Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile storytelling from the trenches

Juliana Stepanova: The 90-Minute Retrospective Disaster That Taught Me Servant Leadership
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's not my job to find the points to improve. My job is to help the team find them, to interact their communication, to start thinking about the improvements, and not pushing them into my exercises." - Juliana Stepanova
 
Juliana shares a humbling experience from her first year as a Scrum Master that transformed how she approaches facilitation. She had meticulously prepared what she believed was a brilliant 90-minute retrospective—carefully designed exercises, content tailored to the sprint, everything by the book. Yet when she asked the team for feedback at the end, they delivered a crushing verdict: "It was the worst retro ever." The disconnect wasn't about the quality of preparation but about whose perspective drove the design. Juliana had crafted the session based on her observations and assumptions about what the team needed, rather than asking them what they actually wanted to discuss. 
This experience crystallized a fundamental insight about servant leadership: the difference between leading and servant leading. Today, Juliana prepares at least twice as many tools and exercises as she needs for any workshop, ready to pivot based on the room's energy and the team's expressed needs. She opens sessions with questions about expectations, aligning with the team's mood while setting appropriate boundaries. The failure taught her that even the most carefully prepared facilitation can miss the mark when it doesn't serve what the team actually needs in that moment.
 
Self-reflection Question: When was the last time you asked your team what they wanted from a retrospective before you designed it, and how might their input change your approach?
 
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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.
 
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About Juliana Stepanova
 
Juliana is an Agile coach and Scrum master, with a focus in her work on transformation through people and processes rather than the other way round. She helps teams and leaders to create clarity, build trust and create value with purpose. Her work combines structure with empathy and is always focused on real collaboration and meaningful results.
 
You can link with Juliana Stepanova on LinkedIn.
 
You can also follow Juliana on Twitter.

Agile in Construction: The Product Owner Role in Construction—Voice of the Customer Across Every Phase With Felipe Engineer-Manriquez
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.

In this episode, we refer to Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Team of Teams by General Stanley McChrystal, as well as our Agile in Construction episodes.
The Great Product Owner: Bringing the Voice of the Customer to Every Decision
"I want you to think like the owner, and bring that to the team meetings, because we can't have the owner in the meetings with us." - Felipe Engineer-Manriquez
 
The Product Owner role in construction is radically different from software—and Felipe has learned to find it in unexpected places. When Jeff Sutherland told his class to "tear up your business cards" because only three roles exist (Developer, Scrum Master, Product Owner), construction people were confused. Felipe's approach: ask the team who can bring the voice of the customer. Sometimes it's the superintendent, interfacing daily with charge nurses and doctors in a working hospital. Sometimes it's a project executive. Rarely, it's the project manager. The key is that the PO role changes across phases because every day in construction is brand new—the building is physically taking shape. Felipe studied military leadership in Extreme Ownership and Team of Teams and found strong product owner culture—leaders who brought customer voice to cell-level teams against hierarchical norms. Great product owners speak in terms of what the customer wants, transforming how teams prioritize and align naturally.
 
Self-reflection Question: Who on your team currently embodies the voice of the customer, and how might you coach them to bring that perspective more explicitly to every team interaction?
The Bad Product Owner: When Gut Decisions Override Value
"Value is a beneficial transformation of materials, information, or a combination of both. Let's not do things that don't transform information or materials." - Felipe Engineer-Manriquez
 
Felipe shares a powerful anti-pattern: owners who make gut decisions based on past project trauma without checking if conditions are still true. On a $100 million project, an owner repeatedly introduces work that doesn't add value—reacting to bad things that happened on previous projects, even when those conditions no longer exist. The result? Teams waste time on activities that don't transform materials or information. Felipe teaches teams an industrial engineering definition of value: "a beneficial transformation of materials, information, or a combination of both." Status updates that don't change behavior are waste. Markings on metal decking that will be buried under 5 inches of concrete are waste. The fix? Make the backlog visible and ask: "Where should we zipper this in so it has the most impact on transforming materials or information?" For construction, prioritization always comes back to getting the right materials in place, one time, at the right time—not touching things twice.
 
