Measuring Success Through Team Evolution | Anamaria Ungureanu

Summary

Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile Storytelling from the Trenches
Episode: Measuring Success Through Team Evolution | Anamaria Ungureanu
Host: Vasco Duarte
Guest: Anamaria Ungureanu
Release Date: July 31, 2025

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Introduction

In this insightful episode of the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast, host Vasco Duarte engages in a compelling conversation with Anamaria Ungureanu, an experienced Scrum Master and Agile Coach. The episode delves deep into the nuances of measuring success within Agile teams, emphasizing the importance of team evolution and continuous improvement. Skipping over promotional segments, the discussion zeros in on practical strategies and reflective practices that Scrum Masters can employ to foster thriving, adaptive teams.

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Favorite Agile Retrospective Formats

Anamaria Ungureanu begins by sharing her philosophy on Agile retrospectives, highlighting the necessity of flexibility and adaptability in choosing retrospective formats. She firmly believes that relying on a single approach can be limiting and advocates for a blend of quantitative and qualitative discussions to glean comprehensive insights.

Anamaria (01:53):
“In my philosophy, we should not have just one approach. Very often, teams jump into what went well and what we can improve using formats like Start, Stop, Continue. However, I guide them to first consider quantitative data—such as team goals, metrics based on objectives or velocity—to ground the retrospective discussion.”

Anamaria emphasizes the importance of varying retrospective formats to maintain engagement and relevance. Depending on the team size and context, she might employ methods like round tables or focused discussions on specific topics such as testing automation or collaboration improvements.

Anamaria (04:20):
“From my experience, changing the approach from time to time is healthy for the team. For instance, focusing a retro on testing—like whether we should automate more—can lead to actionable insights that directly impact our workflow.”

Her approach ensures that retrospectives remain dynamic and tailored to the team’s current challenges and objectives, fostering an environment where actionable outcomes are the norm.

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Defining Success as a Scrum Master

When probed about her definition of success, Anamaria provides a thoughtful perspective that moves beyond mere iterative achievements. She defines success in terms of the team’s overall evolution and sustained growth over time.

Anamaria (06:36):
“I define the Scrum Master’s success based on the results of the team and how they are evolving and growing. It’s not just about a successful iteration; it’s about the continuous path and trend of the team’s performance.”

She underscores the significance of observing long-term trends rather than short-term fixes. For instance, transitioning a team from being storming and disengaged to highly productive and committed exemplifies success in her view.

Anamaria (07:15):
“If a team manages to deliver more based on their commitments and becomes more engaged, that indicates success. Their increased trust with stakeholders and the open environment they foster are key indicators.”

Anamaria also highlights the importance of proactive engagement and the visibility of the Scrum Master’s role in driving team success through structured practices like defining the Definition of Done or enhancing user story writing.

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Accountability Practices

Maintaining accountability is crucial for any Scrum Master striving for continuous improvement. Anamaria shares her strategies for self-assessment and accountability, emphasizing the importance of seeking and incorporating feedback.

Anamaria (09:45):
“I always ask for feedback for continuous improvement. It’s vital not just for improving my role but also for enhancing collaboration with the team and stakeholders.”

She advocates for a proactive stance, where observing team dynamics and bringing forth improvement ideas—without waiting for requests—can lead to significant advancements.

Anamaria (10:30):
“By observing and coming up with proposals proactively, such as introducing better user story writing techniques, I help the team continuously enhance their processes.”

Furthermore, Anamaria reflects on her own experiences to identify areas for personal growth, such as improving time management during workshops or ensuring balanced participation among team members.

Anamaria (11:20):
“After delivering a session, I often review audio recordings to see where I could have been more focused or structured. It’s about applying the feedback to embody the values and principles we advocate.”

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Community and Continuous Improvement

Anamaria emphasizes the value of community engagement in her professional development. Discussing with other Agile practitioners provides her with fresh perspectives and collaborative opportunities to refine her practices.

Anamaria (12:56):
“Discussing with the community helps. It’s a great way to gain insights and learn from others’ experiences.”

This sentiment is echoed by the host, who underscores the importance of adapting to the unique dynamics of each team—acknowledging that no two teams are identical and that continuous learning is essential.

Host (11:54):
“Every team is different, and as Scrum Masters, we need to be aware of feedback, perform self-assessments, and continuously improve ourselves every day.”

