We always hear athletes talking about being 'in the zone.' But you don't have to be LeBron James to feel this type of hyper-focus. Learn how Scrum teams can harness it.

Several of us in the Kanban and Scrum community got together recently to build a bridge between Scrum and Kanban. We are writing a series of blog posts looking at this bridge from different perspectives.

What makes a great team? Why do some teams achieve greatness, seeing their vision become reality, while others seem to go nowhere?

Exploring the accountabilities in a Scrum Team through a Longship metaphor.

If agility is why your organization adopts Scrum, look for more sophistication in employing Scrum. Through Scrum, teams and organizations create the opportunity of having a releasable version of product no later than by the end of each Sprint, where a Sprint takes no more than 4 weeks, and often ...

Learn how to Maximize the value delivered by a combination of internal and external Scrum Team members as we walk through the steps of creating a client-agency partnership using Scrum with Scrum.Org and Blue Coda.

What makes the software development work great? Obviously, technology, right... Wrong! In an interesting article in "Peopleware", authors Tom and Timothy describe how the most important aspect of software development is not technology, but people.

What is the difference between a traditional and an Agile Manager? Keep reading, if you want to learn how a manager evolves.

Have you ever sat on a bus or plane, and rather than offering the vacant seat next to you to others, you hope that no one takes it, so you might have more space.

Congratulations! You replied to the job advert for an agile position, and you’ve got an interview. Genuinely keen to work in an agile way, you know that the organization must have picked up on your credentials.

In this edition of ScrumPulse, Hiren Doshi, Scrum.org Trainer and Coach talks through his practical experience leading numerous Agile Transformations for clients like Tesco, BookMyShow, DELL EMC, Bank of America, Sabre Travels, etc. on what it takes to be an effective Scrum Coach.

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, Professional Scrum Trainer Robert Pieper talks about how Gantt Charts and Burn-Down Charts are often used to manage agile projects, why they are fundamentally different ways of measuring progress toward a release and best ways to measure that progress. 3:29 M...

Many organizations face two key risks in their adoption of Scrum: TACTICAL SCRUM and DEATH BY MANDATE. In this special ScrumPulse Double Header, Professional Scrum Trainer Ravi Verma breaks the conversation into two parts to managing risk.

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, Professional Scrum Trainer Stephanie Ockerman explores the myth that a Daily Scrum is status meeting.  Through her discussion, she dives into several areas as to why it the Daily Scrum is much more than a status meeting and how they differ.  6:29 Minutes

Many of those practicing Scrum mistakenly call the Sprint Review a Demo. Is it just a matter of terminology? From my point of view, the Sprint Review is the most underestimated Scrum Event, and for many companies, its potential is yet to be revealed. It is true that the Demonstration or Demo is an e...

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, Professional Scrum Trainer Krystian Kaczor raises the question, what is the role of a Product Owner?  He answers that question by looking at what set of skills should they have, what they should do vs. delegate and why they have the ultimate accountability.  ...

Coaching conversations typically occur in a “zone of comfortable debate.”. However, to deal with issues at their core, it’s important to enter the ZOUD: the “Zone of Uncomfortable Debate.”

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, Professional Scrum Trainer Jacob Creech gives some great examples of the difference between doing the right thing and doing it well, using the cell phone industry.  This is why the principles of Inspect and Adapt in Scrum are so critical.  As the market evolv...

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, Professional Scrum Trainer Paul Kuijten describes how managers, Scrum Masters and others have responsibilities inside the Scrum Team and outside to other management, executives and stakeholders of many kinds.  Paul addresses the balance required to ride the l...

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, Professional Scrum Trainer Martin Hinshelwood raises some concerns when it comes to professionalism in the delivery of software and what you might look for to improve that professionalism at the team and organizational levels.    4:48 Minutes

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, Professional Scrum Trainer Krystian Kaczor talks about how a Scrum Master must take on many personalities when working with their Scrum Teams and a few examples of the types of personalities they may take on. Those personalities may also evolve over time wit...

“Scrum begins with Done”. The assertion might seem counter-intuitive, as though we must start by defining the end.

If you believe the hype that all you need to do to become a next generation agile IT organization is adopt Scrum and DevOps. Scrum to empower your teams and provide a lightweight framework for getting work done, and DevOps to provide the automation, systems thinking and lean practices to deliver and...

"It's not always easy to be a good Scrum Master. Learn some common pitfalls of Scrum Masters, and to recover from them, or avoid them altogether." "Knowing my True North gives me the courage to focus my energy where I believe it should be, not according to what is popular or pleasing to others." ...

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, Professional Scrum Trainer Martin Hinshelwood talks about why DevOps and Continuous Delivery fit nicely with Scrum as complimentary practices and techniques. 3:17 Minutes

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, Professional Scrum Trainer Kate Terlecka discusses the 4 things you need to consider when looking to Scale Scrum. 3:39 Minutes

Muchas veces sucede que la comunicación no es clara cuando se quiere definir que es terminado. Por ejemplo, cuándo un usuario especifica que requiere un reporte con cuatro columnas y que la última columna tenga un total parece algo sencillo.

