alignment, accountability, and execution, Nate empowers organizations to lead from within and deliver real results in a dynamic tech landscape.   You can link with Nate Amidon on LinkedIn and learn more at Form100 Consulting.

Prabhleen Kaur: The Art of Coaching Product Owners on What vs. How 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. The Great Product Owner: Master of Stakeholder Relationships and the Power of No "The best PO is the person who has the superpower of saying no, and they can deal with the stakeholders with the same prowess." - Prabhleen Kaur   Prabhleen describes working with a Product Owner who managed multiple stakeholders—not just a handful, but a significant number with competing priorities. What made him exceptional was his deep understanding of each stakeholder's pulse and motivations. He knew when to push back and how to frame the "no" in a way that stakeholders could accept. This wasn't random resistance—it came from thorough preparation manifested in clear roadmaps that made most incoming work predictable for the team.  His user stories stood out for their richness in context: beyond the business requirements, they included information about who would be impacted, which proved invaluable for a team dealing with multiple interconnected systems.  He leveraged JIRA's priority field effectively, ensuring the moment anyone opened the board, they could immediately understand what mattered most. Prabhleen emphasizes that this PO understood his role as the "what" while respecting the team as the "how." By maintaining strong stakeholder relationships built on mutual understanding, he created space for the team to prepare, plan, and deliver without constant firefighting.   Self-reflection Question: Does your Product Owner have the preparation and stakeholder relationships needed to confidently say "no" when priorities compete, or does every request become an emergency? The Bad Product Owner: Technical Experts Who Manage the Sprint Backlog "The PO is the what, and the team is the how. When POs start directing the team about how to do things, the sprint goal gets compromised." - Prabhleen Kaur   Prabhleen addresses a common anti-pattern she's observed repeatedly: Product Owners with technical backgrounds who cross the line from "what" into "how." When POs come from developer or technical roles, their expertise can become a liability if they start prescribing solutions rather than defining problems.  They direct the team on implementation approaches, suggest specific technical solutions in user stories, and effectively manage the sprint backlog instead of focusing on the product backlog. The consequences are predictable: stories keep getting added or removed mid-sprint, the sprint goal becomes meaningless, and the team ends up delivering nothing because focus is constantly shifting.  Prabhleen's solution starts in backlog refinement, where she ensures conversations about technical approaches happen openly with the whole team during estimation. When a PO suggests a specific implementation, she facilitates discussion about alternatives, allowing the team to voice their perspective.  The key insight: everyone comes from a good place—the PO suggests solutions because they believe they're helping. The Scrum Master's role is to create space for the team to own the "how" while helping the PO see the value in stepping back.   Self-reflection Question: When your Product Owner has technical expertise, how do you help them contribute their knowledge without directing the team's implementation choices?   [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends]

Prabhleen Kaur: When Team Members Raise Concerns with Clarity, Not Anger 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.   "My idea of success as a Scrum Master is when you look around, you see motivated people, and when something goes wrong, they come to you not in anger, but with concern." - Prabhleen Kaur   Prabhleen offers a refreshing perspective on measuring success as a Scrum Master that goes beyond velocity charts and feature counts. She shares a pivotal moment when her team was in production, delivering relentlessly with barely any time to breathe. A team member approached her—not with frustration or blame—but with thoughtful concern: "This is not going to work out." He sat down with Prabhleen and the Product Owner, explaining that as the middle layer in an API creation team, delays from upstream were creating a cascading problem.  What struck Prabhleen wasn't just the identification of the issue, but how he approached it: with options to discuss, not demands to make. This moment crystallized her definition of success. When team members feel safe enough to voice concerns early, when they come with ideas rather than accusations, when they see themselves as part of the solution rather than victims of circumstances—that's when a Scrum Master has truly succeeded.  Prabhleen reminds us that while stakeholders may focus on features delivered, Scrum Masters should watch how well the team responds to change. That adaptability, rooted in psychological safety and mutual trust, is the true measure of a team's maturity.   Self-reflection Question: When problems emerge in your team, do people approach you with defensive anger or constructive concern? What does that tell you about the psychological safety you've helped create? Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Keep-Stop-Happy-Gratitude Prabhleen shares her favorite retrospective format, born from necessity when she joined an established team with dismal participation in their standard three-column retrospectives. She transformed it into a four-column approach: (1) What should we keep doing, (2) What should we stop doing, (3) One thing that will make you happy, and (4) Gratitude for the team. The third column—asking what would make team members happy—opened unexpected doors. Suggestions ranged from team outings to skipping Friday stand-ups, giving Prabhleen real-time insights into team needs without waiting for formal working agreement sessions. The gratitude column proved even more powerful. "Appreciation brings a space where trust is automatically built. When every 15 days you're sitting with the team making a point to say thank you to each other for all the work you've done, everybody feels mutually respected," Prabhleen explains. This ties directly to the trust-building discussed in Tuesday's episode—using retrospectives not just to improve processes, but to strengthen the human connections that make teams resilient.   [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends]

In Part 2 of this Q&A series stemming from questions in the webinar, Managing Your AI Teammate, Eric Naiburg continues the conversation with Darrell Fernandes, diving deeper into how AI is reshaping the way Scrum Teams work.Together, they explore practical applications of AI in Scrum — from drafting and refining user stories to strengthening Definitions of Done and improving Gherkin statements. Darrell shares how AI can help teams create clearer, more consistent, and testable backlog items, while also warning against over-reliance.Eric and Darrell examine AI's impact on team dynamics, including how meeting-recording tools can summarize conversations, capture action items, and support retrospectives. They also address the human side of adoption: differing mental models, fear of change, and the critical role Scrum Masters play as enablers — not gatekeepers — of AI experimentation.Finally, they tackle a topic many teams overlook: total cost of ownership. As AI capabilities expand, Product Owners must understand infrastructure, data, and operational costs to avoid unintended financial consequences.If you're navigating how to thoughtfully integrate AI into your Scrum Team — balancing opportunity, risk, and cost — this episode offers practical insights and grounded guidance.

Prabhleen Kaur: How AI Is Changing the Way Agile Teams Deliver Value 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.   "AI's output is not the final output—it's always the two eyes we have that will get us the best results." - Prabhleen Kaur   Prabhleen brings a timely challenge to the coaching conversation: the impact of AI on teams and how Scrum Masters should navigate this transformation. She frames it as both a challenge and an opportunity—teams are now capable of delivering faster than consumers can absorb, fundamentally changing expectations and dynamics.  Prabhleen has observed her teams evolve from uncertainty about AI to confidently leveraging it for practical benefits. Developers use AI for writing and understanding code, particularly helpful for onboarding new team members who need to comprehend existing codebases quickly. QA professionals find AI invaluable for generating test cases based on story and epic context already captured in JIRA.  The next frontier? Agentic AI, where AI systems communicate with each other to produce better outputs. But Prabhleen offers an important caution: AI is learning from many conversations, not all of which are reliable. The human element—critical thinking and verification—remains essential.  For Scrum Masters, this means facilitating conversations about how teams want to experiment with AI, exploring edge cases in testing that AI can help identify, and helping teams navigate the evolving landscape of possibilities while maintaining quality and judgment.   Self-reflection Question: How are you helping your team explore AI as a tool for improvement while ensuring they maintain critical thinking about the outputs AI produces?   [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends]

Prabhleen Kaur: When Lack of Trust Turns Teams Into Isolated Individuals 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.   "Teams self-destruct despite best efforts when they lack trust." - Prabhleen Kaur   Prabhleen observed a troubling pattern while shadowing a team: stand-ups had become a register activity where people reported individual status without any connection to the sprint goal. There was no "we" in the conversation—only "I."  The team had experienced a missed deadline due to a PR conflict that wasn't merged in time, but instead of addressing it openly, everyone focused on fixing the immediate problem while avoiding the deeper conversation. The discomfort was never voiced, and resentment accumulated silently.  Prabhleen explains that team destruction is never about one action—it's about the accumulation of unspoken concerns that eventually explode at the worst possible moment. To rebuild trust, she recommends starting with peer reviews that encourage natural collaboration and conversation.  Scrum Masters must be vocal about challenges in front of the entire team, modeling the openness they want to see. For teams that have completely withdrawn, anonymous feedback and scheduled one-on-ones can create safe spaces for honest communication. The key insight? Trust is rebuilt when people realize they will be heard and understood, not judged.   In this segment, we talk about how trust is the foundation of effective teams and how its absence leads to working in silos.   Self-reflection Question: When your team experiences a failure or missed deadline, do you create space for open conversation about what happened, or does everyone quietly move on while resentment builds? Featured Book of the Week: Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland Prabhleen recommends Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland as a foundational read for understanding the spirit behind the framework. "When I actually read the book and understood the nuances of rugby and how the team should be, everything started making sense. I grew beyond the Scrum guide, beyond following rules—it's about how the team operates around you as a collective," she explains. Prabhleen also highly recommends Turn the Ship Around by David Marquet, summarizing its core message as "leaders lead leaders." Both books shaped her understanding that frameworks exist to enable collaboration, not to create compliance. Check out the David Marquet episodes on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast for more insights on intent-based leadership.   [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends]

