Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile storytelling from the trenches Podcast Por Vasco Duarte Agile Coach Certified Scrum Master Certified Product Owner arte de portada

Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile storytelling from the trenches

Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile storytelling from the trenches

De: Vasco Duarte Agile Coach Certified Scrum Master Certified Product Owner
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Every week day, Certified Scrum Master, Agile Coach and Business Consultant Vasco Duarte interviews Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches from all over the world to get you actionable advice, new tips and tricks, improve your craft as a Scrum Master with daily doses of inspiring conversations with Scrum Masters from the all over the world. Stay tuned for BONUS episodes when we interview Agile gurus and other thought leaders in the business space to bring you the Agile Business perspective you need to succeed as a Scrum Master. Some of the topics we discuss include: Agile Business, Agile Strategy, Retrospectives, Team motivation, Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint Review, Backlog Refinement, Scaling Scrum, Lean Startup, Test Driven Development (TDD), Behavior Driven Development (BDD), Paper Prototyping, QA in Scrum, the role of agile managers, servant leadership, agile coaching, and more!(c) Oikosofy Oü Política y Gobierno
Episodios
  • When Teams Lose Trust—How Scrum Masters Rebuild It One Small Change at a Time | Sara Di Gregorio

    When Teams Lose Trust—How Scrum Masters Rebuild It One Small Change at a Time | Sara Di Gregorio
    Nov 17 2025
    Sara Di Gregorio: When Teams Lose Trust—How Scrum Masters Rebuild It One Small Change at a Time

    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: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes.

    "I continue to approach this situation with openness, positivity, and trust, because I truly believe that even the smallest changes can make a difference over time." - Sara Di Gregorio

    Sara faced one of the most challenging situations a Scrum Master can encounter—a team member who had lost all trust in change, creating a negative atmosphere that weighed heavily on the entire team. She remembers the heaviness on her shoulders, feeling personally responsible for the team's wellbeing. The negativity was palpable during every meeting, and it threatened to undermine the team's progress.

    But Sara refused to give up. She started experimenting with different approaches: one-to-one conversations to understand what was happening, bringing intentional energy to meetings, and trying new facilitation techniques in retrospectives. She added personal check-ins, asking "How are you today?" at the start of stand-ups, consciously bringing positive energy even on days when she didn't feel it herself.

    She discovered that listening—truly listening, not just hearing—means understanding how people feel, not just what they're saying. Sara learned that the energy you bring to interactions matters deeply. Starting the day with genuine interest, asking about the team's wellbeing, and even making small comments about the weather could create tiny shifts—a small smile that signaled something had changed.

    Her approach was rooted in persistence and belief: she continued approaching the situation with openness, positivity, and trust, knowing that even the smallest changes can make a difference over time. For Sara, reestablishing a good environment wasn't about quick fixes—it was about showing up every day with the right energy and never giving up on her team.

    Self-reflection Question: What energy are you bringing to your interactions with the team today, and how might that be shaping the team's atmosphere?

    [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends]

    🔥In the ruthless world of fintech, success isn't just about innovation—it's about coaching!🔥

    Angela thought she was just there to coach a team. But now, she's caught in the middle of a corporate espionage drama that could make or break the future of digital banking. Can she help the team regain their mojo and outwit their rivals, or will the competition crush their ambitions? As alliances shift and the pressure builds, one thing becomes clear: this isn't just about the product—it's about the people.

    🚨 Will Angela's coaching be enough? Find out in Shift: From Product to People—the gripping story of high-stakes innovation and corporate intrigue.

    Buy Now on Amazon

    [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends]

    About Sara Di Gregorio

    Sara is a people-centered Scrum Master who champions trust, collaboration, and real value over rigid frameworks. With experience introducing Agile practices, she fosters empathy, inclusion, and clarity in every team. As an Advanced Scrum Master, she helps teams grow, perform, and deliver with enthusiasm and purpose.