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, Professional Scrum Trainer Stephanie Ockerman demonstrates that planning in Scrum is important and does occur despite the myth that many have heard that agile does not use plans.  Stephanie discusses the several events where planning takes place and how they ...

We talk about coaching a lot in the agile world. However, what we are actually expected to do is not usually about coaching. We do other things. We teach. We facilitate. We advise. We solution. We manage. Sometimes we even help do the work. None of those things are bad. Often, th...

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, Professional Scrum Trainer Rich Visotcky discusses the impact of Capital Expenses and Operational Expenses when transitioning from Waterfall to Scrum.  Rich provides some advice, things to look out for and an overall explanation of the different methods.  Thi...

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, we take a peek into part 2 of a conversation about overcoming blocked agile adoptions. Professional Scrum Trainers,  Pradeepa Narayanaswamy, Robert Pieper, Chad Beier and Stacy Martin talk about why it is important to have the entire organization on board, ho...

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, we take a peek into part of a conversation with Professional Scrum Trainers,  Pradeepa Narayanaswamy, Robert Pieper, Chad Beier and Stacy Martin as they discuss some of their experience in dealing with stalled agile change within organizations, reasons that i...

We find this a common thread amongst our customer teams, which can be attributed to a lack of backlog refinement.

We would all agree that “happy teams create happy results”, but the big piece to the puzzle is how to create those happy and engaged teams…  In this edition of Scrum Pulse, Professional Scrum Trainer Nagesh Sharma discusses the psychological aspects of the human brain connects the dots with Scrum...

"It's not our fault! The Product Owner is responsible for backlog management, the PBIs aren't well defined." "It's not my fault! The Development Team owns the Sprint Backlog, moreover, the PBIs went through refinement and they have the same level of detailing as the others." "I'm working on th...

Hi everyone! In this article, I'd like to share my list of top 30 books for Scrum Masters. I've read all of these books and used them in my practice. They actually work! :) The books cover all eight areas of the Scrum Master competency model developed by the Agile Coaching Institute: ...

The previous weeks I've taken some time to re-write the white paper "The 8 Stances of a Scrum Master". Given my sessions at Scrum Day London, Scrum Day Warsaw and Scrum Day Europe I wanted to offer the participants a paper with my latest insights and lessons learned. In this blog post I'll share the...

This white paper contains Professional Scrum Trainer Barry Overeem's personal experiences acting as a Scrum Master and the 8 stances he's documented with an in-depth perspective: The Scrum Master as a Servant Leader, Facilitator, Coach, Manager, Mentor, Teacher, Impediment Remover, and Change Agent.

Recently I had the opportunity to give a guest lecture about "Agile Essentials" at a University of Applied Science. These students, the lecturer told me beforehand, would only be partly interested and engaged. Therefore I prepared for the worst... While I watched the class going through the firs...

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, we take a peek into the third part of a conversation with Professional Scrum Trainers, Ravi Verma, Chad Beier, Charles Bradley and Victor Oliveira  as they discuss what it means to be a product. In this video, they look the definition of a product and how the...

Does this headline make you cringe or cheer? Scrum.org’s Steve Porter and ActionableAgile’s Daniel Vacanti weigh in on whether we should blend these two approaches.

In one of my previous blog articles, I wrote about the Scrum Master journey through the different levels of influence to achieve greatness. In this blog, we will explore the number one skill I believe is needed for a Scrum Master (servant leader) to be effective in order to create change and impact ...

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, Professional Scrum Trainer Ian Mitchell takes a look at the Nexus Framework, the Spotify Model and Scrum.  He compares, contrasts and discusses ways to scale Scrum

Agility is important to an organization and the path to agility becomes more clear by understanding the purpose of pursuing agility. The product owner role is key in increasing the benefits an organization can gain in their path to agility.

Many organizations have achieved sufficient success at the single team level with Agile approaches like Scrum that they want to bring Agile to their entire enterprise.

Do you ever wonder what determines our actions? Most people think that what we do is the outcome of our personality, however, the truth is more straightforward. It’s our mindset that controls our behavior. In this blog, we will explore few practical coaching tactics that a Scrum Master can ap...

When talking about Scrum, people often imagine the picture above: framework and its roles, artifacts, and events. Scrum rules are fairly simple, and they are thoroughly described in the Scrum Guide.

“Do not accustom yourself to consider debt only as an inconvenience; you will find it a calamity” - Samuel Johnson A few weeks ago we looked at the problem of technical debt, and at the challenges a Development Team faces when managing it. Technical debt can be defined as the longer term cons...

"As remote teams become more and more common, Scrum Masters must find a way to effectively do Scrum while working with far flung team members." "We are not a software development company, what you are talking works only for software development. We operate in a very different business. That stuff...

Most of the organizational change initiatives focus on the "hard" aspects such as organizational design, process or tools. Although those are critical, often other "soft" aspects such as values, principles or culture are overlooked. As the iceberg metaphor: consider them or they may sink yout Scrum ...