bottlenecks Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Joshua McDonald: Using Cycle Time As A Storyteller, Not A Scorecard In Agile Retrospectives

“Metrics is not about telling people do better. It’s about telling that story.” – Joshua McDonald

Joshua brings cycle time as his biggest current coaching challenge. The problem is familiar: when a Scrum Master points to a story with high cycle time, developers can feel blamed, even when the intent is learning. Joshua reframes the metric as a storyteller.

Instead of asking why someone took too long, he asks what journey the story went through, where it changed hands, where it waited, and what the team now knows that it did not know at the start. He also describes practical tactics: warn people in advance before discussing specific stories, keep the language gentle, avoid forcing people to explain themselves publicly, and sometimes skip the metric conversation entirely when the team needs encouragement more than analysis.

Metrics matter because they move coaching away from gut feeling and toward observable patterns. Used well, cycle time becomes a barometer for stress, bottlenecks, missing product owner review, and places where the team needs support.

Self-reflection Question: How do you introduce metrics so the team becomes curious about the system instead of defensive about individual performance?

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About Joshua McDonald

Joshua is endlessly curious about better ways of working. He helps teams grow by blending experimentation, creativity, and AI with practical coaching. When a meeting feels routine, he’s already testing a new approach to make it more valuable. Energetic and inventive, he turns everyday collaboration into opportunities for team growth.

You can link with Joshua McDonald on LinkedIn.

Renee Troughton: Managing Dependencies and Downstream Bottlenecks in Scrum

“For the actual product teams, it’s not a problem for them… It’s more the downstream teams that aren’t the product teams, that are still dependencies… They just don’t see that work until, hey, we urgently need this.” – Renee Troughton

Renee brings a dual-edged challenge from her current work with dozens of teams across multiple business lines. While quarterly planning happens at a high level, small downstream teams—middleware, AI, data, and even non-technical teams like legal—are not considered in the planning process. These teams experience unexpected work floods with dramatic peaks and troughs throughout the quarter. The product teams are comfortable with ambiguity and incremental delivery, but downstream service teams don’t see work coming until it arrives urgently. Through a coaching conversation, Renee and Vasco explore multiple experimental approaches: top-to-bottom stack ranking of initiatives, holding excess capacity based on historical patterns, shared code ownership where downstream teams advise rather than execute changes, and using Theory of Constraints to manage flow into bottleneck teams. They discuss how lack of discovery work compounds the problem, as teams “just start working” without identifying all players who need involvement. The solution requires balancing multiple strategies while maintaining an experimentation mindset, recognizing that complex systems require sensing our way toward solutions rather than predicting them.

Self-reflection Question: Are you actively managing the flow of work to prevent downstream bottlenecks, or are you allowing your “downstream teams” to be repeatedly overwhelmed by last-minute urgent requests?

Transform Your Agile Teams with Hard-Earned Lessons from Super-Experienced Scrum Masters

About Renee Troughton

Renee is one of the most experienced Agile coaches in the Southern Hemisphere with over two decades of transformation experience across banking, insurance, pharma, and real estate. Since 2002, she’s helped organizations go digital, tackle systemic issues, and deliver value faster. Passionate about cutting bureaucracy, Renee champions a return to humanity at work.

Follow Renee’s work at AgileForest.com, her website as well as her work on the Agile Revolution podcast.

You can link with Renee Troughton on LinkedIn.

Jelena Vucinic: The Pitfalls of Relying on Key Individuals in Agile Teams

In this episode, Jelena discusses a team of six that became heavily reliant on two highly capable individuals. Their eagerness to deliver results quickly created a bottleneck, as the two individuals began to own critical components of the project. Over time, this led to increased pressure and eventual conflict. Jelena reflects on how to manage situations where individuals may unintentionally dominate the team’s workflow, and how team dynamics can be affected when key members are overburdened.

Self-reflection Question: How can you identify and address over-dependence on key individuals in your team? Leave your answer in the comments, let’s get this conversation started!

Featured Book of the Week: Dare to Lead by Brené Brown

Jelena recommends Dare to Lead by Brené Brown, a book that encourages leaders to adopt a courageous, growth-oriented mindset. The focus is on leading with empathy and vulnerability, showing up for your teams, and creating a supportive environment that helps foster collaboration and creativity. Jelena finds this book valuable as it aligns with her belief that empathetic leadership leads to better outcomes and a stronger connection within teams.

About Jelena Vucinic
Jelena is a self-conscious perfectionist and an everlasting optimist. She is deeply curious about the way people interact. After listening attentively, she likes to ask open questions that often help to reflect and improve collaboration. Jelena believes that every single person makes a difference, and she is dedicated to helping teams and leaders unlock their potential.
You can link with Jelena Vucinic on LinkedIn.