    You can link with Sara Di Gregorio on LinkedIn.
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    15 m
  • BONUS: Flawless Execution — Translating Fighter Pilot Precision to Business Results | Christian "Boo" Boucousis

    BONUS: Flawless Execution — Translating Fighter Pilot Precision to Business Results | Christian "Boo" Boucousis
    Nov 15 2025
    BONUS: Flawless Execution — Translating Fighter Pilot Precision to Business Results In this powerful conversation, former fighter pilot Christian "Boo" Boucousis reveals how military precision translates into agile business leadership. We explore the FLEX model (Plan-Brief-Execute-Debrief), the critical difference between control-based and awareness-based leadership, and why most organizations fail to truly embrace iterative thinking. From Cockpit to Boardroom: An Unexpected Journey "I learned over time that it doesn't matter what you do if you're always curious, and you're always intentional, and you're always asking questions." — Christian "Boo" Boucousis Christian's path from fighter pilot to leadership consultant wasn't planned—it was driven by necessity and curiosity. After 11 years as a fighter pilot (7 in Australia, 4 in the UK), an autoimmune condition ended his flying career at age 30. Rather than accepting a comfy job flying politicians around, he chose entrepreneurship. He moved to Afghanistan with a friend and built a reconstruction company that grew to a quarter billion dollars in four years. The secret? The debrief skills he learned as a fighter pilot. By constantly asking "What are you trying to achieve? How's it going? Why is there a gap?" he approached business with an agile mindset before he even knew what agile was. This curiosity-driven, question-focused approach became the foundation for everything that followed. The FLEX Model: Plan-Brief-Execute-Debrief "Agile and scrum were co-created by John Sutherland, who was a fighter pilot, and its origins sit in the OODA loop and iteration. Which is why it's a circle." — Christian "Boo" Boucousis The FLEX model isn't new—fighter pilots have used this Plan-Brief-Execute-Debrief cycle for 60 years. It's the ultimate simple agile model, designed to help teams accelerate toward goals using the same accelerated learning curve the Air Force uses to train fighter pilots. The key insight: everything in this model is iterative, not linear. Every mission has a start, middle, and end, and every stage involves constant adaptation. Afterburner (the company Christian now leads as CEO) has worked with nearly 3,800 companies and 2.8 million people over 30 years, teaching this model. What's fascinating is that the DNA of agile is baked into fighter pilot thinking—John Sutherland, co-creator of Scrum, wrote the foreword for Christian's book "The Afterburner Advantage" because they share the same roots in the OODA loop and iterative thinking. Why Iterative Thinking Doesn't Come Naturally "Iterative thinking is not a natural human model. Most of the time we learn from mistakes. We don't learn as a habit." — Christian "Boo" Boucousis Here's the hard truth: agile as a way of working is very different from the way human beings naturally think. Business leadership models still hark back to Frederick Winslow Taylor's 1911 book on scientific management—industrial era leadership designed for building buildings, not creating software. Time is always linear (foundation, then structure, then finishing), and this shapes how we think about planning. Humans also tend to organize like villages with chiefs, warriors, and gatherers—hierarchical and political. Fighter pilots created a parallel system where politics exist outside missions, but during execution, personality clashes can't interfere. The challenge for business isn't the method—it's getting human minds to embrace iteration as a habit, not just a process they follow when forced. Planning: Building Collective Consciousness, Not Task Lists "Planning isn't all about sequencing actions—that's not planning. That's the byproduct of planning, which is collectively agreeing what good looks like at the end." — Christian "Boo" Boucousis Most people plan in their head or in front of a spreadsheet by themselves. That's not planning—that's collecting thoughts. Real planning means bringing everyone on the team together to build collective consciousness about what's possible. The plan is always "the best idea based on what we know now." Once airborne, everything changes because the enemy doesn't cooperate with your plan. Planning is about the destination, not the work to get there. Think about airline pilots: they don't tell you about traffic delays on their commute or maintenance issues. They say "Welcome aboard, our destination is Amsterdam, there's weather on the way, we'll land 5 minutes early." That's a brief—just the effect on you based on all their work. Most business meetings waste 55 minutes on backstory and 5 minutes deciding to have another meeting. Fighter pilots focus entirely on: What are we trying to achieve? What might get in the way? Let's go. Briefing: The 25-Minute Focus Window "You need 25 minutes of focus before your brain really focuses on the task. You program your brain for the mission at hand." — Christian "Boo" Boucousis The brief is the ...
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    43 m
  • When Product Owners Facilitate Vision Instead of Owning It | Alidad Hamidi