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Conclusion

The episode wraps up with a reaffirmation of the mutual benefits of clear success definitions and accountable practices. Anamaria Ungureanu’s insights provide a robust framework for Scrum Masters aiming to cultivate high-performing teams through thoughtful retrospectives, consistent feedback loops, and a commitment to personal and professional growth.

By focusing on team evolution and embracing a dynamic approach to Agile practices, Scrum Masters can effectively steer their teams toward sustained success and adaptability in a constantly changing environment.

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Notable Quotes:

• Anamaria Ungureanu (01:53):
  “We should not have just one approach. Very often, teams jump into what went well and what we can improve using formats like Start, Stop, Continue.”

• Anamaria Ungureanu (06:36):
  “I define the Scrum Master’s success based on the results of the team and how they are evolving and growing.”

• Anamaria Ungureanu (09:45):
  “I always ask for feedback for continuous improvement. It’s vital not just for improving my role but also for enhancing collaboration with the team and stakeholders.”

• Anamaria Ungureanu (12:56):
  “Discussing with the community helps. It’s a great way to gain insights and learn from others’ experiences.”

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This episode serves as a valuable resource for Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches seeking to deepen their understanding of success metrics, retrospective methodologies, and personal accountability within the Agile framework.

Transcript

[Vasko]

Hey there, Agile adventurer, just a quick question. What if for the price of a fancy coffee or half a pizza, you could unlock over 700 hours of the best agile content on the planet? That's audio, video, E courses, books, presentations, all that you can think of. But you can also join live calls with world class practitioners and hang out in a flame war free and AI slop clean slack with the sharpest minds in the game. Oh, and yes, you get direct access to me, Vasko, your Scrum Master Toolbox podcast. No, this is not a drill. It's this Scrum Master Toolbox membership. And it's your unfair advantage in the agile world. So if you want to know more, go check out scrummastertoolbox.org membership, that's scrummastertoolbox.org Membership. And check out all the goodies we have for you. Do it now. But if you're not doing it now, let's listen to the podcast.

[Unknown Host]

Hello everybody. Welcome to our Thursday the Success question of the week. Of course, this week with Ana Maria Ungureanu. Hey Anna Maria, welcome back.

[Ana Maria Ungureanu]

Hello. Hello.

[Unknown Host]

So Ana Maria, Thursday is a very important day for us because it's when we talk about what success means, how we keep ourselves accountable, what we learn about the Scrum Master role and how to help also others, like our teams, be successful. We'll talk about that in a second, but before that, do share with us what's your favorite Agile retrospective format and why?

[Ana Maria Ungureanu]

So honestly, the answer is not so short in the sense that in my philosophy I think we should not have just one approach. The very efficient and simplicity is okay, start, stop, continue. But I think for a retrospective we should have a quantitative and qualitative discussion. So when you speak about retrospective, very often the teams jumps in what went well, what we can improve under different flavors like Start, stop, continue. As my way of doing, I'm trying to help them first to think on some quantitative data. For example, what what the goals of the team and supporting them with some metrics if it's needed by context, based on the objectives, based on velocity. So quantitative data. I think it's important to lead that retrospective discussion. And also from my experience, I think from time to time it's healthy to change the approach the format for the team. For example, if we are small team and things like this, it's also good to have a round table. But to ask this question a bit differently, sometimes I ask what you like to dislike, what we could improve sometimes. Start, stop, continue. So as my philosophy, I think as a scrum Master role. It's good to be dynamic make a conversation over a tool, people over processes. As a retrospect I think it's very important. Yeah. So yes it's favor one. Yes. Start, stop, continue as it's clear and simple. But as I said this is just the framework to support the discussion. We need to come with some data and we need to look to have some action at the end on our. Based on our discussion and for my experience I think we need to make attention pay attention as also as an angelic coach we don't want at the end way to leave the action. Very often I saw this kind of we need to improve some processes and things some actions. For the Scrum Master passion is of course you can take it but discussion is for the team what team can do to improve. For example one retro maybe I'm focusing on testing what we can start to continue. Regarding testing should I automate more? Because we see it's impacting. We need to start doing some, you know, transfer knowledge For TDD it has driven development. So I. I like to focus on specific topics rather I change on collaboration how we need to improve our collaboration. But I think from my experience it's efficient if sometimes we focus on specific topic based on what we saw, what we observed from the execution, how the team managed to collaborate, what they raised throughout the daily stand ups and all the discussion. I have one to one and like this I found it's. It's efficient. It's like you know asking your kids from school every day how was it school? How was the school? Fine. Think it's fine. But if I ask tomorrow. But what was your interaction with the math class? I can get different same with the team. I think if I start to ask differently will definitely help them to have.

