
BONUS Why Your Agile Transformation Keeps Snapping Back — And What Systems Thinking Says About It With Natalia Curusi
From Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile storytelling from the trenches by Vasco Duarte, Agile Coach, Certified Scrum Master, Certified Product Owner
May 2, 2026 · 37 min
About this episode
The episode discusses the challenges of Agile transformation and insights from systems thinking with guest Natalia Curusi.
BONUS: Why Your Agile Transformation Keeps Snapping Back — And What Systems Thinking Says About It Natalia Curusi co-authored a book that doesn't tell you what agile should look like — it tells you what actually happens when you try to transform an organization. Friday-night deployments, zombie teams going through the motions, transformations that met a wall of silence. In this episode, we unpack the real lessons from the front lines: how personal values drive the shift to agile, why some teams have all the ceremonies but none of the substance, and what systems thinking reveals about why transformations fail — or snap back. When Your Values Don't Match Your Ways of Working "I felt like there is a mismatch in my values, my moral values and principles, and customer-centric orientation. So when I found out about Agile around 2010, I understood — okay, this is the answer. Now I have the answer how I can map my moral values and principles with software delivery." Natalia's journey to agile didn't start with a methodology — it started with a gut feeling that something was wrong. Working in large corporations in the early 2000s with fixed-scope contracts, late deployments, and scripts…
People in this episode
Host: Vasco Duarte
Guest: Natalia Curusi
Topics covered
- Agile transformation
- Systems thinking
- Organizational change
- Personal values
- Agile mindset
Keywords
- Agile
- transformation
- systems thinking
- personal values
- organizational change
- Agile mindset
- team dynamics
Mentioned in this episode
Books & works: book
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