B (4:03)

Absolutely. I really like the concept that you introduced, which is this idea that when we use drawings or images like this could be images. Right. It doesn't need to be hand drawns. It could be just pictures from the Internet. It allows us to process things in a way and in a level that we would not be able to do through language. This is very important and one of the reasons why I wish more people would study philosophy, because there's a lot of work done in human understanding of reality. And the metaphor as a tool is an extremely powerful technology that we can use as coaches and leaders and. And images is just one of those. There could be many other metaphors. But that's really a great point. So thank you for sharing that. Now, of course, we do this retros because we want help teams succeed, and we hope that also means our success. But in order for us to succeed, we need to have a clear picture of what that is. There goes a metaphor. So, Terry, share with us. When you think about success for Scrum Masters, what comes to mind? How do you define that for yourself?

C (5:15)

So I define it in a way I don't think maybe you would have heard many times. So I might start with the way I don't define it. So I've employed a lot of Scrum Masters in the past, and I often ask them this as an interview question. You know, what does success look like for you as a Scrum Master? And quite a few will say, success for a Scrum Master is to do myself out of a job, which I don't buy into at all. Because a team will always need a coach. As they get better, they want to keep getting better. It's not like you've been transformed and you don't need a Scrum Master anymore. So I don't feel that's successful. I do believe that my success should result in the team succeeding. But having said that, that's not success for me. Right. It's actually really important that I separate my outcomes from their success. Otherwise I become a part of the system and then it's much harder to hold up the mirror. So there's a saying that you can't see the label when you're inside the jar. And if my outcomes are connected to the team's outcomes, then I'm inside the jar with the team and then I'm worrying about velocity or stories that were not done in the sprint and stuff like that. So success is really important for the team and my efforts should lead to the team succeeding. In fact, sometimes just helping them define for themselves what succeeding means for them helps them to succeed. I couldn't tell you how many times I've worked with teams that don't actually have a picture of what success means as a team. And I do very simple things like you just have a future spective postcard from the future. Share a story that a customer would tell six months from now, after we've been fantastically successful, what would that customer tell their friends? Things like that. And then they start to see their success differently. I don't connect to that though. So for me, my personal purpose is to help people see differently so they find joy. When I'm succeeding, I can see visible exhibition of joy in the people that I'm working with, not just in the team. When I see their leaders approaching me with joy in their face when I walk in the room and people are happy to see me right then, I know I'm having an impact. Because a team that's kicking goals brings joy to their leaders, it brings joy to the customers, it brings joy to their stakeholders, and it brings joy to the team. I remember many years ago, a leader came up to me and he said, what did you do? And I kind of went, I do lots of things. I don't know what you mean. And he said, these two teams that you're working with, their absenteeism used to be the highest in our division and it's now the lowest. The team had been so stressed that at least one team member was taking one sick day every week. Every single week someone would be sick because they were so stressed. And by helping to bring them joy, not only were we improving their performance and you know, you can talk about all their success factors. My success factor was their joy. But there was that flow on effect that it actually meant their absenteeism had gone down as well. And that made their leader look really good to his peers and to his leaders that brought him joy. So for me, it's all about joy.

B (9:37)

A long time ago, I read it's a USABILITY book. And it was about software. It was all about helping people who develop products with software to understand that their goal is to make their users look like superheroes, that they did something that would not have been possible without the software. And I think that that's one of the things that you kind of implicitly just described, right? Like my goal as a Scrum master is not to succeed individually, is to help others succeed. If that is the case, then they need to feel like superheroes at least every now and then, not all the time, because that would not be sustainable, but like every now and then. And you just gave a great story, right? Like, we make teams look great to their managers. We make managers look great to their managers. And I think there's a risk, and I'm glad you mentioned it at the start of your answer, I think there's a risk with this idea or picture that we are successful when we work ourselves out of a job. Because that is a self fulfilling prophecy. Especially right now at the end of 2025, when there's a lot of people in our industry that are having a hard time finding a job. Working yourself out of a job is not a sales argument for people to hire you. Oh, if that's the case, then why should I have you? Yeah, right. But if we talk about, hey, if you hire me, you will look great to your managers, they will want to promote you. That's a totally different conversation. Because now we are aligned, right? Like you said. And I think it's very important, our outcome should be different from their outcome. Right? Like in the case of a team, the team may want to deliver their stories on time, may want to have higher quality, better collaboration with all of that. That's their outcome. But our outcome is not that one. Our outcome should be something like what you described, that, that they come to work happy to come to work, they are less stressed. And all of the good things come from that. Right? Like being less stressed, more enjoying the work, more. More joyful in our approaches to the challenges that we are inevitably going to face. And I think that those two aspects, like stop thinking about working yourself out of a job, find an outcome, whatever that is, for everyone out there listening to this episode, that is separate from the team's outcome, but justifies your investment of time and effort into that team or in the work that that team is doing, so that they are successful, but you are also successful. Because I can never find the motivation or the success in the statement, I work myself out of a job.

C (12:29)

Yeah, I agree. I mean, it really says I'm effective in working with junior teams, but at some point they will exceed my capability to coach them. Like maybe our teams are already past.

B (12:48)

That and this is yet another bonus episode, perhaps in the future. And maybe that's why project management is making a comeback. Because there is no project manager on earth that would say I want to work myself out of a job. They would say something completely different. They would say I want to deliver projects on time and on budget. And every manager wants that, even when they're not doing projects. Which is yet another bonus episode. So we've gone three bonus episodes already. All right, Terry, thank you very much for sharing all of these insights and wisdom with us today.

C (13:21)

Thanks, Besco.

A (13:27)

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B (14:26)

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A (14:29)

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B (15:16)

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