LEARN. PRACTICE. GROW.Support capability and recognize conditions
In Norte, Developers know how to run a test and want to facilitate the next decision. An external authority suspended the environment. Another motivation session does not restore access. The Scrum Master helps distinguish missing information, practice needs, a material barrier, and a decision outside the mandate. If someone asks for meeting help and then reveals they do not understand the goal, follow that discovery before choosing a technique. GitLab coaching guidance is a reference for listening and exploration, not a transfer of managerial powers to the Scrum Master. You can share experience as a possibility and ask whether it helps in context. Do not use questions merely to steer toward a solution already decided. When the team demonstrates preparation, agree bounded independent practice, available support, and review. Neither permanent control nor disappearance without agreement reliably develops capability.
Show demand and the actual workflow
In Ria, thirty hours of support through messages are missing from the board. Comparing only the approved plan with nominal capacity may attribute a real difference to an invented cause such as lack of effort. Bring together people who understand business, development, and APS to represent demand, handoff, waiting, and rework. Use sufficient authorized information; do not publish messages containing unnecessary data. DORA recommends visibility of the workflow through to the outcome, including operations and support. Distinguish the observed current state from the intended future state. If coding takes two hours and approval eight days, saving ten coding minutes may have value, but it does not represent the same percentage improvement in full turnaround. Find those able to decide about the relevant constraint. For an isolated prototype, a prior agreement about permitted changes can reduce waiting for trivial approvals while keeping exceptions and controls explicit.
Address incentives and repetitive effort
In Sul, development is rewarded for sending cards and APS for returning them quickly when information is missing. Both areas meet targets while the request circulates without a usable outcome. Discuss with owners an experiment observing usable completion, returns, and full turnaround. Do not unilaterally alter management objectives or hide a worsening queue. Another mechanism is repetitive manual effort growing with demand. Resending the same file ten times weekly may be a toil-reduction candidate; investigating a novel cause and creating a lasting correction may be engineering even within support. The Google SRE reference does not classify all support as toil. Its 50% guidance belongs to its context and does not replace a hired role of 75% support and 25% projects. Use work characteristics to discuss improvement and capacity with decision owners. Keep the plan visible when Developers adapt it to learning.
Ria workshop: a scoped intervention
Prepare a 40-minute session with a Scrum Master, Developers, an APS representative, a management owner, and an observer. During the first ten minutes, present the plan and reveal thirty fictional hours of informal requests. In the next ten, map the actual workflow and separate observations from hypotheses. Then introduce environment unavailability and reserve ten minutes for choosing an intervention addressing the barrier and a feasible autonomy practice. Use the final ten to write the agreement and debrief. The deliverable identifies intended outcome, observed demand, an in-mandate decision, external dependency, support, owner, and review date. The observer records whether the group corrected its initial interpretation, sought appropriate authority, and preserved practice opportunity. Use “not observed,” “with help,” and “in rehearsal without help” states without adding them into a certification. The workshop was authored but not performed with participants; adapt the guide after observation, including if its structure obstructs discussion.
RIA WORKSHOP | 40 min: 10 + 10 + 10 + 10
Service outcome:
Planned demand / informal demand:
Observed facts / hypotheses:
Current state / proposed future state:
Information, practice, access, or decision barrier:
Who may decide the change:
Practice chosen by the team:
Agreed support:
Review criterion and date:
Effect on other queues:
Observation: not observed | with help | in rehearsal without help“The team knows how to run the test; the environment is missing. Let us address that dependency and agree a practice opportunity without recording cancellation as a competence failure.”
Common pitfalls
Motivation treated as an access solution; coaching treated as task management; autonomy without support; local targets rewarding rework; external policy treated as employer rules.
Related topics: Coaching and self-management · Demand visibility · Toil and improvement
A useful intervention addresses the observed condition, respects the mandate, and leaves the team better able to act and learn.
Reference: Visibility of work in the value stream · Scrum Guide November2020; Kanban Guide May2025; EBM May2024; primary guidance reviewed 2026-09-30