Was passiert, wenn die klassische Agilität nicht mehr reicht? Wenn ein Team merkt: Da geht noch mehr – in Klarheit, Verantwortung und Wirksamkeit? In dieser Folge nehmen wir euch mit zu Multivac, einem international tätigen Technologieunternehmen, das den Mut hatte, seine eigene Organisation radikal zu hinterfragen. Wir sprechen über den Weg von agilen Teams hin zu einer konsequent nutzerzentrierten Struktur, über neu geschnittene Rollen, verteilte Führung bzw. Verantwortung. Das Highlight: Self‑Selection als Katalysator für Ownership. Vielleicht sind das die spannendsten Teile von Transformationen: der Übergang von "über mich wird bestimmt" hin zu "ich darf meinen Arbeitsfokus und meine Team-Zugehörigkeit selbst wählen". Ein ehrlicher Praxisbericht über Selbstorganisation jenseits von Buzzwords: mit echten Zweifeln, schlaflosen Nächten, überraschenden Entscheidungen und vielen Learnings für alle, die Organisationen nicht nur verwalten, sondern gestalten wollen. Über den Interviewpartner Simon Grotz ist Agiler Coach und Scrum Master bei Multivac. Vom Softwareentwickler kommend begleitet er heute auf dem Weg zu mehr Selbstorganisation, klaren Rollen und moderner Führung – mit viel Praxisnähe und einem starken Menschenbild. Über das Unternehmen Multivac ist ein weltweit agierendes Technologie- und Maschinenbauunternehmen mit Hauptsitz in Wolfertschwenden im Allgäu (Deutschland). Das Familienunternehmen beschäftigt rund 7'500 Mitarbeitende und gilt als Hidden Champion für Verpackungs‑ und Verarbeitungslösungen in den Bereichen Food, Medical, Pharma und Industrie. Multivac hat früh eine eigenständige Einheit für Digitale Produkte & Transformation aufgebaut. Diese Einheit dient nicht nur der Digitalisierung von Maschinen und Services, sondern auch als Experimentierfeld für neue Formen von Zusammenarbeit und Führung.

BONUS: Conflict Is the Yellow Brick Road to Success — How Embracing Conflict Transforms Teams and Leaders In this bonus episode, we explore why fear, conflict, and courage sit at the heart of true agility with Dan Tocchini, a leadership catalyst who has spent over four decades helping teams at organizations like ESPN, Disney, and Homeboy Industries break through the human barriers to high performance. Dan shares powerful stories and practical wisdom on how leaders can embrace conflict as a generative force, build trust through vulnerability, and restructure their teams for genuine agility. The Power of Vulnerability in Leadership "I'd rather have it on an honest basis, where she knows what I'm thinking, what I'm aiming at, and we're shoulder to shoulder, not head to head."   Dan's career-defining moment came when he told a CFO at ESPN — while he was competing against McKinsey for the same contract — that she was the problem behind her department's 75% turnover rate. Rather than sugarcoating or deflecting, Dan chose vulnerability and honesty, even at the risk of losing the contract. This radical transparency became his superpower. The CFO hired him, and within six months, turnover dropped to 15%. Dan stayed with ESPN for eight years. The lesson for Scrum Masters and leaders: you can only truly connect with someone if you're willing to be honest, even when it might cost you. Listening for Openings, Not Outcomes "Most people listen for outcomes. I listen for openings."   Dan draws a critical distinction between chasing outcomes and discovering openings. When faced with an angry car buyer who felt ripped off, Dan didn't try to close the sale. Instead, he leaned into the conflict, acknowledged the customer's perspective, and opened all the books. The result? A sale with 17% margin — above the dealership average — because the customer chose the price himself. For leaders, this means detaching from your desired outcome and focusing on understanding the opening in front of you. That shift builds trust and often produces better results than pushing for what you want. Why Team Drama Is a Distraction Strategy "Whenever there's drama, it's because people don't want you to see something."   Drama in teams happens because people are siloed, and they silo because they don't trust each other. They share only the information that serves their position without jeopardizing their role. The drama itself is a distraction — like a child throwing a tantrum so you'll forget what they did wrong. Dan's approach: ask three questions. What are they committed to causing? How much of that are they producing? And what's the story between the two? The problem is never the problem — the problem is how you think about the problem. Restructuring for Agility: A Restaurant Case Study "Your way of being needs to be bigger than the structure."   Dan illustrates agile restructuring through a top-25 restaurant in Boise where the general manager flows seamlessly between roles — bussing tables, coordinating with the kitchen, and leading the team — without ever pulling rank. The secret? He grounds his team before every shift with genuine connection, shared meals, and open dialogue. When he gives direction, people move — not from fear, but from respect. Structure alone won't solve problems; it only organizes them so you can see them better. Leaders must be committed to what the structure is designed to accomplish, altering it in motion when needed. Conflict as a Generative Force "What you're not willing to face will eventually defeat you."   Dan's core philosophy centers on embracing conflict rather than avoiding it. When people face conflict, they either seek comfort by avoiding it or realize what's at stake and find a way through. The Stoic principle "the obstacle is the way" applies: to find the path, you must hug the cactus and pull the problem close. In relationships — whether marriage, team, or client — breakdowns should deepen intimacy and trust. Dan reports that 90% of the time, authentically facing into mistakes with clients deepens relationships and keeps contracts alive. What Keeps Dan Going After Four Decades "People love to accomplish things they didn't think they could do. To me, that's exciting."   After more than 40 years in this work, Dan remains energized by working with people to accomplish challenges they initially thought impossible. He describes his work as akin to family — that same depth of connection and shared purpose. His one-liner: "We turn leadership into leadership." It sparks curiosity and opens conversations about what real leadership transformation looks like. About Dan Tocchini   Dan Tocchini has spent 35+ years working with leadership teams across the spectrum — from ESPN to nonprofits like Defy Ventures — helping them evolve from functional to fully alive. His work focuses on the human systems that make agile succeed… or silently kill it.   You can find out more about Dan and his leadership training programs at TakeNewGround.com.

Juliana Stepanova: Why "I'll Just Do It Myself" Is the Most Expensive PO Shortcut 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.   In this episode, we refer to previous discussions about team collaboration and Product Owner patterns. The Great Product Owner: Opening Up to the Team for Solutions "The PO who's not sitting and saying 'I know how it's right, I will solve it by myself,' but coming and saying 'Hey, let's think all together'—that's what gives very, very speed-up development into becoming a great PO." - Juliana Stepanova   Juliana describes the Product Owners she considers truly great as those who bring their challenges to the team rather than solving everything alone. Her example features a PO who was invited to recurring release meetings that consumed one and a half to two hours every two weeks—30 people in a room, largely a waste of time. Instead of suffering in silence or trying to fix it alone, this PO approached the team: "Hey guys, I have these meetings, and they're useless for me. How can we deal with that?" The team collaborated with the Scrum Master to explore multiple options.  Together, they developed a streamlined, semi-automatic system that reduced the process to 10 minutes without requiring anyone to sit in a room. This solution was so effective that it was eventually adopted across the entire company, eliminating countless hours of wasted meetings. The key insight: great POs see themselves as part of the team, not above it. They're open to solutions from anyone and understand that collaboration—not individual genius—drives real improvements.   Self-reflection Question: When facing challenges that seem outside the team's domain, do you bring them to the team for collaborative problem-solving, or do you try to solve them alone? The Bad Product Owner: The Loner Who Does Everyone's Job "To make it quicker, I will skip asking the designer, I will directly put it by myself. I learned how to design five years ago. But afterwards, it's neglecting the whole team—you don't take into account the UX, and actually you need to rework." - Juliana Stepanova   The anti-pattern Juliana sees most frequently is the "loner" PO—someone who takes on other roles to move faster. The classic example: a PO who bypasses the UX/UI designer because "I learned design five years ago, I'll just do it myself." This behavior seems efficient in the moment but creates multiple problems. It disrespects the expertise of team members, undermines the collaborative nature of agile development, and almost inevitably leads to rework when the shortcuts create quality gaps.  Juliana points out this isn't unique to POs—developers sometimes bypass testers for the same "efficiency" reasons. The solution isn't punishment but cultural reinforcement: helping people see the value of professional work, encouraging communication and openness, and building respect for each role's contribution. The key principle: if someone hasn't asked for help, don't assume they need yours. Focus on your own job, and offer assistance only when invited or when you explicitly ask "Do you need help?"   Self-reflection Question: When have you taken on someone else's role because it seemed faster, and what was the real cost of that shortcut?   [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends]