Self-reflection Question: When stakeholders introduce work based on past experiences, how do you help them evaluate whether those conditions still apply to the current situation?
 
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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.
 
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About Felipe Engineer-Manriquez
 
Felipe Engineer-Manriquez is a best-selling author, international speaker, and host of The EBFC Show. A force in Lean and Agile, he helps teams build faster with less effort. Felipe trains and coaches changemakers worldwide—and wrote Construction Scrum to make work easier, better, and faster for everyone.
 
You can link with Felipe Engineer-Manriquez on LinkedIn.
 
You can also find Felipe at thefelipe.bio.link, check out The EBFC Show podcast, and join the EBFC Scrum Community of Practice.

Agile in Construction: Team Happiness as the True Measure of Scrum Master Success in Construction With Felipe Engineer-Manriquez
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 teams that are having fun and are light-hearted, making jokes—these are high-performing teams almost 99% of the time. But the teams that are overly sarcastic or too quiet? They're burning out." - Felipe Engineer-Manriquez
 
Felipe offers a refreshingly human definition of success for Scrum Masters: team happiness. After years of traumatic experiences in construction—days when he pounded his steering wheel in frustration during his commute—Felipe developed what he calls being a "human thermometer." He can sense a team's emotional state within 5 minutes of being with them. His proxy for success is a simple Likert scale of 1-5: 5 is Nirvana (working at Google with massages), and 1 is wanting to jump out the window. Felipe emphasizes that most people in construction internalize stress and push it down, so you have to ask directly. When he asked an estimator this question, the man quietly admitted he was at a 2—ready to walk away. Without asking, Felipe would never have known. The key insight: schedule improvements happen as teams move closer to a 5. And the foundation of it all? Understanding. "People do not have an overt need to be loved," Felipe shares from his Scrum training. "They have an overt need to be understood." A successful Scrum Master meddles appropriately, runs toward problems, and focuses on understanding teammates before trying to implement change.
 
Self-reflection Question: If you asked each of your team members to rate their happiness from 1-5 today, what do you think they would say, and what would you learn that you don't currently know?
Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Start/Stop/Keep
Felipe's favorite retrospective format is Start/Stop/Keep—but his approach to introducing it is what makes the difference. He connects it to something construction teams already know: the post-mortem. He explains the morbid origin of the term (surgeons standing around a dead patient discussing what went wrong) to emphasize the seriousness of learning. Then he reframes the retrospective as a recurring post-mortem—a "lessons learned" cycle. Start: What should we begin doing that will make things better? Stop: What should we no longer do that doesn't add value? Keep: What good things are we doing that we want to maintain? Felipe uses silent brainstorming so everyone has time to think, then makes responses visible on a whiteboard or digital display. The cadence scales with sprint length—45 minutes for a week, 2 hours for two weeks, half a day for a month. His current team committed to monthly retrospectives and pre-writes their Start/Stop/Keep items, making the facilitated session efficient and focused.
 
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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
 
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About Felipe Engineer-Manriquez
 
Felipe Engineer-Manriquez is a best-selling author, international speaker, and host of The EBFC Show. A force in Lean and Agile, he helps teams build faster with less effort. Felipe trains and coaches changemakers worldwide—and wrote Construction Scrum to make work easier, better, and faster for everyone.
 
You can link with Felipe Engineer-Manriquez on LinkedIn.
 
You can also find Felipe at thefelipe.bio.link, check out The EBFC Show podcast, and join the EBFC Scrum Community of Practice.

