← Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile storytelling from the trenches
Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile storytelling from the trenches
The Marathon Mindset—Building Agile Teams That Last Beyond Sprint Deadlines | Shawn Dsouza
00:13:51
Shawn Dsouza: The Marathon Mindset—Building Agile Teams That Last Beyond Sprint Deadlines Read the full Show Notes and search through the world's largest audio library on Agile and Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website:...
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- [00:04]
A
Hey there, agile adventurer, just a quick question.
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B
What if, for the price of a.
- [00:09]
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.
- [01:12]
B
Hello, everybody. Welcome to our Success Thursday. The big question of the week this week with Sean de Souza. Hey, Sean, welcome back.
- [01:21]
C
Hey Osco, everyone.
- [01:23]
B
So, Sean, Thursday is of course success day here on Podcast. Before you dive into that though, share with us what's your favorite Agile retrospective format and why?
- [01:34]
C
Okay, honestly, that is a tough one because I don't really have a favorite format. I would say I like to experiment. You know, sometimes it's the 4L, sometimes it's the sailboat, sometimes it's Matt's had glass. I kind of like to mix it up, just check the vibe of the team and see which one really works. Initially, when I started as a Scrum Master, I just thought of retro as just another, you know, Scrum Scrum event. But right now I think of retros as something that creates a lot of value for the team. And what happens is sometimes I hit the right nerves and sometimes, you know, kind of falls flat. And that's all part of the learning. What I, you know, learned was that there is no one format that fits all right. It's about striking the right balance, you know, having meaningful conversations, thoughtful reflections, and a bit of lightheartedness as well. And I remember in one of the retros, we ditched the usual format and we simply ran something called as the Sprint Awards. So we had categories like the Bug Smasher of the Sprint, the Coding Ninja, the QA Rockstar, the Positivity Pump, the Retro Rockstar and other titles and so on. So the best part, after each award, the team explained why they voted for that person and what they learned from them. For Example, you know, the one who won the coding ninja title, right. The people said that, you know, they voted for him because they could not find any issues in this code. When I asked him how does he manage to write such clean code, he told me this, right? He told that I explained the code to myself a couple of times before I send it to send it out for a review. Such a small thing, right? I mean, just explain the code to yourself and we'll get a very high quality code. So this was one of the key takeaways. Attention to details and we get better code. So if you ask me what kind of retro I personally enjoy the most, I would say is I like the classic offline kind of retros where there are no gadgets. It's more like we have a board, some equipments, some sticky notes and some markers out there. We kick it out with a quick icebreaker and then get started on real conversation, like what went well, what did, and come out with a couple of very actionable action items for us to work on. I don't really have a go to format, but what I do care about is how the team feels. They feel heard or if they feel connected, if they feel, you know, motivated to grow. So for me, that is what a good retro is all about.
- [04:24]
B
Absolutely. And that's incredibly important because that's the goal of the retro, right? Like one thing, if the team doesn't feel hurt and the retro has no value, because that's the goal of the retro, right? To come up with things that matter for the team so that we can help them grow and become a better team. Now we do all of this, Sean, because obviously we want to succeed by helping teams succeeding. But for us to succeed, we need to have a clear understanding of what that means. So share with us, Sean, what does success mean for you as a Scrum Master?