Juliana Stepanova: When a Former Skeptic Calls to Say "Now I Know What You Did" — Defining Scrum Master Success 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.   "Juliana, now I know what you did that time. It was so amazing work. Sometimes the work of the Scrum Master, you cannot measure it in real numbers, because the work of the Scrum Master is dependent on the persons who are working with the team." - Juliana Stepanova   Juliana shares a story that captures the often invisible nature of Scrum Master success. For a year and a half, she worked with a distributed team across Europe, and one colleague in her office would repeatedly ask—half joking, half serious—"Juliana, what do you do here? Why are you getting a salary? I don't see any improvements."  Eight months after that colleague moved to another company, he called her with a revelation: working in a team without effective Scrum Mastering made him finally understand the value she had created. This delayed recognition highlights a fundamental challenge: Scrum Master success often can't be measured in real numbers because it depends on enabling others. Juliana's practical approach is to set three main focus areas every three months, aligned with team and company needs.  She tracks concrete progress—like implementing a Definition of Done across multiple teams—and measures whether specific goals are achieved. She even asks in job interviews: "How will you measure my success in three or six months?" Without this intentional focus and self-measurement, she says, "it's truly hard to see what you're really doing."   Self-reflection Question: What three focus areas would you choose for the next three months, and how would you know you've succeeded in each? Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Wedding Retro Juliana recommends the Wedding Retro format from Retromat, and when she mentions the name, people immediately smile—which is exactly the point. The format uses the traditional wedding saying "something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue" to structure reflection: Something Old represents practices that are working and should continue; Something New covers areas for improvement or experimentation; Something Borrowed invites the team to identify ideas from other teams or departments worth adopting; and Something Blue addresses blockers, risks, and issues.  Juliana loves this format because the playful framing creates positive emotions from the start, disarming tension and making people more open to genuine reflection. "If you laugh at the start of the retrospective," she explains, "you're ready for a much better retrospective than if you're tense and anxious." She uses this exercise "all over the time," even outside her Scrum Master work.   [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends]

Juliana Stepanova: Trust Over Escalation — A Patient Approach to Difficult PO Relationships 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.   "The team still believes it could be solved with proper communication to the PO. My idea is to really try, in a supportive way, to build trust, to encourage communication, and to come to the solution as a team altogether. This is like a win-win situation." - Juliana Stepanova   Juliana brings a challenge that many Scrum Masters will recognize: a Product Owner who doesn't want to be coached and whose behaviors are undermining Scrum rituals. The situation is complicated by organizational structure—the Scrum Master reports to the people department while the PO reports to the product department, creating misaligned directions with no common leadership thread.  The PO arrives at refinement meetings unprepared, writing user stories on the spot while eight team members sit idle for hours. When Juliana explores the root cause, she discovers the PO is genuinely overwhelmed with responsibilities outside the team. But here's the twist: this newly promoted PO is proud of the role and resistant to accepting help, preferring to say "just wait, I will manage it."  Rather than escalating—which Juliana notes would damage trust for years or potentially lose the PO entirely—she advocates for a patient, collaborative approach. The experiment she designs focuses on engaging more deeply with the PO's activities to understand which tasks could be delegated or eliminated, while continuing to build trust through support rather than confrontation. The team maintains hope that the PO will eventually accept help, choosing persistence over escalation.   In this segment, we talk about coaching Product Owners and building trust.   Self-reflection Question: When facing a resistant stakeholder, do you default to escalation, or do you invest in building the trust that enables genuine collaboration?   [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends]

Today's journey is through the idea of the Scrum Master. Please email your thoughts to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠penpositive@gmail.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠ and connect with me on LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/vinodn/⁠⁠On Social MediaPenPositive YouTube Channel ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@PenPositive ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@penpositive⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠My Professional Blog: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://penpositive.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠My Personal Blog: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://vinodnarayan.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Juliana Stepanova: The Slippery Slope — How Small Compromises Lead Teams to Abandon Scrum Entirely 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.   "If you have it like once, you think it's okay. But it starts to change our mindset in the way that these rules, these frameworks could be changed. And with the small stuff that it's not correct, within half a year, Scrum will not work at all." - Juliana Stepanova   Juliana describes a pattern she witnessed in an experienced seven-person development team that had practiced Scrum for years. It began innocuously: the daily standup stretched from 15 to 30 minutes because the team was larger. Then came the skipped retrospectives during release phases—"we don't have time today." Each compromise seemed reasonable in isolation, but together they formed a slippery slope that eventually dismantled the entire framework. The root cause often lies outside the team: misaligned Scrum rituals across multiple teams, company-wide meetings that override sprint events, and pressure from management to prioritize immediate fires over process discipline. Once the brain accepts that "we can skip it for a good reason," finding the next good reason becomes easier and easier. Juliana emphasizes a crucial distinction: teams that actively choose Scrum—those who approach management saying "we want to try this"—naturally protect the framework. They understand its value from personal conviction. When Scrum is imposed rather than chosen, the team lacks the intrinsic motivation to defend it against organizational pressure, making the slippery slope almost inevitable.   In this segment, we talk about the challenges of organizational alignment and protecting Scrum events.   Self-reflection Question: What small compromises has your team made to the Scrum framework, and are they leading you toward a slippery slope where the entire process may eventually be abandoned? Featured Book of the Week: Startup, Scaleup, Screwup by Jurgen Appelo Juliana recommends Startup, Scaleup, Screwup by Jurgen Appelo as her go-to resource for Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches. The book contains 42 tools designed to accelerate business growth, presented in accessible chapters that cover the most essential knowledge for agile practitioners. What sets this book apart for Juliana is its scope: it addresses not just team-level concerns but company-wide perspectives. "Sometimes Scrum Masters don't pay so much attention to the company level or between departments," she explains. "In this book, you'll find normal tools which you can apply all over the company, not only for the team." She uses it constantly for inspiration and recommends reading it at least once—though she returns to it repeatedly for reference.   [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends]

Juliana Stepanova: The 90-Minute Retrospective Disaster That Taught Me Servant Leadership 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's not my job to find the points to improve. My job is to help the team find them, to interact their communication, to start thinking about the improvements, and not pushing them into my exercises." - Juliana Stepanova   Juliana shares a humbling experience from her first year as a Scrum Master that transformed how she approaches facilitation. She had meticulously prepared what she believed was a brilliant 90-minute retrospective—carefully designed exercises, content tailored to the sprint, everything by the book. Yet when she asked the team for feedback at the end, they delivered a crushing verdict: "It was the worst retro ever." The disconnect wasn't about the quality of preparation but about whose perspective drove the design. Juliana had crafted the session based on her observations and assumptions about what the team needed, rather than asking them what they actually wanted to discuss.  This experience crystallized a fundamental insight about servant leadership: the difference between leading and servant leading. Today, Juliana prepares at least twice as many tools and exercises as she needs for any workshop, ready to pivot based on the room's energy and the team's expressed needs. She opens sessions with questions about expectations, aligning with the team's mood while setting appropriate boundaries. The failure taught her that even the most carefully prepared facilitation can miss the mark when it doesn't serve what the team actually needs in that moment.   Self-reflection Question: When was the last time you asked your team what they wanted from a retrospective before you designed it, and how might their input change your approach?   [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends]

Agile in Construction: The Product Owner Role in Construction—Voice of the Customer Across Every Phase With Felipe Engineer-Manriquez 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. In this episode, we refer to Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Team of Teams by General Stanley McChrystal, as well as our Agile in Construction episodes. The Great Product Owner: Bringing the Voice of the Customer to Every Decision "I want you to think like the owner, and bring that to the team meetings, because we can't have the owner in the meetings with us." - Felipe Engineer-Manriquez   The Product Owner role in construction is radically different from software—and Felipe has learned to find it in unexpected places. When Jeff Sutherland told his class to "tear up your business cards" because only three roles exist (Developer, Scrum Master, Product Owner), construction people were confused. Felipe's approach: ask the team who can bring the voice of the customer. Sometimes it's the superintendent, interfacing daily with charge nurses and doctors in a working hospital. Sometimes it's a project executive. Rarely, it's the project manager. The key is that the PO role changes across phases because every day in construction is brand new—the building is physically taking shape. Felipe studied military leadership in Extreme Ownership and Team of Teams and found strong product owner culture—leaders who brought customer voice to cell-level teams against hierarchical norms. Great product owners speak in terms of what the customer wants, transforming how teams prioritize and align naturally.   Self-reflection Question: Who on your team currently embodies the voice of the customer, and how might you coach them to bring that perspective more explicitly to every team interaction? The Bad Product Owner: When Gut Decisions Override Value "Value is a beneficial transformation of materials, information, or a combination of both. Let's not do things that don't transform information or materials." - Felipe Engineer-Manriquez   Felipe shares a powerful anti-pattern: owners who make gut decisions based on past project trauma without checking if conditions are still true. On a $100 million project, an owner repeatedly introduces work that doesn't add value—reacting to bad things that happened on previous projects, even when those conditions no longer exist. The result? Teams waste time on activities that don't transform materials or information. Felipe teaches teams an industrial engineering definition of value: "a beneficial transformation of materials, information, or a combination of both." Status updates that don't change behavior are waste. Markings on metal decking that will be buried under 5 inches of concrete are waste. The fix? Make the backlog visible and ask: "Where should we zipper this in so it has the most impact on transforming materials or information?" For construction, prioritization always comes back to getting the right materials in place, one time, at the right time—not touching things twice.   Self-reflection Question: When stakeholders introduce work based on past experiences, how do you help them evaluate whether those conditions still apply to the current situation?   [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends]

