Team Improvement Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Tom Molenaar: When To Stop Helping Agile Teams To Change—A Real Life Story

“Instead of slowing down and meeting the team in their resistance, I started to try and drag them because I saw the vision of the possible improvement, but they did not see it.”

Tom shares a powerful failure story about a team that didn’t feel the urgency to improve their way of working. Despite management wanting the team to become more effective, Tom found himself pushing improvements that the team actively resisted. Instead of slowing down to understand their resistance, he tried to drag them forward, leading to exhaustion and ultimately his decision to leave the assignment. This episode explores the critical lesson that it’s not our job to save teams that don’t want to be saved, and the importance of recognizing when to step back.

Self-reflection Question: When you encounter team resistance to change, how do you distinguish between healthy skepticism that needs addressing and fundamental unwillingness to improve?

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

Do you wish you had decades of experience? Learn from the Best Scrum Masters In The World, Today! The Tips from the Trenches – Scrum Master edition audiobook includes hours of audio interviews with SM’s that have decades of experience: from Mike Cohn to Linda Rising, Christopher Avery, and many more. Super-experienced Scrum Masters share their hard-earned lessons with you. Learn those today, make your teams awesome!

About Tom Molenaar
Tom is a team coach with a background in social psychology and behavioral influence. He is passionate about fostering collaboration, and helping teams flourish and achieve their potential. His approach blends insight, empathy, and strategy to cultivate lasting team success.

You can link with Tom Molenaar on LinkedIn.

Mike Bowler: Six Thinking Hats, An Agile Retrospective for Balanced Discussions

Mike defines a successful Scrum Master as a catalyst who drives the team towards continuous improvement and effective goal achievement. He discusses how to gauge success by examining data available from the team’s processes and questioning whether true improvement is happening. Effective Scrum Masters facilitate discussions that challenge the status quo and encourage the team to reflect on their progress using data and insights.

Self-reflection Question: What indicators do you use to measure your team’s effectiveness?

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Six Thinking Hats

Mike shares the Six Thinking Hats retrospective as an effective format to dissect complex team issues. This method allows the team to view problems from different perspectives—logical, emotional, critical, etc.—encouraging balanced discussions and deep insights without conflict. He emphasizes how this approach can defuse latent conflicts and foster logical, collaborative problem-solving.

The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends…

🔥 In the ruthless world of fintech, success isn’t just about innovation—it’s about coaching! 🔥

Angela thought she was just there to coach a team. But now, she’s caught in the middle of a corporate espionage drama that could make or break the future of digital banking. Can she help the team regain their mojo and outwit their rivals, or will the competition crush their ambitions? As alliances shift and the pressure builds, one thing becomes clear: this isn’t just about the product—it’s about the people.

🚨 Will Angela’s coaching be enough? Find out in Shift: From Product to People—the gripping story of high-stakes innovation and corporate intrigue.

Buy Now on Amazon

The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends…

About Mike Bowler

Mike is a seasoned Agile coach and trainer with over 25 years of experience. He focuses on technical practices, workflow optimization, leadership coaching, and human behavior, including neuroscience and psychology. His expertise extends from technical implementation to fostering psychological safety.

You can link with Mike Bowler on LinkedIn.

Publish on: 14th November, 2024, 10:05 CET

Tinatin Tabidze: Scaling Agile Teams, a Proactive Change Management approach

Tinatin highlights the importance of being proactive in change. She stresses the need to be aware of what can be changed in one’s role and in the team, and to talk to the manager and peers to assess the changes needed.

Working with her colleagues in a change team, they decided to create a framework/guide for scaling agile in that company and with the teams involved. The process involves finding the need, identifying the source of the need, minimizing dependencies when scaling, accepting and preparing for initial failures, being one’s own critic, staying focused on the change, defining a clear picture of where they want to be, and presenting data to the team to help them reflect and define the changes they want to commit to. Tinatin’s tip is to listen to the team, present data, but avoid jumping to conclusions and let the team come up with their own interpretation. A challenge that we should take on as Scrum Masters!

As Scrum Master we work with change continuously! Do you have your own change framework that provides the guidance, and queues you need when working with change? The Lean Change Management framework is a fully defined, lean-startup inspired change framework that can be used as the backbone of any change process! You can buy Lean Change Management the book at Amazon. Also available in French, Spanish, German and Portuguese.

About Tinatin Tabidze

Tinatin Tabidze is a Scrum Master currently working in Stuttgart, Germany. Originally she started out as a project manager. She has experience with multiple scrum and kanban teams, working with scaled agile frameworks.

You can link with Tinatin Tabidze on LinkedIn.