The Three Pillars of Scrum Master Success | Tom Molenaar

Summary

Podcast Summary

Podcast: Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast
Host: Vasco Duarte
Guest: Tom Molenaar
Episode: The Three Pillars of Scrum Master Success
Date: October 2, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode focuses on defining and achieving success as a Scrum Master, featuring Tom Molenaar’s practical insights. Tom shares his favorite retrospective format and outlines the "Three Pillars"—Purpose, Process, and People—that anchor Scrum Master effectiveness. The conversation dives into actionable tools, team engagement techniques, and how self- and team-assessment drive continuous improvement.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Creative Retrospectives: Drawing the Sprint

• Tom’s Approach:

  • Tom emphasizes the importance of retrospectives for team reflection, adaptation, and fun.
  • His favorite format involves drawing the sprint’s story—on digital whiteboards if remote—and then having teammates interpret each other's drawings.

• Benefits:

  • Encourages out-of-the-box thinking and empathy by seeing the sprint through another's eyes.
  • Leads to laughter, lightens the mood, and often surfaces underlying issues that may not be verbalized in a standard discussion.

• Memorable Moments:

  • Tom describes seeing “toddler-like” sketches, sparking joy and deeper conversations about shared experiences and interpretations.

• Quote:

  "Some can draw really good, others make really funny drawings like a toddler. So there's always space for a lot of fun... It brings them back to their childhood to just make a drawing of the last couple of weeks."
  — Tom Molenaar [03:06]

• Host’s Reflection:

  • Vasco expands on how this method taps into the non-structured experience, encouraging a more holistic team understanding.

  "We experience the plan through the world, which is a totally different perspective... I think that aspect of drawing... can be really a great way to tap into other people's experience."
  — Vasco Duarte [05:28]

2. The Three Pillars of Scrum Master Success

• Tom’s Framework:

  • Success for a Scrum Master is anchored in Purpose, Process, and People.
  • Purpose: The product goal—the outcome the team is working to achieve.
  • Process: Enabling agile ways of working, quick adaptation to change, and regular feedback.
  • People: Fostering team maturity, collaboration, and high performance.

• Balance of Focus:

  • Recognizes limited influence over product outcomes but significant impact on process and people.
  • Measures success by reflecting on team effectiveness in both process and interpersonal collaboration.

• Quote:

  "As a Scrum master, you can really focus on the process and the people... on how the team effectiveness is on the people side of things and the process side of things."
  — Tom Molenaar [07:23]

• Host’s Summary:

  • Vasco encapsulates the approach as the “Three Ps of Success.”

  "Purpose, process and people. We could call it the three Ps of success."
  — Vasco Duarte [08:31]

3. Mapping Success in a New Team

• Onboarding Steps:
  • Tom observes team results, collects data through surveys, and measures collaboration, planning, and refinement.
  • He uses both his own surveys and team self-assessments to gain a 360° view of team dynamics.
  • Critical to identify strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement from multiple perspectives.
• Utilizing Surveys:
  • Surveys are presented to the team to collect input on challenges, perceptions of progress, and potential "low hanging fruit."
  • This process helps establish common ground and avoids imposing an external agenda.
• Quote:

  "Instead of trying to solve things immediately... I always try to ask the team first, what is your problem or what is the next step, do you think? So having their inputs [and] my inputs, bundle it and share it... to see what is our common ground." — Tom Molenaar [10:41]

4. The Importance of a “Handshake”

• Learning from Experience:
  • Tom references a previous misstep, emphasizing the need to align on improvement goals (“handshake”) before moving forward.
  • Surveys and open dialogue create clear agreements, preventing wasted effort when vision and needs are misaligned.
• Quote:

  "If you see certain areas where you feel like this really needs improvement and the team thinks that we're doing fine... then you can immediately have that conversation before we start moving. And I think that that handshake is really necessary..." — Tom Molenaar [13:05]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "The retrospective is a really important moment for us as coaches and for the team to reflect, to adapt, to have the conversations that we need to have, but also to laugh and have fun together."
  — Tom Molenaar [01:40]

• "We experience the plan through the world, which is a totally different perspective."
  — Vasco Duarte [05:28]

• "Always handshake on what needs to be done."
  — Vasco Duarte [13:54]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:40] Drawing retrospectives for team reflection and fun
• [05:28] The value of non-verbal, experiential retrospectives
• [06:29] Defining the Three Pillars: Purpose, Process, People
• [08:31] Summarizing the Three Ps of Scrum Master Success
• [09:05] Tom discusses onboarding and early-stage team assessment
• [10:41] How self and team surveys inform shared improvement
• [13:05] Ensuring alignment through the "handshake" approach

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Summary for Practitioners

This episode offers practical and concrete ways to deepen your effectiveness as a Scrum Master:

• Try more creative retrospectives, such as “draw the sprint,” to deepen team empathy and break through communication barriers.
• Anchor your work in the Three Pillars: constantly revisit purpose, optimize process, and invest in people.
• Use surveys both personally and with your team to establish a shared improvement agenda, avoiding misaligned goals.
• Prioritize an explicit “handshake” moment—mutual agreement—before driving change.

