circles and soup retrospective Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Catherine Kraus: Effective improvement – helping teams accept what can’t be changed, and focus on what can!

Catherine likes to use a metaphor to picture what success looks like for a Scrum Master. She describes the Scrum Master work, as that of a look-out on a ship. A person who is constantly paying attention to what is happening on, and around the ship. In that position, Scrum Masters are perfectly placed to understand what is emerging, but rely on others to tackle the challenges the team faces.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Control / Influence / Accept circles, helping teams accept what can’t be changed, and focus on what can!

When a team is playing the victim, complaining, but not taking action, this format helps them understand what they can influence. But it also helps them understand what they need to accept, and move on! The Control / Influence / Accept retrospective is similar to the Circles and Soup retrospective that we’ve presented on the podcast before.

In this segment, we refer to the book The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People by Covey.

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About Catherine Kraus

As a Scrum Master & Team Coach, Catherine Kraus inspires and galvanizes others into action with her playful and pragmatic approach. She works with organizations to build happier, healthier teams with purpose. She has over 15 years experience leading various transformation and change management projects in IT, Finance, HR & Marketing.

You can link with Catherine Kraus on LinkedIn.

Rob Cooper: How Scrum Masters can adapt their definition of success to the team they work with

The Scrum Master role is not always easy to define, and in this episode, we discuss how that makes it hard to define success. Despite that, Rob shares his definition of success, and how he adapts his success definition to accommodate the situation of the team he works with.

In this segment, we also refer to the idea/concept of Kaizen: Continuous Improvement.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: The Soup Technique

In this segment, we talk about several possible retrospective formats. We start by discussing Themed Retrospectives and how they can be effective for teams, and we end up tackling one of the biggest obstacles to getting value out of Agile Retrospectives: focusing on things outside the control of the team. We discuss “The Circles and Soup” technique by Diana Larsen, which helps teams focus on the obstacles they have control over, and reach out for help on the items they don’t have control over.

About Rob Cooper

Rob is a Lead Agile Coach at Sainsbury’s, focusing on how the whole business uses Agility. Rob is an experienced Agile Coach at Enterprise, leadership, and team levels. In this career, he worked with change in organizations using a range of frameworks, including Scrum, Kanban, SAFe & LeSS approaches. He’s experienced in program & Project Management and has helped multiple teams transition from waterfall to Agile.

You can link with Rob Cooper on LinkedIn.