    When Product Owners Facilitate Vision Instead of Owning It | Alidad Hamidi
    Nov 14 2025
    Alidad Hamidi: When Product Owners Facilitate Vision Instead of Owning It 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: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes. The Great Product Owner: Co-Creating Vision Through Discovery "The best product owner I worked with was not a product owner, but a project manager. And she didn't realize that she's acting as a product owner." - Alidad Hamidi The irony wasn't lost on Alidad. The best Product Owner he ever worked with didn't have "Product Owner" in her title—she was a project manager who didn't even realize she was acting in that capacity. The team was working on a strategic project worth millions, but confusion reigned about what value they were creating. Alidad planned an inception workshop to create alignment among stakeholders, marketing, operations, advisors, and the team. Twenty minutes into the session, Alidad asked a simple question: "How do we know the customer has this problem, and they're gonna pay for it?" Silence. No one knew. To her immense credit, the project manager didn't retreat or deflect. Instead, she jumped in: "What do we need to do?" Alidad suggested assumptions mapping, and two days later, the entire team and stakeholders gathered for the workshop. What happened next was magic. "She didn't become a proxy," Alidad emphasizes. She didn't say, "I'll go find out and come back to you." Instead, she brought everyone together—team, stakeholders, and customers—into the same room. The results were dramatic. The team was about to invest millions integrating with an external vendor. Through the assumption mapping workshop, they uncovered huge risks and realized customers didn't actually want that solution. "We need to pivot," she declared. Instead of the expensive integration, they developed educational modules and scripts for customer support and advisors. The team sat with advisors, listening to actual customer calls, creating solutions based on real needs rather than assumptions. The insight transformed not just the project but the project manager herself. She took these discovery practices across the entire organization, teaching everyone how to conduct proper discovery and fundamentally shifting the product development paradigm. One person, willing to facilitate rather than dictate, made this impact. "Product owner can facilitate creation of that [vision]," Alidad explains. "It's not just product owner or a team. It's the broader stakeholder and customer community that need to co-create that." Self-reflection Question: Are you facilitating the creation of vision with your stakeholders and customers, or are you becoming a proxy between the team and the real sources of insight? The Bad Product Owner: Creating Barriers Instead of Connections "He did the opposite, just creating barriers between the team and the environment." - Alidad Hamidi The Product Owner was new to the organization, technically skilled, and genuinely well-intentioned. The team was developing solutions for clinicians—complex healthcare work requiring deep domain understanding. Being new, the PO naturally leaned into his strength: technical expertise. He spent enormous amounts of time with the team, drilling into details, specifying exactly how everything should look, and giving the team ready-made solutions instead of problems to solve. Alidad kept telling him: "Mate, you need to spend more time with our stakeholder, you need to understand their perspective." But the PO didn't engage with users or stakeholders. He stayed comfortable in his technical wheelhouse, designing solutions in isolation. The results were predictable and painful. Halfway through work, the PO would realize, "Oh, we really don't need that." Or worse, the team would complete something and deliver it to crickets—no one used it because no one wanted it. "Great person, but it created a really bad dynamic," Alidad reflects. What should have been the PO's job—understanding the environment, stakeholder needs, and market trends—never happened. Instead of putting people in front of the environment to learn and adapt, he created barriers between the team and reality. Years later, Alidad's perspective has matured. He initially resented this PO but came to realize: "He was just being human, and he didn't have the right support and the environment for him." Sometimes people learn only after making mistakes. The coaching opportunity isn't to shame or blame but to focus on reflection from failures and supporting learning. Alidad encouraged forums with stakeholders where the PO and team could interact directly, seeing each other's work and constraints. The goal isn't perfection—it's creating conditions where Product Owners can connect teams to customers rather than standing between them. Self-reflection Question: What barriers might you be unintentionally creating between your...
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    15 m
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