[Unknown Host]

I really like the emphasis on the conversation and then using different types of questions to trigger those conversations. Always with the idea that we need to have data. It could be qualitative or quantitative data of course to then from that generate insights and derive actions. I really like that very practical approach. Now we do this retros because of course we want to help our teams and ultimately their stakeholders succeed. And we can do that by holding ourselves accountable by defining what success means for us and then really following that up in our day to day work. So Ana Maria, the question for you.

[Vasko]

Now is how do you see success.

[Unknown Host]

Success for a Scrum Master? How do you define it?

[Ana Maria Ungureanu]

I define that the Scrum Master success is based on the results of the team and results is like how they Are evolving and growing. I'm not looking specific on some iteration. It was good. I'm looking on a path and I'm looking on a trend on an evolution. Okay, so how the team managed to perform. For example, with my case, if you arrive in a storming team or less engaged team and then you see that the team managed to deliver more based on what they commit to be more engaged, that is the success. From my perspective, it's easier to see just by attending some sessions based on how the teams are engaged and how they knock to the Scrum Master. You don't need to go there when they will come proactively just for some discussion, just summarizing some feedback during the sprint, not waiting until the end. For me are key indicators that they value and they appreciate your buying their evolution. As a team, our role is to maximize team efficiency. And when I see that the team growth the team increase the trust with the key stakeholders for me indicator they have an open environment, they foster commitment and all this alignment the value by applying them not just saying I'm a happy, you know, Scrum Master role. When, when you see this, when you receive feedback from others, you know, this is kind of like, okay, you know, based on our discussion, for example, I volunteer just volunteer to work as a Scrum Master for some, some other team. And it was by volunteer, it was some time and the way they, you know, contact me when, you know, I provided them the whole the definition of Dan concepts, the team charter, the working agreement, some basic things. But they resonated. That is, look, I like it we apply things like this was very.

[Unknown Host]

For me, the one of the key questions for us as Scrum Masters is okay, so now this is how I see success, right? Like and you know, write it down or reflect on it with the colleague to make sure that it's crystal clear. Then the next question is, okay, but how do I hold myself accountable, right? Like, what's my practice? Do I ask for feedback? Do I have one? On ones like how do you keep yourself accountable to that definition of success that you just described for us? Ana Maria.

[Ana Maria Ungureanu]

From my perspective, from my context, I always ask for feedback for continuous improvement. I think it's very important also for us, not just for the team, how we can improve with our role and also in the collaboration with them, the stakeholders, not just team members. So asking for feedback, being proactive in the sense that okay, just observing and things to proactively come with some ideas to improve by with the example I said I came with the need of the team to have the definition of done to apply, to refresh another context. For example, I come with how to write the user stories. So by observing and immediately not necessarily wait for people to ask, but come with proposals, ideas, how they can improve. But overall, I think it's very important to always improve. And we improve. We improve from my learning. After I deliver a session and I see very often I could have done better based on this. I look on some audio and I see, okay, I could have been more focused, more structured. Timekeeper is very important. And for our role to see how we keep up with very technical discussions, things like this, I take the notes, I need to pay more attention on the time. I need to pay more attention to engage everyone from some workshop. I learned this from my past experience. So I think ourselves we can now assess how we can improve. But also asking for feedback and being open to adapt based on the feedback we receive. Because we need to not just to say, we need also to apply our values and principles.

[Unknown Host]

Yeah, and I think that's the very important point here, right? Like the reason why we every week talk about how do we define success? It's exactly because we are not there only to help others. That is of course a big part of what we need to do. But we can only do that if we have a clear definition of what success is for us, also for them. But we need to get the feedback so that we can adapt to the reality. Because every team is different. And I very often say that every day there's a new team that we need to work with. Because if a team member is absent, that's a different, different team. Right? If a team member has a difficult situation going on and they're not so calm or patient, that's also a different team. Right? Like as Scrum masters, we really need to be aware of that feedback. Do that self assessment, as you said, collect the feedback and then show the example of continuous improvement by improving ourselves also every day. Thank you for sharing that story, Ana Maria.

[Ana Maria Ungureanu]

In the end I wanted to say that also discussing with other community, it helps.

[Unknown Host]

Yeah, absolutely. Great point. Discussing with the community.

[Vasko]

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