velocity Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Danil Chernyshev: Why Teams Always Adapt—And How Bad Rules Push Them Into Zombie Scrum

“Teams always adapt. You only get to decide what they adapt to.” – Danil Chernyshev

Most dysfunction doesn’t start with the team—it starts with the structure around them. Danil shares the story of a classic metrics-driven organization where Scrum Masters reported to a dedicated manager who measured their success by team velocity.

That manager tracked retrospectives in a separate log, and would show up at the daily Scrum to confirm everyone answered the three questions. The result was predictable: the retrospective became a clock to survive, the daily became a checkbox with no real conversation, and velocity turned into theater—stories closed as “done,” then reopened as “part two” in the next sprint. There was never a real done increment.

Danil refuses to blame the team. They were doing exactly what teams always do—adapting to survive the rules and boundaries handed to them. As he and Vasco explore, the only real choice a leader has is not whether a team adapts, but what they adapt to. Dictate bureaucracy, and they’ll adapt to surviving it. That’s how productive, enjoyable work quietly turns into zombie Scrum. Servant leadership exists precisely so someone helps the team adapt toward value—not toward compliance.

Self-reflection Question: Look at a behavior on your team you find frustrating—what rule or structure might that team be adapting to in order to survive?

Featured Book of the Week: Actionable Agile Metrics for Predictability by Daniel Vacanti

Danil calls this book eye-opening. It changed how he thinks about metrics—not as a reporting tool for executives, but as something teams can use for themselves to understand what to do next and how to improve.

As he puts it, “after that book, you will probably know that a lot of cumulative flow diagrams that you saw in your past, they doesn’t work well, and need to be rebuilt.” The book makes flow metrics serve the team first, while still giving leadership the transparency they need. You can also hear Daniel Vacanti on the podcast, and get the book here: Actionable Agile Metrics for Predictability by Daniel Vacanti.

In this segment, we talk about User Story Mapping by Jeff Patton, and you can hear Jeff Patton on the podcast.

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About Danil Chernyshev

Danil is a results-driven Scrum Master and Delivery Manager passionate about optimizing SDLC processes and unlocking development teams’ potential. With a keen interest in AI, he empowers organizations to innovate and excel, bridging agile practices with cutting-edge technology for impactful results.

You can link with Danil Chernyshev on LinkedIn.

Nate Amidon: When Overconfidence Breaks the Trust You Worked So Hard to Build

“I had built up the trust quotient, but then I didn’t think about continually maintaining it.” – Nate Amidon

Nate had done everything right. As a junior Scrum Master on an internal software team, he started by building trust — showing up, listening, and letting the team know he wasn’t going to make things worse. He even managed to shift their reporting metrics from velocity to predictability, a move the team embraced because it focused on what they could actually control: how well they broke down and executed their plan. But then came the overconfidence. Riding on the capital he’d built, Nate proactively designed a “sprint churn” metric to track how much work swapped in and out of a sprint. The idea wasn’t bad — but he rolled it out without consulting the team first. The pushback hit hard. Engineers pushed back: adding more work mid-sprint shouldn’t automatically be negative, they argued. And they were right. The real failure wasn’t the metric itself — it was bypassing the collaborative process that had earned him trust in the first place. Nate learned that trust isn’t something you build once and bank on. It’s an everyday job. As he puts it, the Scrum Master’s role is to help the team, not direct it — and the moment you start solving problems the team hasn’t agreed exist, you’re directing.

In this episode, we also refer to Nate’s previous BONUS episode on the podcast, where he discussed the brief-execute-debrief cycle from military aviation.

Self-reflection Question: When was the last time you introduced a change to your team without first checking if they saw the same problem you did — and what happened to your trust quotient as a result?

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

About Nate Amidon

Nate, founder of Form100 Consulting, and a former Air Force officer and combat pilot turned servant leader in software development. Nate has taken the high-stakes world of military aviation and brought its core leadership principles—clarity, accountability, and execution—into his work with Agile teams.

You can link with Nate Amidon on LinkedIn. Learn more at Form100 Consulting.

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.

Natalia Curusi: Demonstrating Your Value When the Market Questions Agile Roles

“My challenging topic is about the demand of agility in the market—how do we fit ourselves as scrum masters in that AI era? How can we demonstrate our competence and contribution when there’s a perception that agile roles bring little value?” – Natalia Curusi

Natalia faces the challenge every Scrum Master in 2025 grapples with: how to demonstrate value in an era when business perceives agile roles as optional overhead. The market has contracted, companies are optimizing budgets, and Scrum Masters often appear first on the chopping block.

There’s talk of “blended roles” where developers are expected to absorb Scrum Master responsibilities, and questions about how AI might replace the human facilitation work that coaches provide. But Natalia believes the answer lies in understanding something fundamental: the Scrum Master is a deeply situational and contextual role that adapts to what the team needs each day.

Some teams need help with communication spaces, others need work structure like Kanban boards, still others need translation between technical realities and stakeholder expectations. The challenge is that this situational nature makes it incredibly hard to explain to business leaders who think in fixed job descriptions and measurable outputs. Natalia’s approach involves bringing metrics—not velocity, which focuses on the wrong things, but metrics around team independence, continuous improvement, and organizational capability. She suggests concepts like Gemba walks—going to see what’s actually happening rather than relying only on numbers. The real question Natalia poses is this: the biggest value we can bring to an organization is to leave it better than we found it, but how do we make that visible and tangible to business stakeholders who need justification for our roles?

Self-reflection Question: If you had to demonstrate your value as a Scrum Master using only observable evidence from the past month, what would you show your leadership?

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

About Natalia Curusi

You can link with Natalia Curusi on LinkedIn.

Joe Scherler: From Chapter Leads to Champions, Value Over Velocity in Scaled Agile

In this episode, Joe shares his experience with implementing the Spotify model across several small, agile teams. Confronting the complexities of entrenched roles and slow decision-making, Joe explains how he tried to empower teams through delegation and a focus on value over output. How can challenging traditional reporting structures and coaching leaders on delegation unlock a team’s full potential? Discover the transformative power of discussing team results in terms of value and fostering a collaborative environment where every team member is a catalyst for innovation.

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About Joe Scherler

Having experienced Scrum and Agile in various roles, Joe’s mission is to unlock the hidden potential of teams and those who work with them to create a work environment that is as enjoyable as it is effective. He loves working on both soft and hard skills with the teams.

You can link with Joe Scherler on LinkedIn.