It is easy to focus only on the team.
The stand-ups.
The backlog.
The sprint plan.
But most of the problems a team faces do not start inside the team.
They come from the system around it.
Continue reading A new Scrum Master’s first job – understand the system before changing itPsychological safety is easy to talk about in theory.
The real question is whether it shows up in the small moments of team life.
Not in posters.
Not in values statements.
In ordinary conversations.
That is where safety becomes visible.
Continue reading How psychological safety shows up in everyday team momentsStarting with a new team creates pressure to act quickly.
You want to improve things.
You want to show value.
You want momentum.
But in your first month, the most effective thing you can do is often the simplest: observe before you act.
Continue reading Your first month as a Scrum Master – why observation matters more than actionStarting as a new Scrum Master can feel uncomfortable.
You arrive with responsibility but very little context. You want to add value quickly. You want the team to see that you are useful…
Over the next few Mondays I will be publishing a short series of practical posts with advice for new Scrum Masters. This is the first.
… that pressure often leads to the biggest mistake new Scrum Masters make: trying to fix the team too quickly.
Continue reading The biggest mistake new Scrum Masters make – trying to fix the team too quickly
Velocity feels reassuring.
A number. A trend. A sense of progress you can point to.
But velocity is a mythical comfort metric.
Outside the narrative context of a single team, velocity has no objective meaning. It is not a speedometer. It is a storytelling device – a shared fiction that helps teams coordinate expectations and have conversations about capacity and flow.
The moment velocity becomes a target, it corrupts its own purpose.
Teams optimise for the number rather than the learning behind it. Quality bends. Curiosity fades. Reality gets edited to fit the chart.
True agility is not measured in points delivered.
It is measured in learning rate – how quickly reality updates your understanding of the problem, the solution and the people doing the work.
Velocity can comfort.
Learning transforms.