- [05:00]
C
If anybody who has listened to my previous podcast, they would know my style of working, I would say I'm a people first person. So when it comes to success as a Scrum Master, for me, I would say I don't start with matrices or burn down charts or velocity. Yes, they are very important. But for me, success shows up in small everyday moments. The one which are often overlooked but are very important. It is more like when developers don't hate Mondays whenever they get a very uninterrupted focus time. So these kind of deep work, it doesn't just happen, you have to protect it. So when that happens, you get very high quality work and the mindset of the team changes is when you know, the daily Scrum happens even without me. That is when you realize, you know, the team sees value out of these ceremonies and they don't just follow this. So let me give you an example, right? I worked with two teams. So one of the teams was hitting the deadlines okay on most of the days, but behind the scenes, there were no real conversation. The conversation used to happen in long email chains. Stand up often felt like status update and not collaborations. Retros were skipped or just were subject boxes that we had to do. And on a surface level, everything looks great, but this is not what success looks like. For me, I would say this is not sustainable. Right. In comparison, there is one more team that I worked with. We often struggled to meet the deadlines. There were, you know, some new work that was coming in. Some scope creeps were there. But we always had real conversation in the retrospeed. Openly admitted blockers. They were open discussions about all the disagreements that we had. But every sprint we had some small, meaningful improvements. And that is success for me, I would say, because here we didn't just deliver, right? We grew as a team and this last beyond the sprint goal. Okay? And for me, I would say success isn't just about delivery. It's when people feel safe and supported and, you know, connected. And it is when, you know, the improvement is actually driven by the team and it is not enforced on them. How do I measure all of this? I often look for signals like there are fewer ping me later messages and there is more real time conversation happening. And team members are initiating retro process and they even tweak the process to make sure what works for them. And the product owner feels very confident and supported. And honestly, it's when I can kind of take a day off or two and the team still runs smoothly.
- [07:57]
B
One of the things I wanted to explore, we've talked about this before, like this importance of having growth in the team, that one of the deliverables for the Scrum Master is actually a better team. Right? Like improving all the time. But you said one thing now in your answer that I think is incredibly important. You said having real and meaningful conversations. Now, this sounds great, but we need to be a little bit more specific about it. Because if I ask any manager and they tell me, yeah, this team is delivering all the deadlines, getting everything done, but I'm not really happy with them. This other team is not delivering on time. They have troubles, but I'm completely happy. Managers would not say that. Right? So we also need to fit into that context. And I think that we need to explore what, what does this meaningful conversations that you talk about, real and meaningful conversations, what does that mean in practice for the team? I mean, you talked about one aspect, right? Like when there are no real and meaningful conversations, performance is not sustainable. But is that the only reason? I mean, when you think about it from that perspective and you think you are hiring the Scrum Master, what are you looking for? Right? Like, what do you want to see happening in order to be sure that this is a great Scrum Master, this is a successful Scrum Master.
- [09:18]
C
How I would put it is product development is not a sprint, it's more of a marathon. Then the first team that we had, even though we were hitting deadlines most of the time, they were sprinting towards us way too fast. But there was no learning there. In one of the previous podcast, I shared an example where team drifted away and fel apart because we avoided hard conversation. Right. But when we have real conversation, I would say we inspect and adapt. And this adoption makes sure that the team and the delivery that we have is more sustainable. Right? And that is when I meant that, you know, we should have real conversation within the team and that when we have real conversation, it, you know, results in real changes and this changes last longer. So. Absolutely.
- [10:08]
B
And that's actually a great impact because even when teams are hitting the deadlines and delivering, there will be changes coming their way. And a team that is delivering on time, without real conversations, without meaningful improvement, they're probably not performing at their potential, but they might be performing at the maximum because the lack of conversations and the lack of positive interactions does not prevent, does not allow them to find better ways to work. And the way I would phrase it, picking on what you said is that when we have those real conversations, we know that the team can inspect and adapt. They can improve their performance even if they don't know the future. Right. Even if the future brings changes that way. And I think that this is a very important point that you raised, which is that it's not about delivering on time today, it's about delivering on time today, tomorrow and forever.
- [11:09]
C
Absolutely right. And very interesting take is in one of the books that I read, I think it's called Clean Language, they say that 70 to 80% of the project failed because we are not clear in expressing our thoughts.
- [11:25]
B
Yeah, absolutely. Great story. Thank you for sharing that with us, Sean.
- [11:29]
C
Thank you. It's my pleasure, Vasco.
- [11:34]
A
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- [13:24]
B
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