This show is brought to you by the Online Scrum Masters Summit, taking place virtually on June 17-19, with more information at: http://www.onlinescrummasterssummit.com
What if the most powerful tool for driving agile transformation isn’t a framework or a ceremony—but a dashboard?
Today’s guest believes data may be the most underused lever for agility in large organizations. Gabrielle Wieczorek is a Scrum Master and Certified Agile Coach and a speaker at the upcoming Online Scrum Masters Summit, where she brings over 14 years of experience blending agile frameworks with data science, analytics, and stakeholder trust-building.
About Gabrielle Wieczorek
Gabrielle Wieczorek is an adaptive transformation leader with over 14 years of experience helping teams and organizations unlock the true potential of business and personal agility, especially in times of uncertainty. An enthusiastic Scrum Master, Certified Agile Coach (A-CSM, SSM), Product Owner (CSPO), and technical Senior Systems/Data Analyst, Gabrielle excels in leading teams through change and complexity, focusing on continuous improvement and delivering tangible results. Known for delivering engaging talks that make innovative agile concepts obtainable, Gabrielle has a knack for turning abstract ideas into real-world impact. Whether facilitating dynamic workshops or sharing insights in a lightning talk, Gabrielle empowers others to elevate their Agile practices and drive meaningful change in today’s fast-paced, ever-evolving environments where efficiency and innovation are essential to success.
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Transcript
Greg Kihlstrom (00:00)
This show is brought to you by Online Scrum Master Summit, taking place virtually on June 17th through 19th with more information at www.onlinescrummastersummit.com. What if the most powerful tool for driving agile transformation isn’t a framework or a ceremony, but a dashboard? Today’s guest believes data may be the most underused lever for agility in large organizations. Gabrielle Wieczorek is Scrum Master and certified agile coach and a speaker at the upcoming Online Scrum Master Summit, where she brings over 14 years of experience blending agile frameworks with data science, analytics, and stakeholder trust building. Gabrielle, welcome to the show.
Gabrielle Wieczorek (00:40)
Thank you. Great to be here.
Greg Kihlstrom (00:42)
Yeah, looking forward to talking about this with you. Definitely always love talking agile here on The Agile Brand before we dive in though, why don’t you start by telling us a little bit about your background and your current role.
Gabrielle Wieczorek (00:55)
Sure, I’m happy to. So I am currently a senior systems analyst and also sort of a data analyst in my role with a background in ⁓ analyzing complex data systems and driving operational efficiency and agility, ⁓ mainly through evidence-based insights and just ideas that we have as a team. So in my current role, I serve as a bridge between our technical teams and strategic stakeholders. Looking forward to talking agile.
Greg Kihlstrom (01:21)
Yeah, definitely. Yeah, we’re going to talk about a few different things here. ⁓ You know, mostly based on your talk at the upcoming Online Scrum Master Summit. First thing I want to talk about is the power of data in Agile. And you’ve talked about data-driven agility before. Can you define what that means and why it’s important in large complex environments like your current role?
Gabrielle Wieczorek (01:45)
Sure. So data-driven agility, that when I refer to it, is really the ability to rapidly adapt decisions and operations based on real-time or patterns in data. So it’s a blend of two main concepts. It’s data-driven decision-making, which is decisions grounded in empirical evidence or metrics rather than the gut feel or tradition, which those are very important too, of course. And then also agility, the ability to respond very quickly and efficiently to change.
Greg Kihlstrom (02:14)
Got it, got it. Yeah, and so, you know, those of us that have read and written and spoken plenty about agile, know, the agile frameworks typically caution against over relying on tools. Where do you draw the line between leveraging data tools like Power BI, for instance, and staying true to agile values?
Gabrielle Wieczorek (02:37)
So first off, the way that I like to reshape is that data is not just something that’s stored in a database. It’s actually a constant stream that we’re processing in every moment through what we observe, how we respond, and the feedback that we absorb. We are very much like computers. We’re always filtering, interpreting, making sense of our environment, even when we are doing things like going to the farmer’s market and selecting fruit to take home. We’re looking at it. Does it look ripe? Does it look fresh? Does it have bruises on it, we’re collecting data readily to make decisions, even in small things like that. So whether it’s in a retrospective or a dashboard, data becomes valuable when it leads to insight. That insight could be maybe picking the right apple, or it could be making decisions for your team to enable readiness and get things done. So I treat tools like Power BI as conversation starters, not decision makers.
The dashboards really handle the grunt work. They give you the view and the trends, they surface those blockers, and they look for issues within the team that maybe we can address. And we can focus on what really matters, talking, reflecting, and adapting. True agility. So data informed, people decide.