Agile in Construction: Team Happiness as the True Measure of Scrum Master Success in Construction With Felipe Engineer-Manriquez 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.   "The teams that are having fun and are light-hearted, making jokes—these are high-performing teams almost 99% of the time. But the teams that are overly sarcastic or too quiet? They're burning out." - Felipe Engineer-Manriquez   Felipe offers a refreshingly human definition of success for Scrum Masters: team happiness. After years of traumatic experiences in construction—days when he pounded his steering wheel in frustration during his commute—Felipe developed what he calls being a "human thermometer." He can sense a team's emotional state within 5 minutes of being with them. His proxy for success is a simple Likert scale of 1-5: 5 is Nirvana (working at Google with massages), and 1 is wanting to jump out the window. Felipe emphasizes that most people in construction internalize stress and push it down, so you have to ask directly. When he asked an estimator this question, the man quietly admitted he was at a 2—ready to walk away. Without asking, Felipe would never have known. The key insight: schedule improvements happen as teams move closer to a 5. And the foundation of it all? Understanding. "People do not have an overt need to be loved," Felipe shares from his Scrum training. "They have an overt need to be understood." A successful Scrum Master meddles appropriately, runs toward problems, and focuses on understanding teammates before trying to implement change.   Self-reflection Question: If you asked each of your team members to rate their happiness from 1-5 today, what do you think they would say, and what would you learn that you don't currently know? Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Start/Stop/Keep Felipe's favorite retrospective format is Start/Stop/Keep—but his approach to introducing it is what makes the difference. He connects it to something construction teams already know: the post-mortem. He explains the morbid origin of the term (surgeons standing around a dead patient discussing what went wrong) to emphasize the seriousness of learning. Then he reframes the retrospective as a recurring post-mortem—a "lessons learned" cycle. Start: What should we begin doing that will make things better? Stop: What should we no longer do that doesn't add value? Keep: What good things are we doing that we want to maintain? Felipe uses silent brainstorming so everyone has time to think, then makes responses visible on a whiteboard or digital display. The cadence scales with sprint length—45 minutes for a week, 2 hours for two weeks, half a day for a month. His current team committed to monthly retrospectives and pre-writes their Start/Stop/Keep items, making the facilitated session efficient and focused.   [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends]

In this episode of the Scrum.org Community podcast, Dave West sits down with Brodie Green, Director of Agile Delivery Services at Pega, to unpack Pega's two-decade-long agile evolution. From early whiteboard planning to experimenting with various scaling frameworks, Pega has continually adapted its approach as it scaled to over 6,000 employees worldwide.Brodie shares why Pega ultimately moved to a hybrid agile model, how continuous six-week planning replaced big-room quarterly events, and what they learned about shortening feedback loops across complex product portfolios. The conversation also explores how Pega's Scrum Masters act as Agile Delivery Leads—shifting the focus from team facilitation to solving complex business problems and driving change at scale.The episode closes with practical insights on measuring impact, creating effective working agreements, and using AI as a true team-enabling capability rather than just a productivity tool.

Hiring for Scrum roles is harder than it looks. Making the wrong call can derail an Agile transformation before it even starts. In this episode, Brian and Cort unpack what to actually look for in Scrum Masters, Product Owners, and Developers—beyond the job title and shiny certifications.

Agile in Construction: Over-Commitment and Silence—The Deadly Duo Destroying Your Teams With Felipe Engineer-Manriquez 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.   "I don't think people are bad. They don't self-destruct because they're bad. What I do see is people getting crushed in terribly bad systems." - Felipe Engineer-Manriquez   Felipe shares a powerful insight about team dysfunction: teams don't self-destruct because of bad people—they get crushed by broken systems. On a hospital construction project, he witnessed a dangerous pattern: over-commitment coupled with silence. People would commit to pouring concrete on Thursday when there wasn't even rebar in place—a physical impossibility. But psychological safety was so low that no one could say the emperor had no clothes. Felipe's approach? Ask obvious questions that break the pattern. "Don't you need this so you can do that?" This simple question, framed with verb-noun phrases, surfaces what cannot be spoken. He positions himself as "just a simple, dumb general contractor" who doesn't understand—creating safety for others to speak truth. The turning point comes when you slow down, make work visible, and allow people to say no. As Felipe puts it: "For real accountability, if people are not allowed to say no, then they actually can't make a real promise." Silence is not alignment, and saying yes in low-trust environments is actually hiding from accountability.   In this segment, we talk about psychological safety and systems thinking in team dynamics.   Self-reflection Question: When you see a team over-committing to impossible deadlines, what question could you ask that surfaces the truth without putting individuals at risk? Featured Book of the Week: The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt Felipe chose The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt as the most transformative book of his early lean career. He describes it as "the number one game changer"—a fictional story that teaches the Theory of Constraints in a way you can internalize. The famous "Herbie story" within the book illustrates how helping the slowest part of a process speeds up the entire system. Felipe emphasizes that Theory of Constraints is often skipped in Scrum training when classes run out of time, leaving many credentialed Scrum Masters without this essential knowledge. He uses these principles daily with the Last Planner System in construction—creating visual boards that look like Gantt charts (because construction loves schedules) but function like Scrum boards with days of the week instead of "to do, doing, done."   [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends]

What Makes a Great Scrum Master?When people ask me, “What does it take to be a great Scrum Master?” my first response is always — In what kind of organization?It's not a dodge. It's the most honest answer I can give.We talk about Scrum Masters as if the role is universal — a fixed job description that applies equally everywhere. But the reality?The Scrum Master navigating a twenty — person startup looks completely different from one guiding a 200-person enterprise team.And both are doing the job right.How to connect with AgileDad:- [website] ⁠https://www.agiledad.com/⁠- [instagram] ⁠https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/⁠- [facebook] ⁠https://www.facebook.com/RealAgileDad/⁠- [Linkedin] ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/leehenson/

Cristina Cranga: Coaching Product Owners From Output Obsession to Value Conversations 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.   In this episode, we refer to the work of Esko Kilpi on conversations and episodes on Nonviolent Communication (NVC) on the podcast. The Great Product Owner: A People Person Who Clarifies Before Deciding   "He was comfortable saying 'I don't know yet. What do you think?' It was a bi-directional conversation, not just one-way." - Cristina Cranga   The best Product Owner Cristina worked with was fundamentally a people person and a leader—human skills, not just hard skills. What made him exceptional was his approach to conversation: he started by clarifying the problem first, then decided. By doing this, he separated requests from decisions and made trade-offs explicit.  He was comfortable admitting uncertainty, asking "What do you think?" and engaging the team in co-creation rather than issuing directives. Cristina emphasizes that between the PO and Scrum Master, there's a special bond—a strong leadership partnership that teams look to as a reference. She highlights the concept of "ask more, say less": when you ask questions, you collect information that leads to better, more validated decisions.  The communication process, as outlined in Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg, has four components: observation, feelings, needs, and requests. Great POs embody this by treating uncertainty as part of their job, engaging teams more deeply, and connecting work to value rather than just output.   Self-reflection Question: How often does your Product Owner ask "What do you think?" and what would change if they separated requests from decisions more explicitly? The Bad Product Owner: Output Obsession and the Velocity Trap "Success is measured by how much is delivered, not what changes. Teams get faster, but not smarter." - Cristina Cranga   The worst Product Owner anti-pattern Cristina has witnessed is output obsession—measuring success by how much is delivered rather than what actually changes for users or the business. When velocity replaces outcomes as the primary metric, teams get faster but not smarter. Faster doesn't equal smarter. This anti-pattern is particularly dangerous in an AI-accelerated environment where delivery speed is no longer a constraint. The challenge for practitioners is shifting this mindset. The strongest POs make different choices: they own their decisions at the team level, make decisions explicit, treat uncertainty as part of the job, and connect work to value. When POs break free from output obsession, the results are powerful: faster alignment, no decision hallucinations, more engaged teams willing to experiment, and genuine connection between work and value.   In this segment, we refer to Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg.   Self-reflection Question: If you removed velocity from your team's dashboard tomorrow, what conversations would emerge about actual value delivered?   [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends]

Cristina Cranga: Decision Quality as the True Measure of Scrum Master Effectiveness 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.   "A Scrum Master is successful when teams make better decisions, faster, with clear trade-offs—everything else is a side effect, not the job." - Cristina Cranga   Cristina offers a refreshingly clear definition of Scrum Master success for 2026: increasing the team's decision quality under accelerating change. She emphasizes that success as a term changes over time, and what mattered in previous years may not be what matters now. It's not about ceremony fluency or even making yourself unnecessary—those are side effects. The core of success is helping teams navigate complexity and AI-driven acceleration by making better decisions faster with explicit trade-offs.  Cristina describes this as an evolution from a "mechanic" role—focused on ceremonies, flow, and structure—to a strategic role. The Scrum Master elevates into a leader of team systems and human behaviors, possibly even becoming an AI integration enabler. This requires reskilling and upskilling as the environment changes. Her prompt for self-reflection: How can you orient your execution of the Scrum Master role more towards strategic aspects, focusing on decision quality as the opposite of decision hallucination?   Self-reflection Question: What would change in your daily work if you measured your success by the quality of decisions your team makes rather than the smoothness of your ceremonies? Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Start/Stop/Continue Cristina advocates for simplicity in retrospectives, choosing the classic Start/Stop/Continue format. But she emphasizes that the format itself is secondary—what matters is the environment you create and the outcomes you achieve. Her two key conditions for any retrospective: an actionable plan and a simple conversational approach.  She challenges Scrum Masters to focus on the "how" rather than the "what"—how do you hold the space? How do you hold the silence? How do you approach disagreements? The power of Start/Stop/Continue lies in its simplicity, which frees facilitators to focus on creating psychological safety. Cristina also warns against the instinct to take ownership of action items yourself—instead, delegate to team members so they own their problems and become more committed to finding solutions.   [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends]

