Structure Creates Freedom, How an Agile Coach Measures Success by Becoming Less Needed | Christian Thordal

Summary

Podcast Summary

Episode Overview

Title: Structure Creates Freedom, How an Agile Coach Measures Success by Becoming Less Needed
Podcast: Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile storytelling from the trenches
Host: Vasco Duarte
Guest: Christian Thordal, Agile Coach
Date: May 21, 2026

This episode explores how structure in agile teams can create the conditions for true autonomy and sustainable success. Vasco Duarte is joined by Christian Thordal, who reflects on the evolution of measuring success as a Scrum Master—ultimately defining success as making oneself less essential to the team. The discussion centers on actionable frameworks for retrospectives, techniques for fostering accountability, aligning with management, and enabling teams to self-manage.

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Retrospective Formats & Facilitation Tips

(01:21 - 04:26)

Christian’s Favorite Retrospective Format

• Christian shares a custom, operationally grounded retrospective format:
  • Start with a team check-in: Gauge the team’s current mood and psychological safety.
  • Review previous agreements: Check on last week's action items, verify completion, and assign ongoing ones.
  • Topic Creation: Four-topic board: “Tech” (tools/tech stack), “Team” (internal), “Outside” (external influences), and a “Parking Lot” for miscellaneous items.
  • Context Sharing & Dot Voting: The creator of each topic explains their context; team dot-votes to identify priority issues.
  • Ownership Assignment: Actions generated have clear owners for follow-through.

Key Tips for Facilitating This Retrospective:

• Drive accountability by ensuring every action has an owner.
• Make the session practical and operational to engage engineers and solution-focused team members.

Notable Quote:
"I've ensured that as an owner to an action so we actually do something about it instead of it's, 'Oh yeah, I remember that. Wasn't someone supposed to do something about it?'"
— Christian Thordal (03:51)

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Evolving Views on Success as a Scrum Master

(05:14 - 07:06)

• Christian describes a shift in perspective:

  • Initially, he sought recognition for himself as a leader.
  • Now, he views success as the team “shining” and being less dependent on the Scrum Master.
  • Success is measured by:
    • Increased team predictability and delivery flow.
    • Effective partnership with the Product Owner (“mom and dad” analogy for team support).
    • Team’s progress towards cross-functionality and self-management.
    • Reducing team reliance on the Scrum Master over time.

• Uses parenting analogy:
  “In Denmark you are considered an adult when you turn 18…your assignment is to let that kid grow… and become a part of society... But always with the phone call to dad to get some coaching, borrowing some money for a while, whatever it is. And I kind of see that the same way.”
  — Christian Thordal (06:10)

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Removing Friction for Teams and Management

(07:06 - 08:55)

• Christian details strategies to remove management-related friction:
  • Proactively address management concerns: provide transparency and regular updates.
  • Develop and share actionable roadmaps (e.g., backlog refinement, psychological safety, hiring milestones).
  • Communicate progress via simple reports with metrics (e.g., graphs, one-pager updates) tailored to management’s preferences.
  • Demonstrates problem-solving and stabilizing the team post-turnover, rebuilding delivery reliability.

Notable Moment:
"When you communicate this and you just show him on a graph... I provide a little one pager with: this is what I've done since last time, this is where we are now, and here are the metrics that show the progress. It gives him that kind of calm to say, okay, he knows what he's doing. I don't need to pay attention and look that way."
— Christian Thordal (08:03)

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Structure Creates Freedom & Team Autonomy

(09:25 - 10:38)

• Christian explains the impact of introducing Scrum over a “cowboy loose Kanban style:”
  • Having structure (rituals, clear goals) creates space for self-organization.
  • As rituals and autonomy set in, the team independently handles planning, goals, and backlogs.
  • Christian mentions stepping back from daily meetings and seeing teams proceed effectively without him.