Greg Kihlstrom (03:56)
Nice, nice. No, I love that. And I think that that frames it to your point as a conversation starter, not as ⁓ well. The machine said this and therefore, you know, because I think that’s that’s what a lot of this stuff goes back to is, you know, I think there’s a lot of people that there’s a lot of ways to interpret actual principles and things like that. And again, ⁓ some people listening to this have a cursory understanding of that stuff. Some people know it inside and out. I think when you
Try to interpret it too strictly then you lose out on things like what you’re just saying
Gabrielle Wieczorek (04:32)
Yeah, sometimes it takes that re-grounding. What is data? It’s not just every week we’re looking and we’re looking at those numbers and they mean nothing. No, what can we change? What can we improve? What can we try differently to make things go a little smoother? Yeah. And when the tools start to become more machine-like, like you’re saying, that’s my cue to pull back. Maybe we don’t need to look at the data trends so much. Maybe we’re getting too fixated. And that does happen with management sometimes.
Sometimes they get kind of stuck on that.
Greg Kihlstrom (05:03)
Yeah,
I mean, I think it becomes a crutch if it’s used in the wrong way, as opposed to, something that facilitates. And maybe that’s a good segue to the next topic as well as turning data into trust. And you’ve mentioned that metrics provide transparency and that transparency has the opportunity to build trust. Can you share an example of how you’ve used reporting tools like JIRA, Azure DevOps?
something like that to help stakeholders better understand team progress.
Gabrielle Wieczorek (05:38)
Absolutely. So in a recent project, I actually used JIRA dashboards to provide our stakeholders with kind of that real time visibility for our story progress, any blockers, and also our sprint velocity. So this allows them, they get their own links. They don’t need to bother the team. They don’t have to ask us questions. We’re not caught off guard. They can see in real time. Go check on it if you want to see what’s going on. And by sharing these things like burn down charts or any cycle time or kind of highlighting blockers, we can
quickly and transparently provide those bottlenecks and kind of collaboratively work through those. and that’s just a JIRA dashboard. That’s just using the tools on hand. know Agilist are never supposed to put tools in front and we certainly don’t, but when they’re used to inform, it helps a lot.
Greg Kihlstrom (06:28)
Yeah, yeah, definitely. so. Informing often involves, you know, you can you can give someone a list of bullet points and PowerPoints and all that stuff, but, know, it always goes a lot further if you’re able to tell a story, right? And certainly telling stories. I mean, that’s a that’s a topic of a whole other other podcast. But, you know, when you’re coaching leadership on agile practices, when you’re working with teams.
How do you use the data that you have to tell a story that they actually listen to and get something from?
Gabrielle Wieczorek (07:02)
Well, I like to draw on my background as a systems analyst and a data analyst. I’m actually in a master’s program right now for data science and data really isn’t just numbers and background details in a database. It really is the narrative. What is the true situation going on? It’s the temperature, it’s the pulse on what’s going on. And so when I’m telling a story to a team to kind of use that to teach, to coach as a Scrum Master,
Sort of like we do with retrospectives, I really think about the baseline metrics, where we were. What does that data look like? Where did we start? That’s really motivating sometimes. You can say we started at zero, now we’re at 10. It’s not a big step, but it’s not zero, right? Where are we going? What did we try? What was the process change? So we went from zero to 10, and here’s what we tried. Let’s try from 10 to 15. Let’s try this other thing. So trying to…
built that narrative with that. ⁓ And also what happened, that data, what was the impact on our team, on our project or whatever we were working on. So those three points there, where we were, that baseline, what we tried, the new idea or agile practice or whatever, maybe a new tool and what happened. Those things can kind of provide that data for the team to either decide to change direction or
to kind of see the value in what we’re doing and see the value in maybe we are doing the right thing, going to an agile practice, ⁓ which happens a lot, right?
Greg Kihlstrom (08:37)
Yeah, ⁓ and I think that’s a great segue to me that speaks to what I find often most valuable about leaning on Agile principles is I think there’s some misconceptions that Agile is just about speed or even worse, it’s about just being reactive, which is not what you just talked about. What you just talked about is, in my opinion, the opposite of being reactive.
It’s almost being scientific about an approach. Yeah, yeah. Exactly, exactly. ⁓ So, you know, speaking of, you know, some misunderstandings and things like that, you know, let’s talk a little bit about how teams can sometimes misunderstand metric. You you throw a bunch of numbers or data in front of in front of someone and they just like lots of other things they can they can misinterpret that. What are some of the most?
Gabrielle Wieczorek (09:11)
introspective. Yeah.
Greg Kihlstrom (09:32)
commonly misused metrics in Agile and what should teams be tracking instead?
