Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile storytelling from the trenches

Steve Martin: When a Distributed Team's Energy Vanishes into the Virtual Void 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 .   "They weren't a team, they were a group of individuals working on multiple different projects." - Vasco Duarte (describing Steve's team si...

Steve Martin: When the Gospel of Agile Becomes a Barrier to Change 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 .   "It took me a while to realize that that's what I was doing. I felt the reason wasn't working was them, it wasn't me." - Steve Martin   Steve carried...

BONUS: The Operating System for Software-Native Organizations - The Five Core Principles In this BONUS episode, the final installment of our Special Xmas 2025 reflection on Software-native businesses, we explore the five fundamental principles that form the operating system for software-native organizations. Building on the previous four episodes, this conversation provides the blueprint for build...

BONUS: Breaking Through The Organizational Immune System - Why Software-Native Organizations Are Still Rare With Vasco Duarte In this BONUS episode, we explore the organizational barriers that prevent companies from becoming truly software-native. Despite having proof that agile, iterative approaches work at scale—from Spotify to Amazon to Etsy—most organizations still struggle to adopt these prac...

Xmas Special: Recovering the Essence of Agile - What's Already Working in Software-Native Organizations In this BONUS Xmas Special episode, we explore what happens when we strip away the certifications and branded frameworks to recover the essential practices that make software development work. Building on Episode 2's exploration of the Project Management Trap, Vasco reveals how the core insights...

Xmas Special: Why project management tools fail software development - and what works instead! In this BONUS episode, we dive deep into The Project Management Trap, continuing our exploration from Episode 1 where we established that software is societal infrastructure being managed with tools from the 1800s. We examine why project management frameworks - designed for building railroads and ships -...

Xmas Special: Software Industry Transformation - Why Software Development Must Mature Welcome to the 2025 Xmas special - a five-episode deep dive into how software as an industry needs to transform. In this opening episode, we explore the fundamental disconnect between how we manage software and what software actually is. From small businesses to global infrastructure, software has become the back...

Natalia Curusi: From Spreadsheets to Discovery—Helping POs Make the Transition The Great Product Owner: Taking Ownership and Coaching the Team Forward 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 .   "That person was not just a great product owner, but a great coac...

Natalia Curusi: Measuring What Matters Beyond Velocity and Story Points 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 .   "We as Scrum Masters need to put a scope for ourselves—we need to aim to leave the place where we work a little bit better than it was, and to m...

Natalia Curusi: Demonstrating Your Value When the Market Questions Agile Roles 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 .   "My challenging topic is about the demand of agility in the market—how do we fit ourselves as scrum masters in that AI era? How can we de...

Natalia Curusi: The Dark Side of High-Performing Dream Teams 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 was proud of this team—I helped form them from the start, we traveled to the client together, they were mature and independent, they even jelled outside...

Natalia Curusi: When Your Technical Expertise Becomes Your Biggest Scrum Master Weakness 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 thought my technical background was my biggest strength, but I understood that this was my biggest weakness—I was coming int...

BONUS: Swimming in Tech Debt — Practical Techniques to Keep Your Team from Drowning in Its Codebase In this fascinating conversation, veteran software engineer and author Lou Franco shares hard-won lessons from decades at startups, Trello, and Atlassian. We explore his book "Swimming in Tech Debt," diving deep into the 8 Questions framework for evaluating tech debt decisions, personal practices th...

BONUS: The Agile Organization as a Learning System Think Like a Farmer, Not a Factory Manager "Go slow to go fast. If you want to go somewhere, go together as a team. Take a farmer's mentality."   Simon contrasts monoculture industrial thinking with the permaculture approach of Joel Salatin. Industrial approaches optimize for short-term efficiency but create fragile systems. Farmer thinking recogn...

BONUS: Quality 5.0—Quantifying the "Unmeasurable" With Tom Gilb and Simon Holzapfel Clarification Before Quantification "Quantification is not the main idea. The key idea is clarification—so that the executive team understands each other."   Tom emphasizes that measurement is a means to an end. The real goal is shared understanding. But quantification is a powerful clarification tactic because it...

BONUS: Testing as Measurement—Why Bug-Hunting Misses the Point With Tom Gilb and Simon Holzapfel The Revelation That Almost Caused a Car Crash "Tom said like 10 sentences in a row, kind of like a geometric proof, that just so blew my mind I almost drove off the road. I realized I had wasted hundreds of hours in boardrooms arguing about errors of which we were aware of perhaps 10%."   Simon shares...

BONUS: Continuous Strategy Engineering—Beyond Waterfall Planning With Tom Gilb and Simon Holzapfel Strategy Professors Are Decades Behind "The professors of strategy have no clue as to what Evo is. They are locked in decades ago, waterfall mode."   Tom's analysis is stark: the people teaching strategy in business schools haven't undergone the same agile transformation that software development exp...

BONUS: Impact Engineering—Finding Agile's Lost North Star With Tom Gilb and Simon Holzapfel The Clarity Problem: Why Organizations Start with "Fuzzy B*S*!" "Everybody seems to start from a position of fuzzy b*s*. Nice-sounding words. Management does it, professors do it, politicians do it. And they don't even feel very guilty about it."   Tom Gilb doesn't mince words when describing how most organ...

Scott Smith: Empathy and Availability Define Excellent Product Ownership 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: Always Present, Always Available, Always Curious "They are always present. They always make themselves available for tea...

Scott Smith: Using MIRO to Build a Living Archive of Learning 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 .   "We're in a servant leadership role. So, ask: is the team thriving? That's a huge indication of success." - Scott Smith   For Scott, success as a Scrum Ma...

Scott Smith: Building a Coaching Service Where Survey Scores Become Living Improvement 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 .   "Success is about feedback from coaching clients." - Scott Smith   Scott is tackling one of the most challenging aspects of organ...

Scott Smith: Why Great Scrum Masters Create Space for Breaks 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 .   "Think of the people involved. Put yourself in the shoes of the other." - Scott Smith   Scott found himself in the middle of rising tension as voices escal...

Scott Smith: The Spotlight Failure That Taught a Silent Lesson About Recognition 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 .   "Not everybody enjoys the limelight and being called out, even for great work." - Scott Smith   Scott was facilitating a multi-squad sh...

BONUS: When AI Knows Your Emotional Triggers Better Than You Do — Navigating Mindfulness in the AI Age In this thought-provoking conversation, former computer engineer and mindfulness leader Mo Edjlali explores how AI is reshaping human meaning, attention, and decision-making. We examine the critical question: what happens when AI knows your emotional triggers better than you know yourself? Mo sha...

AI Assisted Coding: Building Reliable Software with Unreliable AI Tools In this special episode, Lada Kesseler shares her journey from AI skeptic to pioneer in AI-assisted development. She explores the spectrum from careful, test-driven development to quick AI-driven experimentation, revealing practical patterns, anti-patterns, and the critical role of judgment in modern software engineering. From...