Tom’s stories and tools highlight how reflection, collaboration, and shared ownership are essential ingredients in agile team success.

Transcript

[Vasco]

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.

Hello everybody. Welcome to our success Thursday. This week we have joining us, Tom Molinaar. Hey, Tom, welcome back.

[Tom Molinaar]

Hey guys. Hi Fosco. Thanks for having me.

[Vasco]

So, success is the topic of Thursday, of course.

But before we dive into that, we explore one of the tools we bring to the table to help us get to that success, which is of course, the Agile retrospective. So share with us the. Sam, what's your favorite Agile retrospective and why?

[Tom Molinaar]

Yeah, I really like that question. Because I think the retrospective is a really important moment for us as coaches and for the team to reflect, to adapt, to have the conversations that we need to have, but also to laugh and have fun together. So that's why I always try to make it as creative as possible. And one of the formats that I started using more and more over the years because it's, it's, yeah, helping people to think outside their, their own box and take on a other person's perspective. Is the drawing creative drawing of the sprint? So first I ask everyone, for example, you can use a Miro board or in Ms. Teams, a whiteboard, if you're doing it online, to draw the sprint. And this is really subjective, you can use different kind of symbols. So then you make it a bit more easy or you just ask them to draw the story of the sprint. So give them a couple of minutes to prepare that and then you're gonna ask other team members to explain or guess the story of the sprint what a other team member wrote. So in that setting they can laugh, they can draw. Some can draw really good, others make really funny drawings like a toddler. So there's always space for a lot of fun and it's. It's a bit different than coding and having like very structured meetings. So it brings them back to their childhood to just make a drawing of the last couple of weeks. And by asking other team members to interpret the drawing of another, you stimulate. Yeah, really funny conversations and good conversation about understanding each other. Ah, this is what you meant by the big block or really tapping in each other's experience. And that's really healthy for team, especially in a retro to not only speak about stuff that. From your. From your own plate or. During week two, we had this impediment and yeah, we know, we all know these conversations but it's really funny to see how they're interpretating and sometimes it's. Yeah, it leads to a highly. Yeah, to a lot of laughter. And I think that's a good combination like having fun, taking perspectives. And in the same time there are always a couple of topics that come up from these stories that we can work on and grow in.

[Vasco]

I really like the way you describe that. It helps us tap into somebody else's experience of the sprint because very often when we verbalize, we talk about concrete things, especially people with an engineering background. We're going to talk about concrete things like the build broke, the tests didn't pass, whatever that is. But we're not really tapping into the experience.

[Unidentified Guest]

Right.

[Vasco]

Like that can lead to frustration, that can lead to trying to solve problems in a hurry and creating bigger problems downstream. Like it can lead to so many things that are experiences, not things you can point to. And that's a very important aspect of what being a human being is all about.

[Unidentified Guest]

Right.

[Vasco]

Like we go through the world and we experience the world. Of course we use reason and decomposition and planning an organization in that experience of the world. But we don't experience the world through a plan. We experience the plan through the world, which is a totally different perspective. And I think that aspect of drawing which taps into the non structured, the non organized, the non mathematical.

[Unidentified Guest]

Right.

[Vasco]

I think that can be really a great way to tap into other people's experience. When you think about success, we talk about this. Helping people go through these different experiences, understanding things that are perhaps beyond the surface, all of that is helpful for us to help succeed the teams, but also ourselves. So what do you think when you think about success for yourself as a scrum master, what do you think about?

[Tom Molinaar]

I think about the. The three pillars that are really important. Three pillars of. Of success for a team to be a effective team that is reaching their goals. So to achieve the purpose of the team, which is delivering the product, that's the result. On the product side, we as coaches, like, we, we can't influence the product that much. Okay, we can, we can help our PO with the, with the vision and all kind of stuff, but direct influence on the product is, yeah, is something that the team is working on on a technical, on a product side of things. But as a Scrum master, you can really focus on the process and the people and with the process, I mean having the agile way of working in place because we spoke about team dynamics, but working agile means also having that quick ability to adapt to changes, to receive regular feedback and on the people side of things, we as coaches can help a team to grow in their maturity, to become a high performing team, to improve the collaboration and to make sure that the agile process is really helping the team flourish. So also when it comes to the meetings, are they effective, the collaboration effective? And that's how I measure my own success as a Scrum master, in a reflection on how the team effectiveness is on the people side of things and the process side of things. Absolutely.

