What exactly is “agile” or even an agile leader? This is one of the biggest problems our industry faces. Ask a room full of people to answer and you may get as many answers. Common ones include “it’s a mindset” or “it’s a software methodology” etc…

In my career, I have had the great privilege to witness different companies undergo many different phases of agile transformations. I’ve met many amazing Scrum Masters along the way that have evolved to take on major responsibilities in their organizations.

As an agile coach and trainer, I have had the opportunity to reach thousands of students that are just beginning their journey into the Scrum and agile world.

Does a Scrum Master really need technical business knowledge? If you’re trying to break in the world of Scrum, you might be asking yourself: Does a Scrum Master really need technical knowledge? Do they need business knowledge? I’m here to set the record straight.

I once worked for an organization with many opportunities for improvement. To be honest, it was a mess.

Per a January 20th, 2017 article by Daniel Shapero, VP of Talent Solutions and Careers at LinkedIn, the role of Scrum Master is in high demand. It’s ranked number 10 on his list of most promising jobs of 2017.

Your team has been trained and coached to deliver new chunks of software in a short time frame. Those using Scrum will be able to deliver in a Sprint. Those using Kanban will deliver as soon as their small feature is done.

I see four common reasons an agile implementation doesn't get the benefits hoped for. These reasons include a failure to limit risk, long end-to-end delivery lead times, consistent cost-overruns, and no one knows why you do what you do.

If you’ve learned Scrum and tried to implement it in any large organization you’ve likely run into a few issues. Getting dedicated people on your team is hard. Building cross-functional teams is really hard.

I'm sure you've heard of Waterfall, ever heard of Water-Scrum-Fall? Ever heard someone in a product development group tell you “they use a hybrid-agile approach”? There’s a million ways people continue using a traditional, phase gated, software development lifecycle approach and marry it with an agile framework or methodology.