Já se sentiu sem direção para encarar uma nova transição profissional? Neste Enzimas, Verusa Domithildes, Scrum Master na dti digital, compartilha insights valiosos baseados nos livro “Os primeiros 90 dias”, para a criação de um plano estratégico que transformar os desafios iniciais em oportunidades de sucesso. Ela cita exemplos práticos baseados nos insights da obra de Michael Watkins focando na construção de confiança e na clareza de expectativas. Ficou curioso? Então, dê o play! Assuntos abordados: Os primeiros 90 dias como janela estratégica; Categorização de tipos de transição de liderança; Estratégia de "quick wins" para gerar tração; Entender antes de agir; Expectativas explícitas e ocultas em novos ambientes; Construção de relacionamentos-chave. Links importantes: Newsletter Dúvidas? Nos mande pelo Linkedin Contato: osagilistas@dtidigital.com.br Os Agilistas é uma iniciativa da dti digital, uma empresa WPPSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Cristina Cranga: Why Speed Without Value Creates Chaos in AI-Accelerated Teams 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.   "When output becomes cheap, value becomes harder to see. AI is amplifying this risk." - Cristina Cranga   Cristina brings a timely challenge to the table: how do Scrum Masters stay focused on value when AI tools are accelerating delivery to unprecedented speeds? Teams are delivering faster than ever—AI provides code, tests, documentation, even backlog items—but speed is no longer the constraint. The real challenge is meaning. Teams struggle to explain why their work matters to users or the business.  Cristina frames this as a shift from "delivery" as the primary keyword to "value." She suggests that Scrum Masters are evolving from facilitators of flow to protectors of intent—what she playfully calls "strategic guardians of the value chain" or even "value masters." Together with Vasco, they explore experiment ideas around building clarity of value cycles with product owners, bringing signals of value into earlier backlog work, and helping teams validate faster, not just deliver more.  The key insight: in an AI-accelerated world, the Scrum Master's role becomes more strategic, focused on ensuring teams make better decisions with clear trade-offs rather than just executing ceremonies.   Self-reflection Question: How might you help your product owner build a "clarity of value" cycle that tests ideas before they reach the development team?   [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends]

Cristina Cranga: Why Nice Teams Still Fail and the Power of Honest Conversations 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.   "Sometimes you can change people by only listening to them. Not giving advice—don't become an advice monster." - Cristina Cranga   Cristina shares her experience of sensing that something was off with a team but being unable to pinpoint exactly what it was. Instead of jumping to conclusions, she paused, reflected, and created an intervention plan centered on one thing: starting honest conversations. Through one-on-one discussions with team members, she discovered that the problem wasn't performance or process—it was something deeper.  Expectations weren't aligned with reality, and frustration stemmed from a company culture that didn't offer psychological safety. Cristina introduces the concept of the "advice monster"—someone who constantly tells others what they should do rather than simply listening. She emphasizes that as Scrum Masters, we need to recognize the three layers of our influence: control, influence, and no control.  Even when we can't solve problems, being present and listening can create profound change. The key is self-awareness of our own vulnerability as humans and compassion for others who might be at 80% or 10% of their mental health and energy on any given day.   In this segment, we talk about the importance of psychological safety and active listening in team dynamics.   Self-reflection Question: How often do you enter conversations with the intention of truly understanding rather than solving, and what might you discover if you listened more and advised less? Featured Book of the Week: The Fearless Organization by Amy Edmondson Cristina chose The Fearless Organization by Amy Edmondson as her most influential book because it explains what Scrum Masters see every day but struggle to name. The book provides a mental model for why teams don't speak up and how to influence behavior without forcing it. As Cristina puts it: "She explains why nice teams still fail. Silence is not always alignment and politeness—most of the time, it's distrust." The book repositions the Scrum Master role from someone focused on ceremonies to someone who creates the conditions for psychological safety. It also explains why process alone doesn't fix everything and helps Scrum Masters measure what really matters in a team.   [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends]

Mohini Kissoon: The One Question That Transforms Messengers Into Product Owners The Great Product Owner: The Calm Navigator Who Shields the Team 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.   "He said "no" often, but he did it with such clarity that people respected it. It's not just no—it's giving the reason why." - Mohini Kissoon   Mohini has had the privilege of working with many great Product Owners, but one stood out for his calm demeanor and ability to navigate complex situations. Whatever stakeholders threw at him, he remained professional and calm—and critically, he never transferred that pressure onto the team. He had built strong relationships with stakeholders and was the go-to person who commanded respect across the organization.  When stakeholders demanded features that didn't align with team goals, he would acknowledge the request, explain the trade-offs, and offer to revisit it once the current direction was validated. He said no often, but with such clarity and reasoning that people respected his decisions.  This Product Owner also shielded the team from ad hoc requests, handling stakeholder bypass attempts so developers could maintain focus. He would only bring truly urgent items—like compliance issues—directly to the team.  With his helicopter view, he understood how incoming work would impact different stakeholders and parts of the business. Most importantly, he was a good listener who gave the team space to grow and experiment while challenging them constructively.   Self-reflection Question: When you work with your Product Owner, do they shield the team from chaos or pass it through unfiltered—and how might you help them develop that protective capability? The Bad Product Owner: The Messenger Who Couldn't Say No 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.   "When the team would ask 'why are we building this?' the answer would be 'because sales asked for it.' There was no triaging, no challenging stakeholders—just saying yes." - Mohini Kissoon   Mohini shares a story about a Product Owner who appeared to be doing everything right on paper: attending ceremonies, responding to questions, being present for the team, and working closely with stakeholders. But the team was constantly frustrated with scope creep, and the root cause was that this Product Owner was operating as a messenger, not a decision maker. She would bring requests from stakeholders directly into the backlog with no prioritization based on value and no pushback.  Major new work would appear at sprint planning that hadn't been discussed during backlog refinement. The team was committing to 100 story points but only completing 40, with items constantly carrying over.  When Mohini was brought in to help, she asked one simple question that changed everything: "What is the vision for your product?" The Product Owner couldn't answer—because nobody had ever asked her before.  Mohini ran a product vision workshop with her and key stakeholders, created a one-page strategy identifying target users, core problems, and success metrics, and established a working agreement that backlog items must align with identified goals. She also introduced prioritization sessions involving stakeholders. The transformation came when the Product Owner finally felt equipped to say no with informed reasoning.   Self-reflection Question: Does your Product Owner have a clear product vision they can articulate, and if not, what workshop or conversation could you facilitate to help them discover it?   [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends]

Mohini Kissoon: The Language Test That Reveals True Team Ownership 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.   "When I see my team taking ownership of their work, taking ownership of the Scrum events, asking questions, challenging each other constructively without waiting for me—that's when I know I've done my job." - Mohini Kissoon   Mohini defines success for Scrum Masters through three distinct lenses. First, she looks for teams that take ownership—of their work, of the Scrum events, of asking questions and challenging each other constructively without waiting for her to intervene. When she can observe from the sidelines while the team self-manages, she knows she has shaped the right conditions for them to thrive.  Second, success means having metrics that demonstrate improvement over time: team happiness, flow, and how individuals have grown in their roles. These metrics aren't just for the team—they're for sharing with leadership to show the positive impact created.  Third, and perhaps most importantly, success is about creating psychological safety where team members feel comfortable disagreeing, engaging in healthy conflict, and being creative without taking things personally.  One powerful indicator Mohini uses is the language of the team: do they say "their sprint goal" or "our sprint goal"? This subtle shift from passive to possessive language reveals the true level of ownership the team has developed. It's an easy thing to observe but often missed by Scrum Masters.   Self-reflection Question: Listen carefully in your next sprint planning or daily scrum—does your team use "we" and "our" language, or do they speak about the work as something external to them? Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Timeline Retrospective Mohini finds herself returning to the Timeline retrospective more than any other format, especially when a team has been going through something complex—a difficult sprint, a major release, or a quarterly review with a working group. The format helps people pause and reflect on what has happened before jumping into "what do we change next?" In a physical room, she draws a line on the whiteboard and invites people to add sticky notes for key moments that stood out during the period. In virtual settings, she uses a digital whiteboard. The moments can be good, bad, confusing, or stressful—anything significant. The exercise starts silently, giving everyone space to think without being influenced. Then the team walks through the timeline chronologically, sharing stories behind their notes.  What makes this format powerful is that it creates shared understanding before asking for solutions. Team members often realize that others experienced the same event differently. However, Mohini warns that the timeline can feel overwhelming when you see all the stickies on the board. The key is to build a bridge before jumping to actions: have the team identify patterns, vote on items to discuss further, and only then derive concrete actions from the prioritized items.   [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends]

