Starfish retrospective Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Ziryan Salayi: Helping Scrum teams mature, and evaluate their maturity to work without a Scrum Master

Ziryan looks for “sparks” when assessing the team’s progress, and the success of his own work. He shares an example of a time when he announced to a team that he was going on vacation, and the team reacted by saying that he should not worry, they were ready to be on their own. In this segment, we discuss how you can help your teams take ownership of their process, and slowly, but surely become more independent!

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: The pizza slices formats

Ziryan likes to help the teams focus on a holistic understanding of what happened during the Sprint. For that, he uses several formats that focus on multiple aspects. We talk about the Spiderweb retrospective and the Starfish retrospective formats to help teams look at the Sprint with a holistic mindset.

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Abou Ziryan Salayi

Ziryan is a Scrum Master, Professional Scrum Trainer, and organization coach with a passion for getting the most out of people and teams. His aim is to enable employees to be fully empowered and support self-organization in all areas within agile organizations

You can link with Ziryan Salayi on LinkedIn and connect with Ziryan Salayi on Twitter.

Rafał Witaszek: Is your team “chatty”? And other questions we can ask to assess Scrum Master success

Is your team “chatty”? That’s the first question that Rafał suggests we ask from ourselves as we assess our progress, and success as a Scrum Master. We also talk about different metrics we can use to help us guide, and support the team.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: The 4L’s and Starfish retrospectives as possible options for different goals

In this segment, we hear from Rafał how the 4L’s retrospective and the Starfish retrospectives can be used for different purposes. He describes for us, what each of these formats is best for, and how he organizes his facilitation to help the teams focus on those different outcomes.

About Rafał Witaszek

Rafał believes the best things are done together. As a Scrum Master, his focus is on enabling communication within an organization. As he is also a passionate sailor, he’s learned that we need to adjust our sails to make the best use of the wind. Focus on what we can affect, and leave other things out.

You can link with Rafał Witaszek on LinkedIn.

Yousef T. Fahoum: Helping Scrum teams own and drive the improvement conversations

For us to reach a successful outcome of our work, we must be able to learn all the time, and get to a point where the team takes initiative in starting, and facilitating the conversations needed. Yousef recommends we keep on reading, and learning about what we might be missing to get there. He shares some tips that have worked for him to help teams own the improvement process and conversations.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Tips on how to run successful Starfish retrospectives

The Starfish Retrospective, is Yousef’s go-to format because of how it facilitates the type of conversations that bring ideas and improvements. Yousef shares some tips on how to successfully run the Starfish retrospective format.

About Yousef T. Fahoum

When starting out as a ScrumMaster and BA years ago Yousef passionately followed the ScrumMaster Podcast. Yousef is a SAFe Enterprise Coach at Elabor8 with experience implementing Agile and SAFe at some of the largest and most recognized brand leaders across industry domains in the U.S. and Australia.

You can link with Yousef T. Fahoum on LinkedIn and connect with Yousef T. Fahoum on Twitter.

Jaime Bartol: The Starfish Agile retrospective, and how it helps your team reflect

It is usually a sign of progress and success when the team is able to execute the Scrum process without needing the presence of the Scrum Master. However, that’s only part of the success definition we discuss in this episode. We also talk about the need to focus on value and to have the team feel that they own the solution they are working on.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: The Starfish retrospective

When we start experimenting with new retrospective formats, the Starfish retrospective is a good place to start. It allows for several “degrees” in the responses we get from team members, and can easily be adapted for different team contexts. The 5 categories, help consider different aspects from the more traditional: what went well? Not so well? What should we try?

About Jaime Bartol

Jaime has been a ScrumMaster/Agile Coach for 6 years with experience in large organizations as well as startup teams! She has worked with frontend and data engineering teams and even brought Agile to awesome marketing teams! Jaime’s passion is about teams and using Agile/Scrum fundamentals to elevate efficiency, productivity, and joy!

You can link with Jaime Bartol on LinkedIn.

David Gentry: how the Starfish Agile Retrospective leads quickly to actions for the team

Is your team more like a Golf team or a Hockey team? That’s one of the questions David asks himself when assessing his impact as a Scrum Master. Checking the Scrum Guide, for a list of responsibilities may also be a good way to get started assessing your success as a Scrum Master, but don’t forget to adapt to the local reality, a core idea of Agile that also applies to the Scrum Master work.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: The Starfish Retrospective

The Starfish retrospective is a format that David finds leads more often to concrete actions, the final goal of a retrospective. In this segment, we also talk about the importance of having many formats in your toolbox, so that the retrospectives don’t get boring and stop delivering results.

About David Gentry

David Gentry is an Agile Coach and Scrum Master. He has served in a variety of other roles in his career including developer, data analyst, business analyst, quality analyst, and project manager. In his free time, he can be found playing bass guitar and interpreting how groove applies to life and agility.

You can link with David Gentry on LinkedIn and connect with David Gentry on Twitter.