When Agile drifts towards control rather than responsiveness, it is easy to turn Scrum events into performances.
Safe. Polished. Predictable. But quietly useless.
I saw this first-hand when I started as a Scrum Master in a new organisation.
I ran our Sprint Reviews as real conversations, not controlled presentations – and that shift towards openness and responsiveness was genuinely liberating for the team.
“You’re facilitating the Sprint Review”
Early on, I was told I was responsible for facilitating the Sprint Review. That’s often seen as a Product Owner responsibility, but that wasn’t the culture there.
What struck me most was that I wasn’t given any guidance on what a Sprint Review was for. It was just another meeting on the calendar that had to happen.
So I ran it the way I’d always recommended elsewhere, based on my reading of the Scrum Guide.
What I changed in the room
I did use slides, but only as a summary. The difference was what happened around them.
After each item, I paused and invited challenge. Questions. Pushback. Curiosity. I treated stakeholders (team members and other members of the business) as participants, not an audience.
This wasn’t a presentation, it was a conversation.
That turned out to be quite counter-cultural.
The moment it clicked
The moment I realised it was landing well was when the head of our department spoke up, asked a couple of key questions, then immediately said he could do something to unblock an issue. Not next week. Not ‘take it away’. There and then, in the review, because he’d seen the work and understood the impact.
Afterwards, the team said how effective it was.
What improved when we let go
And something else happened: other teams and Scrum Masters heard about it and asked to be invited. Apparently, a lot of sprint reviews were very tight, controlled, and broadcast-like. A status update, not a feedback loop.
By letting go of that tight control, we got better outcomes.
Stakeholder engagement increased. People felt more comfortable speaking and asking questions. The team responded directly, not just the Scrum Master or Product Owner. We got better information from the people who did the work, and faster decisions from the people who could unblock it.
Control vs responsiveness
Yes, there was vulnerability in that. Pauses can feel awkward. Questions can expose uncertainty. A conversation is harder to ‘manage’ than a script.
But that’s the point. A sprint review isn’t there to prove you’re on track. It’s there to help you steer.
When you turn it into a broadcast, you might feel in control. When you turn it into a conversation, you become responsive. And responsiveness beats control every time.