In this Q&A episode, Eric Naiburg, COO of Scrum.org, is joined by Darrell Fernandes, Executive Advisor at Scrum.org to explore how AI is showing up in Scrum Teams today—and what it really takes to make it valuable.Drawing from questions raised during a recent webinar: Managing Your AI Teammate: Turning AI from Experiment to Strategic Partner, they discuss practical ways teams are using AI as a research assistant, DevOps helper, and development aid. They emphasize why Scrum's iterative mindset is critical for working with AI, especially given how quickly models, capabilities, and limitations evolve.The conversation tackles common misconceptions about AI replacing people, the importance of validating AI outputs, and why teams should consider writing a “job description” for AI to clearly define expectations, measures of success, and accountability. Eric and Darrell also explore how AI may automate some work while creating entirely new roles and opportunities for professionals.This is Part 1 of an ongoing conversation focused on helping Scrum Teams thoughtfully integrate AI while staying grounded in empiricism, collaboration, and value delivery.Key LearningsWhy there is no single model for integrating AI into Scrum—and why experimentation mattersHow Scrum's inspect-and-adapt mindset applies directly to AI usagePractical examples of AI as a research assistant, DevOps helper, and development toolWhy teams must validate AI outputs to manage bias, accuracy, and complianceHow defining a job description for AI helps measure effectiveness and valuWhy AI is better viewed as a teammate or tool, not a replacement for peopleHow AI may eliminate some tasks while creating new roles and opportunitiesLinksWebinar - Managing Your AI Teammate: Turning AI from Experiment to Strategic PartnerWhitepaper - The AI Teammate Framework: A Four-Step Framework for Product Teams

Mohini Kissoon: Beyond the AI Fear—Discovering What Makes Scrum Masters Truly Irreplaceable 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.   "The real challenge isn't whether AI will replace Scrum Masters. It's whether we understand what parts of our work are actually irreplaceable—and whether we're spending our time on those things." - Mohini Kissoon   Mohini is wrestling with a challenge that's coming up repeatedly in conversations with Agile coaches and Scrum Masters: the anxiety around AI and what it means for their role. She hears questions like "Will AI replace Scrum Masters?" but believes we're asking the wrong question. The real challenge is understanding which parts of our work are truly irreplaceable and demonstrating value in those areas.  People might think that AI can generate sprint reports and analyze team metrics—so why do we need Scrum Masters? But what's missing is the human touch: reading the room, sensing unspoken tension, building trust through presence, and asking questions that shift perspectives. Mohini and Vasco explore how the Scrum Master role may have accidentally become defined by process and structure rather than impact on teams.  The solution lies in showing value through concrete metrics—demonstrating improvement in team happiness, flow, cycle time, and lead time. Scrum Masters need to use storytelling and create history that shows the before and after. They should leverage champions from teams they've worked with to share testimonials. We are like diplomats: we work through influence and need allies both inside and outside the team to support our work.   Self-reflection Question: If AI could handle all the administrative and mechanical aspects of your Scrum Master role tomorrow, what would you spend your time doing—and are you already investing enough time in those irreplaceable human elements?   [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends]

Mohini Kissoon: When Politeness Becomes the Enemy of Team Growth—Escaping the Conflict Avoidance Trap 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.   "Conflict isn't the enemy. It's when we're avoiding conflict that it becomes an issue for teams." - Mohini Kissoon   Mohini shares a story about the worst self-destructive pattern she has witnessed: teams that are overly polite to avoid addressing conflicts. She worked with a team that prided themselves on being collaborative and drama-free, but beneath that politeness was a hesitancy to have difficult conversations. It started small—in sprint planning, the Product Owner would propose unrealistic scope, and people would just nod and accept. Someone might say "that's quite ambitious," but no one would actually push back. In retrospectives, feedback was always wrapped in layers of positive framing. When a developer consistently delivered work that didn't meet the Definition of Done, no one called it out directly—they just quietly fixed it or worked around it. After three months, side conversations started emerging where people would pull Mohini aside to share concerns they would never voice in the room. The team was skipping the storming phase of the Tuckman model, and this avoidance eventually led to missed deadlines and frustrated stakeholders. The key learning: healthy conflict brings the energy teams need to innovate and grow.   In this segment, we talk about the Tuckman model and why the storming phase is essential for team development.   Self-reflection Question: Is your team's harmony genuine collaboration, or is it a facade hiding unspoken frustrations that will eventually surface at the worst possible moment? Featured Book of the Week: Turn the Ship Around by David Marquet Mohini discovered Turn the Ship Around by David Marquet at a time when she was working with multiple teams and feeling exhausted from being the person everyone looked to for answers. She thought that's what servant leadership meant, but she was actually creating dependency rather than capability. The book tells the story of how Marquet took command of the worst-performing submarine in the US Navy and transformed it into the best by fundamentally changing how leadership worked. "Instead of the traditional leader-follower model, he built a leader-to-leader structure where everyone was expected to think, decide, and own their work," Mohini explains.  The key insight was that we don't just empower teams—we need to build an environment where they can grow and don't need permission to excel. This shifted Mohini's approach: instead of saying "here's what I think we should do," she started asking "what have you tried so far? What do you intend to do next?" The book also emphasizes that pushing decision-making down requires providing the knowledge and context teams need to make good decisions.   [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends]

Mohini Kissoon: How to Break the Cycle of Dominant Personalities in Agile Teams 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.   "I confused silence with agreement. My silence as a facilitator had been giving the wrong impression to the team: that this kind of dynamic is acceptable." - Mohini Kissoon   In her first year as a Scrum Master, Mohini was full of energy and deeply committed to doing Scrum by the book. She had just earned her certification and joined a mid-sized product team where a senior developer—let's call him Tom—was brilliant but quite dominant. In every session, Tom would speak first, speak longest, and often override the ideas of junior developers. Mohini noticed this pattern but didn't intervene, assuming that Tom's experience and the others' silence meant agreement. Over several sprints, stand-ups became reporting sessions to Tom rather than collaborative planning. Junior developers gradually stopped offering ideas in fear of being shut down. When Mohini finally reached out to the team members individually, one of them was even considering leaving the organization—they felt like "just a cog in the machine." This was the wake-up call Mohini needed. She realized she had been focusing intensely on the mechanics while missing the human dynamics entirely. The solution came through coaching Tom on active listening and introducing facilitation techniques like silent brainstorming and round-robin sharing, giving everyone the opportunity to contribute without being influenced.   Self-reflection Question: When you observe dominant voices silencing others on your team, do you intervene immediately, or do you wait to see if the situation resolves itself—and what does that choice cost your team?   [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends]

I made a VERY controversial Podcast Episode on January 1st and I think people may have completely missed it! There will be 3 CRAZY-BIG changes happening on the Agile Landscape in 2026:

Carmela Then: Why Teams Hate Agile (And How to Change That) 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.   "They just hate it. They absolutely hate it. They had Agile fatigue." - Carmela Then   Carmela describes what success looks like for a Scrum Master, and her answer might surprise you. Years ago, she might have pointed to metrics like cycle time. Today, she measures success by whether teams embrace Agile and Scrum rather than resent it.  She joined a team that was exhausted and bitter—their previous Scrum Master had been a micromanaging project manager in disguise. Stories were broken into disconnected tasks: one for development, one for testing, with no relationship between them. At the end of a sprint, nobody could answer whether something actually worked in production. The team hated Agile with a passion.  Carmela approached them differently—not as a threatening authority figure, but as a humble business analyst there to help. She let the Product Owner vent his frustrations about Agile in a retrospective.  Then, without preaching, she simply showed them another way: how to break down features properly, how to create end-to-end visibility, how to write stories that delivered actual value. Slowly, the team began to experience what Agile was meant to feel like. They stopped being "task deliverers" and started becoming value creators. The transformation wasn't overnight, but the result was a team that finally understood—and even appreciated—why Agile works.   Self-reflection Question: If you asked your team whether they love or hate Agile, what would they say—and are you brave enough to ask? Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Emotional Seismograph Carmela recommends the Emotional Seismograph as her go-to retrospective format. The setup is simple but powerful: create a graph with the sprint days on the horizontal axis and emotion levels on the vertical (happy at the top, sad at the bottom). Each team member draws a line showing how they felt throughout the sprint. The visual result is striking—and the conversations it triggers are invaluable. Carmela focuses on the extremes: moments of great happiness and moments of stress. She has team members add sticky notes to explain those peaks and valleys, allowing common themes to emerge. Her philosophy is that positive emotions drive productivity: "When the team is having a positive experience throughout their workday, they're actually more productive. Stress is the silent killer—it makes people sick, takes them out physically and mentally, and people will just quit." By putting a finger on the emotional pulse of the team, Scrum Masters can identify what to continue doing and what needs to change to lift the team into a better experience.   [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends]

Carmela Then: When Remote Teams Stop Listening—The Silent Killer of Agile Collaboration 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.   "Two minutes into it, my mind's starting to wander and I started to do my own thing." - Carmela Then   Carmela paints a vivid picture of a distributed team stretched across Sydney, New Zealand, India, and beyond—a team where communication had quietly become the enemy of progress. The warning signs were subtle at first: in meetings with 20 people on the call, only two or three would speak for the entire hour or two, with no visual aids, no PowerPoints, no drawings. The result? Within minutes, attention drifted, and everyone assumed someone else understood the message.  The speakers believed their ideas had landed; the listeners had already tuned out. This miscommunication compounded sprint after sprint until, just two months before go-live, the team was still discussing proof of concept. Trust eroded completely, and the Product Owner resorted to micromanagement—tracking developers by the hour, turning what was supposed to be an Agile team into a waterfall nightmare. Carmela points to a critical missing element: the Scrum Master had been assigned delivery management duties, leaving no one to address the communication dysfunction.  The lesson is clear—in remote, cross-cultural teams, you cannot simply talk your way through complex ideas; you need visual anchors, shared artifacts, and constant verification that understanding has truly been achieved.   In this segment, we talk about the importance of visual communication in remote teams and psychological safety.   Self-reflection Question: How do you verify that your message has truly landed with every team member, especially when working across time zones and cultures? Featured Book of the Week: How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie Carmela recommends How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, a timeless classic that remains essential reading for every Scrum Master. As Carmela explains, "We work with people—customers are people, and our team, they are human beings as well. Whether we want it or not, we are leaders, we are coaches, and sometimes we could even be mentors." Written during the Great Depression and predating software entirely, this book emphasizes that relationships and understanding people are the foundation of personal and professional success. Carmela was first introduced to the book by a successful person outside of work who advised her not just to read it once, but to revisit it every year. For Scrum Masters navigating team dynamics, stakeholder relationships, and the human side of Agile, Carnegie's principles remain as relevant today as they were nearly a century ago.   [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends]