Gabrielle Wieczorek (09:37)
Where do we start, right? ⁓ In general, ⁓ as an Agilist, know reporting, that’s not the focus. We shouldn’t be focused on that. But the number of story points, tracking story points, burned down using story points, it is so misunderstood. The misuse really is focusing on the actual story points numerically rather than the outcomes. So like management or someone coming from a new team, see it as, 13 point story. Oh, okay. That’s a big one. 13 points could be a month for one person or a team. Maybe the team decided that’s a month or it could be two weeks or it could be one week or it could be, you know, three weeks or whatever. The whole project could be 13 points. It’s so subjective. So it’s very misused. And I find that people get very fixated on just that. I, when I’m coaching teams, I, if I noticed that they’re too stuck on that, we switched to t-shirt sizing.
because now we don’t have numbers, right? So what we track instead is the business value with the t-shirt sizing. Is this small impact, medium impact, large impact, right? Or extra large, epic level, you know? Right, right. So kind of breaking that tradition with the points, because the points are that they are just something that people get stuck on.
Greg Kihlstrom (10:37)
Yeah, and I think it’s your to your point as soon as they get stuck on that, then that becomes a metric of success almost more than just a tool to.
Gabrielle Wieczorek (11:11)
Well, and you peg your developers against each other too. they got 36 points done in a sprint. Well, maybe they’re a senior developer and there’s 36 points is actually someone else’s, you know, 70 points or whatever. It’s just so subjective. You really can’t look at it like that. So, and it’s not technically required in an agile team either. you know, if we want to go back to the, ⁓ the manifesto, there’s no points mentioned, right?
Greg Kihlstrom (11:37)
Fair point, fair point, yeah.
So what role do you think the data and metrics play in the continuous improvement part of things? How do you make sure that they’re used for learning and to the last point, not just like judgment.
Gabrielle Wieczorek (11:53)
Right, right. So moving away from using story points to kind of peg one developer against another or whatever, we want to get away from that judgment zone. So as a coach, as a scrum master, or as a team lead, I typically include retrospectives like that’s the first thing out of the gate. Let’s talk about where we were, where we’re going, what went wrong, what went sideways, what, what do we feel okay about? Did we have a nice coffee today or whatever? Like just start off very
very casual and then we really have to dive into where are our opportunities for improvement. So data and metrics can provide us with, maybe, you know, this past couple of sprints aren’t going so well. Cause I wasn’t there as a scrum master, but I’m being brought into a team and that’s all I can really see. can meet with the team one-on-one and see each person, how’s it going? But I can also look in the backlog and say, Whoa, you know.
That’s how I like to use data is to see where the gut check is, see how things are going ⁓ and understand the health of the team. then typically what happens when I work with the team is I start to work with the product owner. We start to build that backlog maybe up a little bit and we don’t focus so much on those story points. We focus more on features, business value.
And sometimes we’ll use like a little sprint planning poker type style of games so that everybody is involved in that and they start thinking a little differently. And then at that point, it’s really as a team using data to show as a team, well, we’re not pitting each other against each other. We’re not judging. We’re all getting this done. Look at the business value our team has provided. that’s really great. Because seeing that cheering a team on from zero to 10 and from 10 to 20, it’s
It’s a really, really motivating thing to do. And I find it even motivates me, even though I’m on the Scrum Master level, it’s exciting to see the team grow like that. And I like to remind them.
Greg Kihlstrom (13:55)
Yeah. And so I want to talk a little bit more about that as well. You know, your your role as you know, so you have a background in technical systems analysis. You also, as you’ve mentioned, you know, have a background in coaching. How does that, you know, kind of dual lens help you guide teams through change uncertainty?
Gabrielle Wieczorek (14:16)
Yeah, so my background as an analyst in general, because I kind of say I’m just an analyst. I’ve had, you know, quality assurance, reporting, data, systems, business. I’ve had every other title in front of analysts. So just as an analyst, it fits very well because, you know, as a Scrum master or as an agile coach, you have to be able to identify those inefficiencies, try to help streamline different processes, help the team find solutions. And my technical understanding
really has helped me to gain the trust from the dev teams. Cause when we have people joining a dev team as their coach or as their leader, but that person doesn’t have any technical background, they don’t understand maybe why that story needs to be broken down smaller or they don’t understand. And so they can’t represent the team as well as they could if they do understand and they meet with management or they meet with, you know, scrum of scrums or whatever. they’re like,
trying to just explain why something’s taking a little longer. just, you have more credibility when you have a little bit of a technical background. And I don’t say that to, you know, alarm other people that maybe don’t have that background, but I would say whatever team you join, you do need to read up on the code base they’re using, read up on the tools they’re using, make sure you know what an API is, you know? These are important things to help you, you know, coach the team and decision make on your own. So.