[Vasco]

So purpose, process and people. We could call it the three Ps of success.

[Tom Molinaar]

Right, Exactly. That's a good one.

[Vasco]

One question before we finish. How do you, when you, like we talked about yesterday, on Wednesday, we talked about you joining a new team, a new organization, a new team, how do you map this out? Like when you go into a new team, how do you start thinking about purpose, process, people? Like how do you do that for yourself? Not for the team which will eventually benefit from it, but how do you do it for yourself?

[Tom Molinaar]

Yeah, yeah, especially that's, that's during the first phase I try to observe as much as possible what are the results of the team. And I use a, a survey that I can use within the team. How they score themselves, but also how I score their performance on collaboration. And that's based on my observations during the first retro, how they refine, how they plan. So basically I use that survey to check what is the state of the team when it comes to collaboration and how would I rank it and what is the, the next step for the team? How well is the process serving the team? Are there certain elements that are lacking or not working as smooth? And of course what is the result? Because yeah, you can work on team dynamics all you want, but if the team isn't delivering the product, most of the teams are in a corporate setting, so they have to deliver their product for the customer so, so do you.

[Vasco]

Have myself a survey that, that you bring to the teams or is that something that you define based on maybe an initial assessment or the first one on ones?

[Tom Molinaar]

Yeah, I use. So your question is if, if I bring that survey to the ta.

[Vasco]

If you have a survey that you use for yourself and you work through that with the team.

[Tom Molinaar]

Yeah, during the years I had different approaches, but what I really like doing now is like having that 360 view on, on these three pillars by sharing the survey with the team as well, so that they add that I can see their opinion on how things are going and also to ask what are your challenges? What are your problems? Instead of trying to solve things immediately that you feel like, ah, we need to improve this, this is going to benefit the team. I always try to ask the team first, what is your problem or what is the next step, do you think? So having their inputs, having my inputs bundle it and share it in the, in maybe the second retro when I joined them to see what is our common ground, where, where do we meet each other, what are the most important things that we can fear on or what is low hanging fruit. So I really like to share my opinion but also have their reflections on.

[Vasco]

I really like that approach of coming in with a survey that may have a certain number of questions that are fixed, others that may be appropriate to the context and really get the team's opinion. Because that's one of the things that I very often see, especially in the early days of agile adoption, when a lot of people came into those teams with a lot more knowledge about agile than the teams themselves. These days it's not like that. The teams are in principle quite well aware of agile and the different agile approaches. So coming in with that survey really helps the team hopefully express how they see themselves and also how they see the opportunity for improvement. And then I'm reminded of the story you shared on Monday, right, where you brought in the enthusiasm and the vision and the team just laid back and never wanted to do anything. And the survey would have given you that immediate perception.

[Unidentified Guest]

Right.

[Vasco]

And I think that this is so powerful for us because then it sets us up for success.

[Unidentified Guest]

Right.

[Vasco]

Then we know what we need to work on. For example, on the Monday episode in that story, maybe you would have found that the team had a vision for improvement. It was just completely different from what you would expect it to be.

[Tom Molinaar]

Exactly. And there needs to be a handshake moment. And what I shared on Monday is that I skipped the intake where I had like a handshake with the team. This is what we agree on. And by using this survey you can if you see certain areas where you feel like this really needs improvement and the team thinks that we're doing fine, we don't need that, then you can immediately have that conversation before we start moving. And I think that that handshake is really necessary for us as coaches to not lose energy in that phase when you start moving and so that you find the common ground. That's something that is really useful and necessary.

[Vasco]

Absolutely. Always handshake on what needs to be done. Tom, thank you very much for sharing that story with us.

[Tom Molinaar]

You're welcome.

[Vasco]

All right, I hope you liked this episode, but before you hit next episode, here's the deal. This podcast is powered by people like you, the members who wanted more than just inspiration. They wanted real tools and real connection to people who are practicing Agile. Every day we're talking access to over 700 hours of agile Gold, CTO level Strategy talks, Summit keynotes, live workshops, E courses, Deep Dive interviews, books, and if you're into no Estimates, we got the pioneers of no Estimates in those Deep Dive interviews as well. Agile Business Intelligence, creating Product visions, coaching your product owner courses, you name it. You'll get invites to monthly live Q&As with agile pioneers and practitioners, plus a private Slack community which is free of all of that AI slop you see everywhere. And of course without the flame wars, it's a community of practitioners that want to learn and thrive together. It's the best place to connect with community and learn together. So if this podcast has helped you before, imagine what you will get from this podcast membership. So head on over to scrummastertoolbox.org membership and join the community that's shaping the future of Agile. We have so much for you, so check out all the details at the end. ScrumMasterToolbox.org membership because listening is great, it's important, but doing it together, that's next level.

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[Tom Molinaar]

Slack.

[Podcast Host/Producer]

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