Episode Summary

Podcast: Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast
Episode: Why Sticky Notes Are Your Visualization Superpower in Retrospectives | Alex Sloley
Date: October 23, 2025
Host: Vasco Duarte
Guest: Alex Sloley, Agile Coach

Episode Overview

In this engaging discussion, Vasco Duarte interviews Alex Sloley about the practical and strategic impact of visualization—especially through the simple tool of sticky notes—on Agile retrospectives and Scrum practices. The conversation delves into how powerful visualization fuels transparency, inspection, and adaptation. Alex also shares thoughtful perspectives on defining Scrum Master success, drawing from personal case studies and broader organizational metrics.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Sticky Notes as a Visualization Superpower

• Alex’s Favorite Retrospective Format

  • Alex emphasizes that any retrospective using sticky notes is a winner for him.
  • Visualization Is Key: Sticky notes allow for transparent representation of ideas, issues, improvements, actions, metrics, and more.
  • Engagement: The tactile, flexible nature of sticky notes encourages participation and collaboration.

  Quote:

  “As long as it includes sticky notes, I'm like, good to go...You can visualize the good and the bad and you can visualize the improvements or the Kaizens. You can visualize the options that were, are, or could be... It's making stuff transparent and putting it out there so everybody can see it.”
  — Alex Sloley, [01:36]-[02:12]

• Scrum Principles Connection:

  • Visualization aligns directly with Scrum’s pillars of transparency, inspection, and adaptation.
  • Sticky notes are a way to actualize these principles, making invisible work visible and enabling meaningful inspection.

  Quote:

  “In Scrum, we talk about the pillars of Scrum: transparency, inspection and adaption... sticky notes are so beautiful, you can move them anywhere, you can write anything you want on them. And you can use your imagination, the sky's the limit, to visualize stuff.”
  — Alex Sloley, [02:13]-[02:56]

• Practical Applications:

  • Visualize blockers, unplanned work, flow, interruptions, constraints.
  • Use different sizes, colors, and placements for richer meaning and diagnostics.
  • Beyond retrospectives: employ sticky notes in planning, reviews, and daily Scrum to visualize live data, issues, or improvements.

  Quote:

  “Be strategic about being visual...get together with the team and think about ways to make that challenge visual. And then you can start to create experiments that visualize that stuff. So then it becomes: identify the challenge, how do I make it visual, start making it visual, and then once you start making it visual, magic can happen because the team can see it...”
  — Alex Sloley, [03:33]-[04:39]

2. Visualization Fuels Team Engagement and Improvement

• Empowering Teams:
  • Visualization creates a shared understanding and opens the floor for creative problem solving.
• Transparency's Virtuous Cycle:
  • Transparent information enables inspection; inspection drives adaptation; adaptation, in turn, cycles back to increased transparency.

3. Defining Success as a Scrum Master

• “The Vibe or the Smell” of the Workplace

  • Alex shares a metaphor from Sumantra Ghoshal: effective Scrum Masters sense the “smell” (or, in Australian parlance, the “vibe”) of a workplace.
  • Success can often be felt before it is measured—whether it feels fresh and rewarding or “like burning trash.”

  Quote:

  “You can go into a workplace and you're like... it smells fantastic. It smells like fresh strawberries and cream... Or it might smell like a hot dumpster fire... The vibe is something you feel. Like if you're having a successful impact on the organization or on teams as a Scrum Master, you can feel it, you can smell it. It's like intangible.”
  — Alex Sloley, [05:35]-[06:51]

• Three Concrete Success Metrics
  Alex shares practical ways to measure impact beyond just “the vibe”:

  1. Financial Impact

     • At a major financial institution, improvements led to a $3.3 billion increase in home loans profits (78% increase). Alex coached leadership and teams on better business flow.
     • Caveat: Success is collaborative and not solely attributable to one person.

     Quote:

     “Looking back, I can say with some level of confidence that those metrics that are reported at the board level... I'm pretty confident, and many people I've talked to in that company are confident that I had some level of influence in that happening, which was like profits and money and stuff like that.”
     — Alex Sloley, [07:18]-[08:20]

  2. Employee Satisfaction

     • Leading a coaching team of 32 at another organization, Alex saw employee satisfaction ratings rise by 26% in a year—one of the highest in the company.

     Quote:

     “We had an internal mechanism where we surveyed employee satisfaction. And in the course of one year, their employee satisfaction rating went up 26%...I believe I had one of the highest employee satisfaction increases in the company at that time.”
     — Alex Sloley, [08:25]-[08:58]

  3. Recognition and Awards

     • One client, under Alex’s guidance, won the World Agility Forum “Best Agile Place to Work” award in 2021 and was nominated the previous year.

     Quote:

     “I helped and spearheaded an effort where my client was able to win a World Agility Forum award... Best Agile place to work in 2021...”
     — Alex Sloley, [09:00]-[09:26]

• Reflection:

  • While metrics matter, Alex underlines that sensing the “vibe” remains just as effective as quantitative measurements, especially for daily, real-time assessment.

  Quote:

  “Maybe just thinking about the vibe of the thing or the smell of the workplace is just as effective as those metrics are, right?”
  — Alex Sloley, [10:18]-[10:40]

4. Takeaways from the Host

• Maintaining Shared Belief:
  • Success should not only be felt by the Scrum Master; others must believe in it too (“Other people also need to believe what we believe” – Host, [10:41]).
• Importance of Storytelling:
  • By sharing tangible stories, Scrum Masters can help others connect with the meaning and measurement of success.

Notable Quotes

• “Sticky notes are so beautiful... you can move them anywhere, you can write anything you want on them. And you can use your imagination, the sky's the limit, to visualize stuff...”
  — Alex Sloley, [02:30]

• “Transparency, inspection, adaptation—it's a virtuous cycle.”
  — Alex Sloley, [02:56]

• “Success sometimes is just the vibe... you can feel if you are having a successful impact on the organization.”
  — Alex Sloley, [06:51]

• “Did you say I was having an impact? Probably.”
  — Alex Sloley, [09:00]

Timestamps of Key Segments

• [01:36] — Alex on the power of sticky notes in retrospectives and visualization
• [03:33] — Strategic advice: how to make challenges visual
• [05:35] — Defining “success” for a Scrum Master: vibe and intangible impact
• [07:18] — Story: Measurable financial impact of coaching at a bank
• [08:25] — Story: Employee satisfaction as a measure of impact
• [09:00] — Story: Winning best Agile workplace award
• [10:18] — Reflection: Balancing the “vibe” with measurable success

Conclusion

This episode spotlights the humble sticky note as a superpower tool for visualization, team engagement, and fueling the core Scrum cycle of transparency, inspection, and adaptation. Alex Sloley blends practical, strategic Agile advice with personal success stories, reminding listeners that while metrics and awards matter, sometimes the best measure of impact is the palpable “vibe” a great Scrum Master helps cultivate.