When our team was going through an agile transformation, we weren’t using any tool at the time, which I know we don’t need to, but we were remote. We needed something. I suggested Jira. We adopted that. And my systems analyst brain built Jira. It’s very customizable, configurable products. So we had our process. had our small team. We had our portfolio of products. Each product had a team. So we just built Jira, systems analyst at, right?
Greg Kihlstrom (16:06)
Right.
Gabrielle Wieczorek (16:07)
Made all the fields, organized all that, built the little dashboards for everything. it, and you know, and I love doing that stuff. It’s really great. Cause it’s just, you set it up, give it to the team. Here’s how to use it. We did trainings. so that’s my systems analyst tab. My data analyst tab obviously is helping with the reporting and then scrum master. It’s just, I built all this. also always will change things as we start using it. say, we need to add another field or, maybe this needs to be a dropdown. just.
constantly fine tuning everything we do. ⁓ And that really makes a difference to have that background.
Greg Kihlstrom (16:42)
Yeah, yeah, definitely. As we wrap up here, you know, one, couple, couple last questions for you, but you know, one, one thing, you know, some advice for those that are, you know, a Scrum Master, a product owner, you know, somebody, somebody in one of those roles, what advice would you have to them? You know, if they want to introduce more data into their team retrospective sprint planning, just planning in general, what, what advice would you have for them?
Gabrielle Wieczorek (17:08)
So for scrum masters or product owners ⁓ looking to kind of bring more data into retrospective or print planning, both of those, I would say is relevant. I know that there are a lot of things to do and things not to do out there, but when I feel that a team needs that shakeup, they need to be aware of their metrics, their data, their failing, so to speak. I like to comment them with.
that information. It’s empirical. It’s not my gut feeling. It’s not my personal emotions. It’s reality. You guys are not delivering. It’s not to pass judgment. It’s we need to fix this. And it’s a great, tough way to start a retrospective, I will say. We know when we’ve had an iffy sprint, or an iffy deployment, or an issue. So it’s important, I think, to kind of…
even if you’re just in a remote session, show that burn down chart. Did it look very good or does it look like it needs some work? It’s a great segue into discussion. We’re not just going to gloss over and say, yep, everything went right and everything went great. We’re just going to move on to the next sprint. We have to address it if it’s in our face. I think it’s great to include those things as the set the tone for the session, might not be what everybody wants to see or flip side.
Maybe we had a really great sprint and, you know, let’s make this a quick retrospective. Look how awesome we did. my gosh. You know, let’s, how do we keep this up? What do we do next sprint so that this continues? So it’s just that constant kind of, I think the Scrum Master is also a cheerleader a lot. ⁓ Yeah. It’s been a game changer to include that data and really allow the team. Cause I find a lot of dev teams don’t always know what burn down means. It’s just.
Greg Kihlstrom (18:52)
Totally.
Gabrielle Wieczorek (19:00)
something that you know management looks at. like them to understand what that means. You are why it’s stepping down. You you own this right.
Greg Kihlstrom (19:10)
Nice, nice, love it. Well, Gabrielle, thanks so much for joining today. One last question for you before we wrap up. What do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
Gabrielle Wieczorek (19:22)
Well, I will say it ⁓ is a bit of a challenge sometimes. Not every contract I’m on, not every project, not every role I have is an agile coaching role. But I find that that’s just what you get when you include me in your team. You’re going to have a little bit of agile coaching flavor because that’s what I bring. ⁓ So to stay agile in my role, whatever it is, especially with how technical my current role is, I always make learning a top priority. actually
kind of block off time on Friday mornings and I spend a lot of time reading up on the, you know, the current news articles or things like your podcast. I’ll listen to things and just keep those muscles moving. Always, always thinking about how can I instill agility in today, even if it’s not my, you know, my number one annual performance goal of the year. It’s how do I improve every day? My true secret is really having that
that time carved out. And I also have a lot of personal Trello boards. I know it’s a huge nerdy thing about me. I have my personal life Trello boards and I, just kind of helps me to stay on track with my goals. You know, whether it’s, it’s weight loss or organizing things for my daughter, my house, ⁓ decorating certain rooms in the house or planting my front flower beds. Like I just did. I literally, it’s, it’s motivating for me to go from to do and progress done and and move my little cards and that just reminds me of why this is so impactful and why it helps, because it kind of takes the guesswork out.
Greg Kihlstrom (20:55)
Nice, nice agile and work agile in life, right?
Gabrielle Wieczorek (20:58)
That’s right. honestly applied those principles after my knee surgery and my doctor was very, very pleased with how quickly I bounced right back.
