This is a story that follows one person growing to gain confidence in the role of a Scrum Master - through learning the messy, uncertain, genuinely difficult work of helping a team get better. The situations are drawn from years of coaching Scrum Masters who were learning the role while already doing it. Book recommendations are woven into the narrative, because that is how most of us discover useful books: someone mentions one at the right moment. All references are collected in the Further Reading section.
Format: PDF / 74 Pages
Language: English
Author: Pierluigi Pugliese
(c) Connexxo, 2026
The Story:
Connie has been a software developer for eight years. She is good at it. She likes solving problems, writing clean code, and shipping features that users actually use. One day, the head of engineering asks her to become the Scrum Master for a struggling team. This is the story of how she figures it out.
Over a hundred days, Connie navigates the territory that every new Scrum Master discovers the hard way: a first Sprint Planning where she talks too much and listens too little. Daily Scrums that feel like status reports. A retrospective where the team finally says what they actually think. A Product Owner who does not understand why she keeps asking questions. An organisation that treats Scrum as a reporting structure rather than a way of working.
The learning is not linear. Connie makes mistakes, corrects course, makes different mistakes, and slowly develops the instincts that no training class can teach. She learns that removing impediments sometimes means having a difficult conversation with someone two levels above her. She discovers that the best thing she can do in a meeting is often nothing. And she finds out that the hardest part of the role is not learning the framework but learning to lead without authority.
Format: PDF / 74 Pages
Language: English
Author: Pierluigi Pugliese
(c) Connexxo, 2026
The Story:
Connie has been a software developer for eight years. She is good at it. She likes solving problems, writing clean code, and shipping features that users actually use. One day, the head of engineering asks her to become the Scrum Master for a struggling team. This is the story of how she figures it out.
Over a hundred days, Connie navigates the territory that every new Scrum Master discovers the hard way: a first Sprint Planning where she talks too much and listens too little. Daily Scrums that feel like status reports. A retrospective where the team finally says what they actually think. A Product Owner who does not understand why she keeps asking questions. An organisation that treats Scrum as a reporting structure rather than a way of working.
The learning is not linear. Connie makes mistakes, corrects course, makes different mistakes, and slowly develops the instincts that no training class can teach. She learns that removing impediments sometimes means having a difficult conversation with someone two levels above her. She discovers that the best thing she can do in a meeting is often nothing. And she finds out that the hardest part of the role is not learning the framework but learning to lead without authority.