The Future of the Scrum Master Role In 2026The Death of the Ceremony ManagerAI Won't Replace You — But It Will Replace the Version of You That Stops LearningThe Role Shifts from “Team-Level Support” to “Delivery System Architect”The Rise of the “Hybrid Delivery Leader”The End of Framework FundamentalismA New Career Ladder EmergesThe Future Scrum Master Is a Culture EngineerWhat Gets Left BehindHow to connect with AgileDad:- [website] ⁠https://www.agiledad.com/⁠- [instagram] ⁠https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/⁠- [facebook] ⁠https://www.facebook.com/RealAgileDad/⁠- [Linkedin] ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/leehenson/

Carmela Then: The Scrum Master Who Learned That Perfect Boards Don't Build Perfect Teams 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.   "The failure part is, instead of leading the team to work toward a common vision, I was probably one of the persons that helped the divide." - Carmela Then   Carmela shares a vulnerable story from her first Scrum Master role at a bank. Armed with training, certifications, and the ability to build a beautiful physical Scrum board with perfectly straight lines, she believed she was ready to lead. But Carmela quickly discovered a crucial truth: mastering the mechanics of Scrum is vastly different from serving a team's real needs. Instead of showing up as a humble learner willing to grow alongside her team, she put on a facade of competence and confidence.  When two Product Owners began fighting for dominance, rather than stepping back and focusing the teams on their shared purpose, Carmela found herself drawn into the political battle, supporting one PO over the other. The result was devastating—a toxic environment where one PO was demoted, and talented team members left the organization entirely. Looking back, Carmela recognizes that her failure wasn't about the Scrum board or ceremonies; it was about not putting the customer and common goals at the center. She learned that Scrum Masters must lead with humility, focus on outcomes rather than egos, and help teams unite rather than divide.   In this episode, we refer to John C. Maxwell and Failing Forward by John C. Maxwell.   Self-reflection Question: When was the last time you prioritized looking competent over truly serving your team's needs, and what did that cost you?   [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends]

Steve Martin: Coaching Product Owners to Be the Voice of the Customer In this episode, we refer to Henrik Kniberg's "Product Owner in a Nutshell" video and Product Ownership by Geoff Watts. The Great Product Owner: Rob Gard's Customer Obsession 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.   "The role of the PO really is to help the team empathize with the user, the customer of the product, because that's how they can develop great solutions." - Steve Martin   Rob Gard worked at a fintech firm and is now CPO of a major fintech company. Steve describes him as having a brilliant mind and being a real agileist—someone Steve learned a huge amount about Agile from. Rob's defining characteristic was his absolute obsession with the user. Everything focused on customer pain points. Working with engineering teams serving military customers, Rob held regular workshops with those customers to understand their pain firsthand. He was literally the voice of the customer, not theoretically but practically. Rob pushed and challenged teams to be more innovative, always looking for better ways of providing better software. His gift was communication—specifically, briefing the team on the problem rather than just reading out stories in refinement sessions. This is the anti-pattern many Product Owners fall into: going through the motions, reading requirements without context. Real product ownership, as Rob demonstrated, is telling a story that helps the team empathize and understand the pain. When teams can internalize customer problems, they develop better solutions. Rob's ability to communicate the problem into the minds of teams enabled them to serve customers more effectively. This is the essence of great Product Ownership: not being a proxy for management, not juggling multiple teams, but being deeply connected to customer pain and translating that pain into context the team can work with.   Self-reflection Question: Do your refinement sessions tell stories that help the team empathize with customer pain, or do you just read out requirements? The Bad Product Owner: Proxies for Management Instead of Customer Advocates 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.   "They weren't a team, they were a group of individuals working on multiple different projects." - Vasco Duarte   Steve emphasizes that Product Owners often have great intentions but struggle due to lack of training and coaching. The anti-patterns are systemic: commercial managers "dressed up" as Product Owners without understanding the role. Project managers transitioning to PO roles—though Steve notes PMs can make really good POs with proper support. The most damaging pattern is Product Owners spread across multiple teams, having very little time to focus on any single team or their customers. These POs become proxies—representing the voice of senior management rather than the voice of the customer. They cascade requirements downward instead of bringing customer insights upward. The solution isn't to criticize these struggling Product Owners but to help them understand their role and see what good looks like. Steve recommends Henrik Kniberg's "Product Owner in a Nutshell" video—15 minutes, 15 years old, still profoundly relevant. He also points to Product Ownership by Geoff Watts and formal training like CSPO or IC Agile Product Ownership courses. The fundamental issue is meeting Product Owners where they are, providing coaching and support to transform them from management proxies into customer advocates. When POs understand their role as empathy builders between customers and teams, everything changes.   Self-reflection Question: Is your Product Owner the voice of senior management or the voice of the customer?   [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends]

Steve Martin: Making Scrum Master Success Visible with OKRs That Actually Work 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 is not the retrospective that is the success of the retrospective. It is the ownership and accountability where you take improvements after the session." - Steve Martin   The biggest problem for Scrum Masters isn't just defining success—it's being able to shout it from the rooftops with tangible evidence. Steve champions OKRs as an amazing way to define and measure success, but with a critical caveat: they've historically been poorly written and implemented in dark rooms by executives, then cascaded down to teams who never bought in. Steve's approach is radically different. Create OKRs collectively with the team, stakeholders, and end users. Start by focusing on the pain—what problems or pain points do customers, users, and stakeholders actually experience? Make the objective the goal to solve that problem, then define how to measure progress with key results. When everyone is bought in—Scrum Master, engineers, Product Owner, stakeholders, leaders—all pulling in the same direction, magic happens. Make progress visible on the wall like a speedometer, showing exactly where you are at any moment. For an e-commerce checkout, the problem might be too many steps. The objective: reduce pain for users checking out quickly. The baseline: 15 steps today. The target: 5 clicks in three months. Everyone can see the dial moving. Everything should focus on the customer as the endpoint. The challenge is distinguishing between targets imposed from above ("increase sales by 10%") and objectives created collaboratively based on factors the team can actually control. Find what you can control first, work with customers to understand their pain, and start from there.   Self-reflection Question: Can you articulate your team's success with specific, measurable outcomes that everyone—from developers to executives—understands and owns? Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Post-Retro Actions and Ownership The success of a retrospective isn't the retrospective itself—it's what happens after. Steve emphasizes that ownership and accountability matter more than the format of the session. Take improvements from the retrospective and bring them into the sprint as user stories with clear structure: this is the problem, how we'll solve it, and how we'll measure impact. Assign collective ownership—not just a single person, but the whole team owns the improvement. Then bring improvements into the demo so the team showcases what changed. This creates cultural transformation: the team themselves want to bring improvements, not just because the Scrum Master pushed them. For ongoing impediments, conduct root cause analysis. Create a system to escalate issues beyond the team's control—make these visible on another board or with the leadership team. Find peers in pain: teams with the same problems can work together collectively. The retrospective format matters less than this system of ownership, action, measurement, and visibility. Stop retrospective theatre—going through the motions without taking action. Make improvements real by treating them like any other work: visible, measured, owned, and demonstrated.   [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends]

Steve Martin: Why Agile Fatigue Means We Need to Change Our Approach 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.   "We teach transformation, we support transformation, we help change, but we don't really understand what they're changing from." - Steve Martin   Steve believes Agile as a whole is on the back foot, possibly regressing. There's palpable fatigue in the industry, and transformation in its current form hasn't been the success we hoped. Organizations still need to work in a state of agility—making rapid decisions, aligning teams, delivering value at pace—but they're exhausted by how we've implemented Agile. As Agile professionals, Steve argues, we have a responsibility to take stock and reflect on what's not working. The problem isn't that organizations don't need agility; it's that we've been force-feeding them frameworks without understanding their context. Steve invokes an ancient principle: "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear." But we haven't waited for readiness—we've barged in with Big Bang transformations, bringing 10, 15, or 20 Agile coaches to "save the world." The solution requires meeting people where they are, understanding what they're changing from, not just what they're changing to. Steve's coaching conversation centers on a radical idea: stop trying to help teams that don't want to be helped. Focus on teams already interested in incremental, adaptable delivery. Run small pilots, learn what works, then scale when ready. The age of prescriptive transformation is over. We need to adapt to the reality of the moment, experiment with what works, and have the courage to change the plan when our approach isn't working.   Self-reflection Question: Are you forcing Agile on teams that aren't ready, or are you working with those who genuinely want to improve their delivery approach?   [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends]

