Vasco Duarte (4:59)

Yeah, absolutely. And this idea of having something ready all the time really helps to make that habit. I guess we could call it stay right like sediment. That habit of reinforce that habit of continuously adding things that we would like to discuss to the retro board. And then later on we can prioritize or discard some that have stopped being, I guess, important at that time. Right. So that's a great idea.

Kartiga Seturaj (5:33)

Absolutely. Yep.

Vasco Duarte (5:34)

So when we think about retros, of course we, we want to work on the retros and we even enjoy, as you said, preparing and hosting the retros because it helps us succeed ourselves as Scrum Masters by helping our team succeed. So Kartika, let's dive into that success definition. What do you say is success For Scrum Masters, sure.

Kartiga Seturaj (6:02)

So like any other, you know, textbook definition, we want to put ourselves out of the job. So that's actually true. We want to help teams get to point where they are self managing, self organizing, being able to operate independently. That that's definitely one of the success measures for this Scrum Master. And there's also other ways like you can measure success, the health of the team there. There are a lot of tangible, intangible metrics that we can use to track success of Scrum Master. Another thing that I would like to share a small story here. One of the teams that I coached at one time, they suggested that when I did anonymous survey, they suggested that they want to run the retro by themselves. Initially I was like, oh my God, did I do anything wrong? Why do they want to do it by themselves? But then I understood that they are slowly maturing. I mean, they are mature enough now that they don't need me anymore in the room. It's actually really empowering to see that. And yeah, we should be proud to be a Scrum Master of a team who wants to do the retros by themselves. Instead of saying we don't want to do retros. They're on the other side of the spectrum. Right. So they are like really mature. They know what they're doing. They understand the importance of retro. They want to take ownership. That's what success means. So when a team is saying that, I would say that particular Scrum Master has been successful in helping the teams achieve their agile maturity. That would give you. That doesn't mean that you're out of job. It means that you can move on and shift your focus to other strategic needs. Other strategic priorities within the organization. There might be other areas where you can help with. So that gives you more time to focus on those strategic initiatives. Moving away from this tactical task of just facilitating meetings, there might be other things where you can bring more value to the table. And also it's important for the teams to honor the process and principles when a Scrum Master is not in the room. So that's one good indication of whether Scrum Master is successful. Do the teams do what needs to be done even when you're not around?

Vasco Duarte (8:10)

Yeah. And do the teams do what needs to be done when you're not around is something we should definitely keep our eye on and even proactively create the opportunities to observe that. So that would be my next question. Kartiga, how do you look at what is happening from the moment you enter a team to the moment where they are fully autonomous. Right. Like what are the behaviors, what are the things you're wanting to observe that give you the indication that indeed the team is becoming more independent? Sure.

Kartiga Seturaj (8:47)

Yeah. There are definitely a lot of things that we can observe. And look at one thing, do they take the initiative? Are the need to drive continuous improvement. That's. We just talked about that. Doing retros. Not just doing retros. Right. What do they do on the action items that come out of retros? Are they taking the lead and initiative or are they just waiting for another leader or Scrum Master to help them with that? That would definitely help you understand. Do they understand the why behind whatever we are doing on day to day basis and also focusing on the team health? As I said, there are various health modules that we have in the market and also for free, which would also help you kind of monitor the team's health on a periodic basis. So that's another thing. There are a lot of tools that you can use. That's what I mean when I say what health monitors and how effective the team's meetings are. Even when the Scrum Master is not facilitating it, are they meeting the goals of that meeting? Are they just meeting for the sake of meeting or are they really getting value out of those meetings? So being an observer to see whether all these are being, you know, how this is being done by the teams would also help.

Vasco Duarte (10:04)

Yeah, absolutely. Keep an eye on all of those things. One of the questions that I like to ask is, okay, so let's imagine that a team is really getting to be much more autonomous. One thing we could look for is that they want to host a retrospective themselves. You've already shared that. But what are other things you look for that tell you that they are perhaps not really autonomous yet, but they are ready to start going in that direction, that you recognize that, okay, I can maybe step away for a couple of days and let them take over.

Kartiga Seturaj (10:44)

Sure. So one thing that might also help is the maybe. As I said, when you do this health assessment, one thing that I've tried out with the teams is the SWOT analysis, like doing analysis on their strength weaknesses, opportunities for improvement, threats and risk. So when you do that on a regular basis, like every six months or every three months, whatever works best for you, keeping an eye on how those shift, are they able to convert their weaknesses to strength? Are they able to convert those opportunities for improvement to strengthen? So that is where we want to be at. Right. So once you get a good view of what the strength, weaknesses, opportunities are after three months. When you do the same analysis, what are the shifts? Are they shifting from weakness to strength? Opportunity to strength would also help you get an idea of whether the theme is progressing in the right direction. So I personally like metrics. That's why I try to have some kind of a data to support all my analysis. So this would definitely help. And also their work agreements. Right. So when they first form in the team formation, the Tuckman's chart, if they are a new team, the work agreements that they first put together and the work agreements that they might again put together after six months or one year should definitely be different. If they are still talking about we should improve our peer review process, which they talked about six months or one year ago, no, they are not ready. There is still something wrong that we need to fix. There is something fundamentally wrong. So things should change and evolve. The work agreements would evolve. That's how the results of the SWOT analysis will also change over time. That might give you more information and also that could be used as indicators for you to understand whether they are progressing towards the next phase of maturity.

Vasco Duarte (12:39)

Yeah, absolutely. That's a great example by the way. Looking at how the working agreements have evolved. If you have them in a version tracking system like Git or even Confluence and you just look at the previous versions and how they've evolved over time, that's a great way to measure the evolution and the growth of a team. Thank you for sharing that, Kartiga.

Kartiga Seturaj (13:02)

Absolutely.

Vasco Duarte (13:06)

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