Key Insight:
"Structure creates freedom. So within this structure you kind of, I mean you have the rituals and so on that you follow. But it is more what value does it bring and behave now that it's in place, I can now focus on the behavior and I can, I can see that they are, this team is more and more doing it by themselves."
— Christian Thordal (09:38)

• Christian emphasizes ongoing “light touch” coaching: check-ins to offer pointers, but primarily give positive feedback—and let the team lead.

Host’s Reflection:
"I really like how you link this removing friction step towards the enabling autonomy. Right? Like removing friction is not there just to remove friction. There's deeper consequences and impacts that we are looking for from that.”
— Vasco Duarte (10:38)

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Memorable Quotes & Timestamps

• On action accountability in retrospectives:
  “I've ensured that as an owner to an action so we actually do something about it…” (03:51) — Christian Thordal

• On evolving Scrum Master success:
  “The less that I shine and the more the team shines, the better I perform.” (05:30) — Christian Thordal

• Parenting analogy for team autonomy:
  “Your assignment is to let that kid grow into society ... and being a functional individual. But always with the phone call to dad to get some coaching, borrowing some money for a while, whatever it is. And I kind of see that the same way.” (06:10) — Christian Thordal

• On removing management friction through metrics:
  “I provide a little one pager with: this is what I've done since last time, this is where we are now, and here are the metrics that show the progress.” (08:03) — Christian Thordal

• On structure enabling autonomy:
  “Structure creates freedom... I can, I can see that this team is more and more doing it by themselves.” (09:38) — Christian Thordal

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Key Takeaways for Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches

• Retrospectives should be pragmatic, actionable, and have clear ownership for every improvement action.
• True success as a Scrum Master means engineering yourself out of the daily “must-have” role and developing team autonomy.
• Reduce friction by addressing management’s concerns proactively, transparently, and with tailored communication.
• Introducing structured frameworks (like Scrum rituals) provides the predictable rhythms in which autonomy and self-management can flourish.
• Ongoing coaching can shift from hands-on guidance to occasional, targeted check-ins and continuous encouragement.

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For more practical tools and inspiring agile conversations, visit scrummastertoolbox.org.

Transcript

[A]

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.

[B]

Hello everybody. Welcome to our Success Thursday. This week we have with us Christian Tordal. Hey Christian, welcome back.

[C]

Hey Vasco.

[B]

So success Thursday is also retrospective Thursday. So let's start right there. Christian, what's your favorite agile retrospective format and why?

[C]

One is. I'm not sure it has a name. I like to think that I came up with it myself, but that's probably a lie. But basically I, I start with a board and it usually starts with a team check in just to get the vibe of the team people feeling bad. We usually have enough social psychological safety to air it and talk about it. But lately the team has been good, so we skipped from there. So what are the agreements we agreed on last week? What are the actions and who were accountable for making them come true? Are they still alive or have they been handled? Have they been handled? All good. Are they still alive? Then they'll move already into the actions for next retrospective to look at. And then I've divided the kind of topic creation because I'm not really looking into how did the sprint go. But it's more what are the topics that kind of hinders you in performing better as a team, but also individuals. So I've divided it into four boxes which is called tech. So those are the tools or the tech stacks that we have. One is called team. So what's within the team and then outside of the team and then kind of a mixture of only. So we call it a parking lot. It's a bad name because it kind of gets forgotten when you, when you call it that. And then we kind of go into the Topic creation. And the reason why I did the four groups is then we have only grouped it so we don't have to spend time on that. And when we have created the topics, whoever created it runs through it so we have a context for it. And then we dot vote for what are the most present ones that we need to attend to now. And then we kind of discuss it and figure out maybe who needs to go with this one and who's accountable. And then we write the action down. And that's kind of the format that I have for the two teams that I'm responsible for.

[B]

So if you think about facilitating that format, what are some tips you've learned from experience that make that format work?

[C]

I think what makes it work, I mean it's very grounded. It's real operational problems. I think one of the reasons all the wide works is that I have ensured that as an owner to an action so we actually do something about it instead of it's, oh yeah, I remember that. Wasn't someone supposed to do something about it? So it kind of creates progress and accountability in that sense.

[B]

Absolutely. And that you call it operational. In my mind, I imagine the word practical, pragmatic is a great way to engage the engineer minded people in the team. Right. Because they can see the application of what is being discussed. So that is a focus that can certainly bring people's attention, especially those that have more concrete thinking strategy like engineers typically do. And we do these retrospectives because we want to help teams succeed and hopefully ourselves succeed as well. So, Christian, share with us. When you think about your own success as a Scrum Master, what does that mean?

[C]

A good question. I think it. So it has changed over the years. I think in the beginning of my career as a Scrum Master, it was more of how can I shine? How can I show that I'm. That I'm a good leader and growing into the role but also gaining experience. I think the less that I shine and the more the team shines, the better I perform. So I guess you can measure success in how do you help the team become more predictable in the deliveries, how do you create flow, how do you build your relationship with your product owner so it kind of becomes the mom and dad of the team. So you kind of align that way. And going forward, how do I make the team less dependable of the Scrum Master? So we have this cross functional and self managing team. I always have the analogy of when you become a parent, you are responsible for that individual. So in Denmark you are considered an Adult when you turn 18. So your assignment is to let that kid grow into society and become a part of society and being a, well, a functional individual. But always with the phone call to dad to get some coaching, borrowing some money for a while, whatever it is. And I kind of see that the same way. So I think if you can do that. And of course, also this is a maybe missed one that I just learned some years ago. But the more friction you remove from management, the easier it is to have kind of craft autonomy and then work with the team.

[B]

So tell a little bit more about what you mean by that, the removing the friction from management.

[C]

I think. Yeah. So friction for me is if management has a concern that this team is performing or that these type of issues, if you don't give them some kind of comfort in. I know this, I'm working with it. So what I'm doing with my domain leader at the moment is I'm kind of reporting to him. But what I've done is that I have shown him what I see the issues or I think the issues are for this specific team. And then I've created a roadmap on how do I address these problems. So some of. One of them is we need to refine the backlog. We need to reprioritize it. There's something about psychological safety. So I have given a plan throughout the year with milestones for when these things are achieved. And one of the things I just achieved is I had a decimated team. A lot of people left back in December last year. We have hired some new ones, and I've just managed to stabilize it now, so they're actually beginning to deliver again. And when you communicate this and you just show him on a graph, this guy's a numbers guy. So he also wants metrics. So I provide a little one pager with. So this is what I've done since last time. This is where we are now. And here are the metrics that shows the progress. It gives him that kind of calm to say, okay, he knows what he's doing. I don't need to pay attention and look that way. I can do something else. So that's removing friction for me.

[B]

Yeah, absolutely. And when you think about removing friction, we obviously want to enable the team to kind of, you know, take over basically ownership of the work that you're doing. When you think about that process that you go through when removing friction, what are you hoping to see as behaviors at the team level that kind of illustrate that, yeah, this is actually working. I am successfully removing that friction.

[C]

So what I'm looking at now is so we've set up, we adapted Scrum instead of this kind of cowboy loose Kanban style that there used to be which creates, create a structure and structure creates freedom. So within this structure you kind of, I mean you have the rituals and so on that you follow. But it is more what, what value does it bring and behave now that it's that in place, I can now focus on the behavior and I can, I can see that they are this team is more and more doing it by themselves. So it is easier for me to say oh, it might be a poor excuse but oh, I'm gonna miss daily today or I have an overlapping meeting so I won't be doing planning today with you guys. And I can actually see there comes a plan, there's a sprint backlog and there's a sprint goal. So kind of removing myself from that and actually experiencing okay, they don't need me that much anymore, but still being contact with them and then drop by once in a while and say okay, I got some pointers for you this time to make it better, but you're actually doing well and this is what I want to see more of. So kind of encouraging the behavior in that way.

[B]

I really like how you link this removing friction step towards the enabling autonomy. Right? Like removing friction is not there just to remove friction. There's deeper consequences and impacts that we are looking for from that. So that was a lovely, well described. Thank you for sharing that. Christian.

[A]

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