Cycle time 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.

Joshua McDonald: The Distributed Agile Team That Hid Problems Behind Follow-Up Stories

“They started to separate and call each other out, which is definitely not Agile.” – Joshua McDonald

Joshua shares the story of a 17-person distributed team spread across time zones, cultures, and communication styles. Some team members were direct and ready to challenge problems in public. Others preferred quieter, one-on-one conversations.

Over time, those differences created a blame environment where people stopped asking for help and started hiding problems. Long-running work was closed and replaced with follow-up stories, then part two, then part three, until the real issue disappeared under Jira housekeeping.

The result was not better flow, but delayed learning, missed upskilling opportunities, and a stressful team environment where quieter people stopped speaking in standups and retrospectives. Joshua explains what he would do differently now: split the team by communication patterns, listen to what each group needs, act as a mediator, and only bring the whole group together once people feel heard.

In this segment, we talk about different communication styles.

Self-reflection Question: What signals tell you that people are hiding problems because the team environment does not feel safe enough?

Featured Book of the Week: Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi

Joshua recommends Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi because it reframed networking as a relationship practice, not a transaction. The book helped him see that staying connected with people creates learning, support, and a safety net over time.

He also mentions the Bible as a daily source for reflecting on respect, peace, and conflict resolution, especially because Scrum Masters often need more than process knowledge to help teams work well together. For Joshua, both recommendations point to the same deeper idea: our work improves when we treat relationships as something to maintain before we urgently need them.

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

About Joshua McDonald

You can link with Joshua McDonald on LinkedIn.

Christian Thordal: How “Fake Kanban” Fooled the Metrics, And What This Agile Coach Did to Fix It

“The team was like birds in a nest waiting to get fed — completely dependent on the PO for every piece of work.” – Christian Thordal

Christian tells us about a team that always appeared busy but was hiding serious dysfunction behind a single healthy metric. When he rated the system across his domain, he found the team scored low in process maturity, effectiveness, and learning — yet their cycle time looked good.

The team claimed to practice Kanban, but in reality it meant “we can do whatever we want.” Daily standups had become social check-ins. The backlog held over 100 items to do and 50+ in progress, most of them just headlines with no descriptions. Real work assignments happened through 30-minute Slack huddles between the PO and individual developers — pure push, no prioritization.

Despite having OKRs, the team could only plan a week ahead. Christian’s fix was radical: he restarted the backlog entirely, cutting 150 items down to roughly 30, established WIP limits to create a pull-based system, and brought the team into the process as active participants rather than passive recipients.

In this segment, we refer to Kanban and OKRs.

Self-reflection Question: When was the last time you looked beyond a single “green” metric to understand what was really happening in your team’s workflow?

Featured Book of the Week: Turn the Ship Around by David Marquet

Christian recommends Turn the Ship Around by David Marquet, a former U.S. Navy submarine commander who transformed his crew’s performance by replacing permission-seeking with intent-based leadership. Instead of waiting for orders, crew members were expected to say “I intend to…” — transferring ownership and making people accountable for their decisions.

Christian says this deeply resonated with his own military background in the Danish Army, where leadership operated on similar principles. The book’s core message — stop creating dependency and start building leaders at every level — connects directly to the team story in this episode, where passive dependency on the PO was the root of the dysfunction.

You can also listen to previous episodes with David Marquet and explore more on intent-based leadership.

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

About Christian Thordal

Christian Thordal is a former Danish Army officer turned Agile Coach. He works with leaders and teams to create clarity, accountability, and momentum in complex organizations. His approach blends military leadership principles with modern product development, helping organizations move from discussion and strategy to real execution and measurable results.

You can link with Christian Thordal on LinkedIn.

Karina Margole: Helping a DevOps Team Regain Focus, and More Control of Their Work

In this episode, Karina shares a case study of leading an Agile transformation within a DevOps/Infrastructure team. By dividing responsibilities between handling immediate requests and long-term projects, the team found a balance. To help adoption of their process by their users, they introduced QR codes for request submissions, making the process engaging and user-friendly. How can you streamline incoming requests while maintaining long-term project focus for DevOps teams? Discover practical tips for managing change and improving team workflow.

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About Karina Margole

Karina Margole is an Agile Coach with over a decade of experience, based in the UK. She has ADHD and a passion for creating an environment where everyone can do their best work. Karina approaches her work with a holistic, systemic view while also paying attention to individuals on a personal level.
You can link with Karina Margole on LinkedIn.

Kevin Hoey: Two Scrum Master Critical Tasks: Measuring Value Delivery in Agile Teams, And Aligning With Stakeholders

When it comes to success for scrum masters, Kevin focuses on people-centric approaches, continuous improvement, and value delivery. He emphasizes aligning with stakeholders’ goals and measuring outcomes. Kevin discusses the importance of having a product roadmap and vision, conducting health checks, and striving for daily improvement. Removing unnecessary steps and making processes more efficient are key to achieving better outcomes for the team and the business.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Order Stories by Cycle Time

Kevin emphasizes the necessity of retrospectives, especially for teams that claim to be too busy. He discusses the anti-pattern of avoiding retros, highlighting the benefits of examining sprint goals and reinforcing what works well. Kevin suggests periodically reviewing stories by cycle time to identify and address delays, ensuring continuous improvement in handling challenging tasks.

Kevin also shares two other retrospective formats. Starting with the simple: just do a retro, and talk; and he also recommends another simple format: “Did we meet our Sprint goal? Why/Why not?”

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About Kevin Hoey

Kevin is the lead scrum master at Domestic and General, with 10 years’ experience in project management before moving into scrum mastery. He now heads up a team of scrum masters, whilst continuing to support his own squads. Kevin believes scrum masters need to focus on self-improvement to turbocharge their ability to better support teams and the wider business on the journey to effectiveness.

You can link with Kevin Hoey on LinkedIn.