Steve Martin: When a Distributed Team's Energy Vanishes into the Virtual Void 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.   "They weren't a team, they were a group of individuals working on multiple different projects." - Vasco Duarte (describing Steve's team situation)   The infrastructure team looked promising on paper: Product Owner in Italy, hardware engineers in Budapest, software engineers in Bucharest, designers in the UK. The team started with energy and enthusiasm, but within a month, something shifted. People stopped showing up for daily stand-ups. Cameras went dark during meetings. Engagement in retrospectives withered. This wasn't just about being distributed—plenty of teams work across time zones successfully. The problem ran deeper. The Scrum Master had a conflict of interest, serving dual roles as both facilitator and engineer. Team members were simultaneously juggling three or four other projects, treating this work as just another item on an impossibly long list. Steve spent a couple of months watching the deterioration before recognizing the root cause: there was no leadership sponsorship or buy-in. Stakeholders weren't invested. The team wasn't actually a team—they were individuals happening to work on the same project. Steve considers this a failure because he couldn't solve it. Sometimes, the absence of organizational support creates an unsolvable puzzle. Without leadership commitment, even the most skilled Scrum Master can't manufacture the conditions for team success.   In this episode, we refer to The Phoenix Project by Gene Kim, a book about organizational culture disguised as a DevOps novel.   Self-reflection Question: Is your team truly dedicated to one mission, or are they a collection of individuals spread across competing priorities? Featured Book of the Week: The Phoenix Project by Gene Kim "There's a lot of good lightning bulb moments that go off." - Steve Martin   Steve describes The Phoenix Project as a book about culture, not just DevOps. Written like a novel following a mock company, it creates continuous light bulb moments for readers. The book resonated deeply with Steve because it exposed patterns he'd experienced firsthand—particularly the anti-pattern of single points of failure. Steve had worked with an engineer who would spend entire weekends doing releases, holding everything in his head, then burning out and taking three days off to recover. This engineer was the bottleneck, the single point of failure that put the entire system at risk. The Phoenix Project illuminates how knowledge hoarding and dependency on individuals creates organizational fragility. The solution isn't just technical—it's cultural. Teams need to share knowledge and understanding, deliberately de-risking the concentration of expertise in one person's mind. Steve recommends this book for anyone trying to understand why organizational transformation requires more than process changes—it demands a fundamental shift in how teams think about knowledge, risk, and collaboration.   [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends]

Steve Martin: When the Gospel of Agile Becomes a Barrier to Change 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 took me a while to realize that that's what I was doing. I felt the reason wasn't working was them, it wasn't me." - Steve Martin   Steve carried the Scrum Guide like a Bible in his early days as an Agile coach. He was a purist—convinced he had an army of Agile practitioners behind him, ready to transform every team he encountered. When teams questioned his approach, he would shut down the conversation: "Don't challenge me on this, because this is how it's supposed to be." But pushing against the tide and spreading the gospel created something unexpected: resistance. The more Steve insisted on his purist view, the more teams pushed back. It took him a couple of years to recognize the pattern. The problem wasn't the teams refusing to change—it was his approach. Steve's breakthrough came when he started teaching and realized he needed to meet people where they are, not force them to come to him. Like understanding a customer's needs, he learned to build empathy with teams, Product Owners, and leaders. He discovered the power of creating personas for the people he was coaching, understanding their context before prescribing solutions. The hardest part wasn't learning this lesson—it was being honest about his failures and admitting that his righteous certainty had been the real impediment to transformation.   Self-reflection Question: Are you meeting your teams where they are, or are you pushing them toward where you think they should be?   [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends]

Finding Your Fit as a ScrumMasterHere's something nobody told me when I started as a Scrum Master: the most important interview isn't the one where they ask you about impediment removal or sprint velocity.It's the one you have with yourself.Everyone talks about whether you're a good fit for the role. But what about whether the environment is a good fit for you?How to connect with AgileDad:- [website] ⁠https://www.agiledad.com/⁠- [instagram] ⁠https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/⁠- [facebook] ⁠https://www.facebook.com/RealAgileDad/⁠- [Linkedin] ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/leehenson/

Natalia Curusi: From Spreadsheets to Discovery—Helping POs Make the Transition The Great Product Owner: Taking Ownership and Coaching the Team Forward 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.   "That person was not just a great product owner, but a great coach—he had excellent communication and stakeholder management skills, and he coached myself as a Scrum Master, showing me how product ownership should look like." - Natalia Curusi   Natalia worked with a Product Owner who embodied everything the role should be. He didn't come from a technical background, but he possessed exceptional domain knowledge, outstanding communication skills, and stakeholder management expertise you rarely find in one person. What made him truly remarkable was that he coached everyone around him, including Natalia as the Scrum Master.  He demonstrated full empowerment and ownership—making decisions himself rather than constantly escalating to higher management. When risks needed to be taken, he took them with courage and conviction. The team trusted him completely because he balanced business needs with team capacity, always understanding what they could realistically achieve. Over the past five years, this person has been promoted multiple times and now serves as a global director of product, still with the same company.  When Natalia thinks about what great product ownership looks like, she thinks of him—someone who combined technical understanding with coaching ability, took genuine ownership of outcomes, and empowered the team through clear vision and decisive leadership. These are exactly the skills that are hardest to find in the market, yet when you find them, the impact is transformative for the entire organization.   Self-reflection Question: Does your Product Owner take ownership and make decisions, or do they constantly escalate to higher management, preventing the team from moving forward with confidence? The Bad Product Owner: Assigned Without Training, Support, or Willingness "She was a great subject matter expert with deep domain knowledge, but the organization assigned her the product owner role without her willingness, without training, and while she was already 80% loaded with other responsibilities." - Natalia Curusi   Natalia encountered a Product Owner anti-pattern that reveals a systemic organizational failure. The person was an exceptional subject matter expert with incredible domain knowledge, but when the organization decided to adopt Agile, they assigned her the PO role like sticking a label on a box—no training, no consent, no preparation. She was already working at 80% capacity on other responsibilities and had no understanding of what product ownership meant. Frustrated and overwhelmed, she approached the role from a command-and-control mindset. At the project start, she brought a massive spreadsheet of requirements, expecting the team to implement them sequentially.  The team tried a different approach, wanting to understand problems before discussing solutions, but the PO surprised everyone by re-introducing the spreadsheet in a later meeting—a clear sign of misalignment and broken trust. Natalia, recognizing this was a battle she couldn't win without organizational support, chose to manage the relationship rather than create open conflict. She worked to mediate between the PO's spreadsheet approach and the team's need for discovery and iterative development. The real anti-pattern wasn't the individual—it was the organization assigning critical roles without providing training, time, or psychological safety. This situation illustrates why product ownership fails: not from bad people, but from bad systems that set people up to fail.   Self-reflection Question: When you see a struggling Product Owner, are you addressing the individual's behavior or the systemic conditions that set them up to fail in the first place?   [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends]

Natalia Curusi: Measuring What Matters Beyond Velocity and Story Points 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.   "We as Scrum Masters need to put a scope for ourselves—we need to aim to leave the place where we work a little bit better than it was, and to make sure that this place could improve itself without us." - Natalia Curusi   Natalia defines success for Scrum Masters with crystal clarity: leave the organization better than you found it, and ensure it can continue improving when you're gone. This means fostering independence and ownership in teams so they can perform whether you're on vacation, in another meeting, or have moved to coaching other teams.  The opposite pattern—where everything falls apart when the Scrum Master isn't present—reveals someone who hasn't truly succeeded in the role. Natalia also emphasizes the importance of establishing metrics early, but not the traditional ones.  Using velocity as a metric is an anti-pattern that focuses teams on the wrong outcomes. Instead, she recommends metrics like predictability, team morale, psychological safety measured through 360 feedback, and the quality of conversations both within teams and with stakeholders. But metrics alone don't tell the story.  Natalia champions the concept of Gemba walks—going to see what's actually happening, talking to people, observing the reality rather than just reviewing dashboard numbers. Some metrics are easily gamed, others provide only narrow perspectives on reality. The most important practice is using metrics to trigger reflection and adaptation, not as fixed targets. Natalia believes strongly that the quality of conversations—how teams discuss options, make decisions together, and adapt when facing pressure—reveals more about a Scrum Master's success than any velocity chart ever could. The ultimate question: can your team succeed without you?   Self-reflection Question: If you disappeared from your team tomorrow, would they continue improving, or would progress stop until someone replaced you? Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Spotify Squad Health Check "This is a multidimensional retro that I run with teams every 2 to 3 months—you need around 30 minutes for it, and I often get insights and new ideas from this retrospective that help me as a Scrum Master." - Natalia Curusi   The Spotify Squad Health Check is Natalia's favorite retrospective format because it provides a comprehensive view of team health across multiple dimensions. Unlike traditional retrospectives that might focus on a single sprint or specific issue, this format examines the team's overall state across areas like teamwork, support, mission clarity, and technical quality. Teams rate themselves on various health indicators, creating a visual representation that reveals patterns over time.  What makes this particularly valuable is that it works whether you know the team well or are just starting with them—either way, you gain insights and "aha moments" about where the team truly stands. The multidimensional nature prevents teams from optimizing just one aspect while neglecting others, and the regular cadence (every 2-3 months) allows you to track trends and celebrate improvements.  For Natalia, this format consistently surfaces the hidden challenges that teams might not raise in regular retrospectives, making it an essential tool in her Scrum Master toolkit.   [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends]