success metrics Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Aimé Flemm: Renting The Change vs Owning It — Why LeSS Transformations Get Reversed

“They rented the change instead of owning it.” – Aimé Flemm

A year ago Aimé helped his Dutch employer adopt LeSS. The teams are happy. They’re performing well. And now, he’s watching it all get pulled apart. The company was acquired by a German parent that’s “actually really German” — traditional, command-and-control.

The parent wants to “align” all its companies and is pushing to revert the LeSS structure back to component teams. Why? Because higher management never went to the trainings. They never went through the change themselves. They signed off on it, but they didn’t internalize it.

And now the loud-but-few voices of the status quo are reaching upward, and management is panicking. That’s what Aimé means by “renting the change” — you got the lease, you never bought the building, and the moment pressure rises, you walk away.

His experiment for the next sprint, sharpened in this conversation: stop trying to defend the structure. Start a conversation with management to co-create success metrics for the merger itself. Decouple the structure from the definition of success. As long as the merger succeeds, the structure can stay fluid. Speak their language. And remember: coaching is the cherry on top — about 5% of the real gains. The big improvements live in the structural changes.

Self-reflection Question: When you sold your last change to upper management, did they buy it — or are they renting? And what’s your plan for the moment when they want to give back the keys?

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About Aimé Flemm

Aimé Flemm joins us from the Netherlands. Our guest is an organizational design coach who starts where most agile transformations stop. He works at the structural level: redesigning the incentives, reporting lines, and systems that either enable or quietly kill agility. His belief: you can’t coach your way out of a broken org design.

You can link with Aimé Flemm on LinkedIn.

Junaid Shaikh: How Scrum Masters Can Measure Their Own Impact, Practical Self-Assessment Metrics

On defining success as a Scrum Master, Junaid starts with a Peter Drucker quote: “You cannot improve something you cannot measure.” He proposes several practical self-assessment metrics:

First, the Agile Team Maturity Index — a spider graph that shows where the team stands across multiple criteria, making gaps visible and actionable.

Second, track retrospective action items. Create tiger teams for specific issues, run small iterative experiments, and measure in the next retrospective whether the trend is improving.

Third, watch for shared sprint goals. Junaid once saw a team with nine sprint goals for a two-week sprint — those weren’t goals, they were individual tasks. A real sprint goal should be something multiple team members work together to achieve.

Fourth, self-organizing teams. If the team falls apart when the Scrum Master is absent for a sprint, there’s a problem. Coach teams to self-organize, and their ability to function independently becomes a success metric.

Fifth, communication patterns. Too many emails flying around can signal hidden conflicts or trust barriers. If communication happens through the right channels — dailies, direct interactions — you’re likely in good shape.

Sixth, Scrum event health. If events get canceled too frequently, the team may be reverting to traditional ways of working.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: What Went Well, Not So Well, What Could Be Improved?

Junaid’s favorite retrospective format? The vanilla: what went well, what could have gone better, what to do better next. He’s tried many formats — the Three L’s (liked, learned, lacked), the Three Little Pigs, the sailboat retrospective — but the core principle is always the same. His practical advice: stick with a consistent format so the team gets better at the process itself rather than constantly adjusting to new concepts.

One addition he insists on for any format: an appreciation component. In the rush to analyze processes and outcomes, teams often skip acknowledging how another team member, PO, or Scrum Master helped during the sprint. That appreciation builds trust, respect, and openness that feeds into subsequent sprints.

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

About Junaid Shaikh

Junaid Shaikh is an energetic Agile Coach with a natural flair for Agile and Scrum, shaped by recent experiences at software giants like Ericsson and hardware leaders ABB. In his work, he champions collaboration, curiosity, and continuous improvement. Beyond coaching, he brings the same passion to cricket, table tennis, carrom, and his newest sporting obsession — padel.

You can link with Junaid Shaikh on LinkedIn.

Natalia Curusi: Measuring What Matters Beyond Velocity and Story Points

“We as Scrum Masters need to put a scope for ourselves—we need to aim to leave the place where we work a little bit better than it was, and to make sure that this place could improve itself without us.” – Natalia Curusi

Natalia defines success for Scrum Masters with crystal clarity: leave the organization better than you found it, and ensure it can continue improving when you’re gone. This means fostering independence and ownership in teams so they can perform whether you’re on vacation, in another meeting, or have moved to coaching other teams.

The opposite pattern—where everything falls apart when the Scrum Master isn’t present—reveals someone who hasn’t truly succeeded in the role. Natalia also emphasizes the importance of establishing metrics early, but not the traditional ones.

Using velocity as a metric is an anti-pattern that focuses teams on the wrong outcomes. Instead, she recommends metrics like predictability, team morale, psychological safety measured through 360 feedback, and the quality of conversations both within teams and with stakeholders. But metrics alone don’t tell the story.

Natalia champions the concept of Gemba walks—going to see what’s actually happening, talking to people, observing the reality rather than just reviewing dashboard numbers. Some metrics are easily gamed, others provide only narrow perspectives on reality. The most important practice is using metrics to trigger reflection and adaptation, not as fixed targets. Natalia believes strongly that the quality of conversations—how teams discuss options, make decisions together, and adapt when facing pressure—reveals more about a Scrum Master’s success than any velocity chart ever could. The ultimate question: can your team succeed without you?

Self-reflection Question: If you disappeared from your team tomorrow, would they continue improving, or would progress stop until someone replaced you?

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Spotify Squad Health Check

“This is a multidimensional retro that I run with teams every 2 to 3 months—you need around 30 minutes for it, and I often get insights and new ideas from this retrospective that help me as a Scrum Master.” – Natalia Curusi

The Spotify Squad Health Check is Natalia’s favorite retrospective format because it provides a comprehensive view of team health across multiple dimensions. Unlike traditional retrospectives that might focus on a single sprint or specific issue, this format examines the team’s overall state across areas like teamwork, support, mission clarity, and technical quality. Teams rate themselves on various health indicators, creating a visual representation that reveals patterns over time.

What makes this particularly valuable is that it works whether you know the team well or are just starting with them—either way, you gain insights and “aha moments” about where the team truly stands. The multidimensional nature prevents teams from optimizing just one aspect while neglecting others, and the regular cadence (every 2-3 months) allows you to track trends and celebrate improvements.

For Natalia, this format consistently surfaces the hidden challenges that teams might not raise in regular retrospectives, making it an essential tool in her Scrum Master toolkit.

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

About Natalia Curusi

With over 20 years in software delivery, Natalia Curusi is an expert in Agile Transformations, Delivery Optimisation, and Systems Thinking. As an Agile Coach at Endava, she leads Asia Pacific initiatives, driving business agility and continuous improvement while mentoring teams to build customer-centric, high-performing, and collaborative cultures.

You can link with Natalia Curusi on LinkedIn.

BONUS: Tom Gilb on Building True Engineering Culture and Delivering Value Through Evolutionary Methods

In this BONUS episode, we dive deep into the world of true engineering discipline with Tom Gilb, a pioneer who was writing about Agile principles before Agile was even named. We explore his latest book “Success – Super Secrets & Strategies for Efficient Value Delivery in Projects and Programs, and Plans” and uncover the fundamental flaws in how organizations approach project delivery and stakeholder management.

The Genesis of Success-Focused Engineering

“People were failing at project deliveries – even when using Agile. I saw there was very little about setting clear goals and reaching them, it had nothing to do with being successful.”

Tom’s motivation for writing his latest book stems from a critical observation: despite the widespread adoption of Agile methodologies, project failure rates remain unacceptably high. The core issue isn’t methodology but rather the fundamental lack of clarity around what success actually means. Tom emphasizes that true success is about achieving the improvements you want at a price you can afford, yet most organizations fail to define this clearly from the outset.

In this segment, we refer to the book How Big Things Get Done by Bent Flyvbjerg who published statistics on the poor performance of projects in general.

Beyond OKRs: The Power of Quantified Multi-Dimensional Objectives

“First you need to have a definition of what it means to succeed. And that needs to be multi-dimensional. And you need to clarify what they are.”

While many organizations believe they’re already quantifying objectives through frameworks like OKRs, Tom reveals significant weaknesses in these approaches. True value isn’t just profit—it encompasses multiple dimensions including security, usability, and other stakeholder-specific benefits. The key insight is learning to quantify what needs to be achieved across all critical dimensions, as you simply cannot design for high-quality attributes like security without first quantifying and designing for them explicitly.

In this segment, we talk about Tom’s paper on OKR’s titled “OKR Objectives and Key Results: what’s wrong and how to fix it”.

The Missing Engineering Discipline

“Why is the failure rate of our projects so high?” Continue reading BONUS: Tom Gilb on Building True Engineering Culture and Delivering Value Through Evolutionary Methods

Jelena Vucinic: How Agile Team Satisfaction and Value Delivery Define Scrum Master Success

In this episode, Jelena shares her approach to measuring success as a Scrum Master by focusing on two key areas: team satisfaction and value delivery. She emphasizes the importance of discussing these metrics with the team, gauging engagement levels, and reflecting on factors like time-to-market and throughput. Jelena encourages Scrum Masters to consider using net promoter scores as a way to evaluate their impact.

Self-reflection Question: How can you help your team define and measure success in a meaningful way? Leave your answer in the comments, let’s get this conversation started!

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Uncover the Stinky Fish

Jelena shares a retrospective format known as “Uncover the Stinky Fish,” designed to help teams address underlying issues that are not being openly discussed. This format is especially useful in conflict resolution but requires a safe environment for it to be effective. Jelena emphasizes the need for personalization in retrospectives, tailoring the approach to the context and encouraging empathy and connection among team members.

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.