retrospective facilitation Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Aria Omidvar: The Many Layers to Scrum Master Success

Aria explores the layers of success for Scrum Masters, highlighting the transformation of team culture. He assesses success through the lens of team self-reliance, self-organization, and ownership of work. Aria’s metric for success involves equipping teams with tools and practices that enable them to effectively carry out their responsibilities. This episode offers valuable insights into the multifaceted nature of success in the role of a Scrum Master.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Making Retrospectives Clearly Different From Other Meetings and Work

Aria shares his preferred retrospective format, emphasizing the importance of a distinct mindset for this higher-order team work. He advocates for creativity and mindfulness, aiming to set retrospectives apart from regular team activities with a specific format he shares in this episode. Aria offers practical tips such as note-taking, root cause analysis, and solution brainstorming during discussions. He underscores the value of critical thinking, focusing on root causes, and showing the path to solutions. Aria’s approach promotes effective retrospectives as a catalyst for meaningful team improvement.

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About Aria Omidvar

Aria has 4+ years of experience serving as Scrum Master, Product Owner, and Agile Coach (CSM, A-CSM, CSPO) from single teams to multiple teams and the whole software organization. He’s a Software Engineer turned Software Developer turned Peopleware Developer and Agilist.

You can link with Aria Omidvar on LinkedIn and connect with Aria Omidvar on Twitter.

Konstantin Ribel: The Three Tiers of Scrum Master Success, Team, Multi-team, and Product

Konstantin outlines three tiers of success for Scrum Masters. Level 1 centers on fostering teamwork and trust within a single team. Level 2 emphasizes collaboration between multiple teams, avoiding silos, and ensuring equitable workloads. Level 3 delves into product-focused success, considering customer-driven value, delivery efficiency, and feedback loops. Konstantin advises bringing teams together through multi-team events and facilitating progress sharing among teams to enhance overall success in the Scrum Master role.

Featured Retrospective Format For The Week: Tailoring Retrospectives, Konstantin’s Recipe For Scrum Master Adaptability To Team Needs

Konstantin advocates for adaptability in retrospectives, noting the importance of ditching a pre-planned format if it doesn’t suit the team dynamics at the time of the retrospective. He emphasizes the need to prepare each retrospective, as it helps us to be secure if there’s a need to improvise. Konstantin shares the example of a team that received news of an impending change just before the retro, and that prompted Konstantin to focus on the team’s need for a conversation around closure, rather than future improvement. This highlights the value of addressing real-time team needs over rigid adherence to a set format.

How can I, as a Scrum Master, supercharge my facilitation?

About Konstantin Ribel

Konstantin drives organizational success through innovative thinking, simplifying processes, and building high-performing teams. With a strong track record in change management and process optimization, he leads agile transformations and applies systems thinking for adaptable, thriving businesses in dynamic industries.

You can link with Konstantin Ribel on LinkedIn.

Kaisa Martiskainen: What are “15% solutions”? And how they engage the team for action after an Agile Retrospective

In this episode, Kaisa discusses her approach to measuring success in agile/scrum teams. While some people focus on metrics like sprint velocity, Kaisa prefers to survey the team to get a pulse on how they are doing. She also emphasizes the importance of paying attention to the bigger picture of the organization and using surveys to make decisions on how to improve as a scrum master. Kaisa recommends using different survey tools, such as the Scrum Culture Index (or the Squad Health Check), to assess the team’s agility and identify areas for improvement. She also highlights the importance of understanding the system in which the team operates and identifying and removing any problematic structures that may be hindering progress. Finally, Kaisa mentions the concept of “system’s intelligence,” which emphasizes the idea that structures produce behavior, and coaches the audience to identify systems and work towards removing any obstacles to team success.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: What are “15% solutions”, and how they engage the team for action after an Agile Retrospective

In this episode, Kaisa shared some tips on how to switch up the retrospective format to make it more interesting. She suggested using “strings” from Liberating Structures and also talked about the “15% solutions” structure where the team comes up with small solutions that don’t require extra resources. This encourages creativity and helps counteract the need to come up with a perfect solution. Kaisa emphasized the importance of being ready to progress in small steps.

In this episode Kaisa refers to a Liberating Structure String that includes the following elements:

1. 1. Impromptu Networking
  2. What, So What, Now What?
  3. TRIZ with nested 15% Solutions

How can I, as a Scrum Master, supercharge my facilitation?

About Kaisa Martiskainen

Kaisa is an Agile coach working for a large multinational software company. Originally from Finland, her thirst for learning new things and passion for languages led her to live in Sweden, and Scotland before settling in Montreal, Canada. She is an avid Redditor who spends her free time reading, knitting, investing and playing with her two daughters.

You can link with Kaisa Martiskainen on LinkedIn.

Franziska Moenster: Designing Agile Retrospectives for maximum engagement, lessons learned

When we are starting our journey as Scrum Masters, one of the ceremonies that most scares us is the retrospective. There’s so much hanging on that ceremony, from the need to get an action that leads to improvement, to having the team engaged and everybody participating. In that context, it’s natural that we try our best and prepare extensively for the Retrospective. However, there’s a point when preparation is just too much! In this episode, we talk about what is that limit, and how to look at Retrospective facilitation in a way that leaves space for the team to take ownership, and be active in the Retrospective.

About Franziska Moenster

Franny (short for Franziska) loves seeing the power of building strong performing teams that build products in a customer centric way. She’s been working as a Scrum Master/Agile Coach for over 5 years. Profiting from her hands-on experience on scaling agile across teams and her joy of trying out new things she is always inspecting and adapting on an organizational level as well! On a personal note, she has recently moved to Tenerife to follow her passion of freediving.

You can link with Franziska Moenster on LinkedIn.