Agile in Construction: The DOWNTIME Strategy—Eliminating Waste Before Adding Process With Felipe Engineer-Manriquez
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 first rule is that I will do no harm. And if something goes wrong, I will take full responsibility with leadership. My neck is literally on the line." - Felipe Engineer-Manriquez
 
Felipe shares his change strategy for introducing Lean and Agile into construction projects, and it starts with an unexpected principle borrowed from Hippocrates: do no harm. He explicitly tells teams this promise, putting his neck on the line to build trust. But the real magic happens in what comes next: instead of adding new processes, Felipe first helps teams stop doing things. Using the DOWNTIME acronym (Defects, Overproduction, Waiting, Transportation, Inventory, Motion, Excess processing), he identifies wasteful activities that don't add value. In construction, 60-80% of every dollar doesn't add value from the customer's perspective—compared to manufacturing (above 50% value) or agriculture (90% value). Felipe's approach: eliminate waste first to create excess capacity, then introduce new processes. On a project that was 2 years behind schedule with lawyers already engaged, he spent just 5 minutes with the team defining a visible milestone goal on a whiteboard. Two weeks later, they met their schedule and improved by 4 days—the first time ever. The superintendent said, "Never in the entire time I've worked here have we ever met a schedule commitment." The secret? Free up capacity before adding anything new.
 
In this episode, we refer to the 8 wastes video by Orbus and WIP limits.
 
Self-reflection Question: Before introducing your next process improvement, what wasteful activity could you help your team stop doing to free up the capacity they need to embrace change?
 
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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
 
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About Felipe Engineer-Manriquez
 
Felipe Engineer-Manriquez is a best-selling author, international speaker, and host of The EBFC Show. A force in Lean and Agile, he helps teams build faster with less effort. Felipe trains and coaches changemakers worldwide—and wrote Construction Scrum to make work easier, better, and faster for everyone.
 
You can link with Felipe Engineer-Manriquez on LinkedIn.
 
You can also find Felipe at thefelipe.bio.link, check out The EBFC Show podcast, and join the EBFC Scrum Community of Practice.

Agile in Construction: Over-Commitment and Silence—The Deadly Duo Destroying Your Teams With Felipe Engineer-Manriquez
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 don't think people are bad. They don't self-destruct because they're bad. What I do see is people getting crushed in terribly bad systems." - Felipe Engineer-Manriquez
 
Felipe shares a powerful insight about team dysfunction: teams don't self-destruct because of bad people—they get crushed by broken systems. On a hospital construction project, he witnessed a dangerous pattern: over-commitment coupled with silence. People would commit to pouring concrete on Thursday when there wasn't even rebar in place—a physical impossibility. But psychological safety was so low that no one could say the emperor had no clothes. Felipe's approach? Ask obvious questions that break the pattern. "Don't you need this so you can do that?" This simple question, framed with verb-noun phrases, surfaces what cannot be spoken. He positions himself as "just a simple, dumb general contractor" who doesn't understand—creating safety for others to speak truth. The turning point comes when you slow down, make work visible, and allow people to say no. As Felipe puts it: "For real accountability, if people are not allowed to say no, then they actually can't make a real promise." Silence is not alignment, and saying yes in low-trust environments is actually hiding from accountability.
 
In this segment, we talk about psychological safety and systems thinking in team dynamics.
 
Self-reflection Question: When you see a team over-committing to impossible deadlines, what question could you ask that surfaces the truth without putting individuals at risk?
Featured Book of the Week: The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt
Felipe chose The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt as the most transformative book of his early lean career. He describes it as "the number one game changer"—a fictional story that teaches the Theory of Constraints in a way you can internalize. The famous "Herbie story" within the book illustrates how helping the slowest part of a process speeds up the entire system. Felipe emphasizes that Theory of Constraints is often skipped in Scrum training when classes run out of time, leaving many credentialed Scrum Masters without this essential knowledge. He uses these principles daily with the Last Planner System in construction—creating visual boards that look like Gantt charts (because construction loves schedules) but function like Scrum boards with days of the week instead of "to do, doing, done."
 
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🔥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 Felipe Engineer-Manriquez
 
Felipe Engineer-Manriquez is a best-selling author, international speaker, and host of The EBFC Show. A force in Lean and Agile, he helps teams build faster with less effort. Felipe trains and coaches changemakers worldwide—and wrote Construction Scrum to make work easier, better, and faster for everyone.
 
You can link with Felipe Engineer-Manriquez on LinkedIn.
 
You can also find Felipe at thefelipe.bio.link, check out The EBFC Show podcast, and join the EBFC Scrum Community of Practice.