If you worked in large organizations you have probably heard about the term "dependencies". I am convinced that dependencies need to be eliminated, not managed. With a help of system diagrams in this article, I will uncover the main reasons why Scrum Teams suffer from dependencies, how they impact o...

Often I hear people say that Scrum does not take care of risk: there is no risk log, risk is not on the agenda of the Sprint Review or Retrospective as a standard agenda-item. The Developers need to be accountable for the quality of the product and how it's made. And ultimately each role in Scrum h...

The Times News were on a journey to re-platform their system. While working diligently behind feature flags, using elements of Scrum, it wasn’t clear to the stakeholders the value being delivered and how well the teams were progressing towards their end goal.

This presentation by Professional Scrum Trainer, Chuck Suscheck describes the discovery techniques of BDD and exemplifies an end-to-end automated business scenario so that you can see the direct tie between business needs and software execution possible with BDD.

This is the second in a series of posts exploring Scrum Mastery. In our first post, we introduced the 4 dimensions of Scrum Mastery. Scrum requires self-managing, cross-functional, collaborative teams. The success of Scrum hinges on the strength of a team. In this post, we will explore the Team Iden...

The University of Applied Sciences at Albstadt-Sigmaringen (HSAlbSig) is respected for its well-balanced curriculum. However, even the best curriculum can benefit from outside sources and experts.

Bottom line - Toyota Improvement and Coaching Kata is the perfect partner for flow-based retrospectives.

Agility is the ability of an organization to adapt to new conditions and to change its direction. The modern service-based format of the production-based economy of the previous century renders the competence of companies to change even stronger than before.

"An Agile Coach know more than just Scrum", said one consultant in a boardroom meeting, "he/she knows organisation dynamics, executive coaching and other Agile practices like Kanban and DevOps", he continued.

Bottom line - PSK improves the performance of Scrum teams, but WiP must be optimized for flow and work in progress should not relatively age compared with other in progress items

In this session, we explore how to integrate Peter Senge's 5 Disciplines of Learning Organizations with the Nexus Framework to help organizations to scale their business agility with Scrum. Along the way, we find out what Michelangelo had to say many centuries ago that can guide and inspire them in ...

Last year I reached a very important goal I had set for myself: I became a Professional Scrum Trainer (PST) on behalf of Scrum.org. But why was this so important to me, and how did I get on this path?

Behavior Driven Development (BDD) and Test Driven Development (TDD) are Agile Practices that are complementary to the Scrum framework. Both are focused on improving the quality of the software product under development. That said, they approach building valuable software from different perspectives.

We all understand, every field has a skill quotient that you need to achieve to be able to qualify and deliver. It’s a Doctor of Medicine for someone who wants to practice medicine, be a Doctor, and save lives.

Imagine this, you are at the weekly company meeting in a room of 60 people. All of them are co-workers who you have been working with for several years. You feel engaged and committed to the goal set by your company. 

The purpose of Scrum is to deliver Increments of releasable functionality. So at each Sprint Review, a “Done” Increment is required to make transparent the progress made by the team.

There is often confusion when organisations transition to an agile way of working, particularly with the mapping of roles. This blog explores the role of Project Managers in Scrum.

From my go-to barbecue chicken to practicing Scrum, I have tried adding many different ingredients over the years. Is there a point when too many ingredients get in the way of the original recipe?  Would the Scrum framework in your world of work be more optimal with less of them?

Bottom line - WiP limits must be applied to improve flow of the delivery of value. It's a key lever to improve the performance of Professional Scrum Teams, and it's required by the Kanban Guide for Scrum.

The world is becoming more technologically complex, interdependent, and culturally  diverse, which makes the building of relationships more and more necessary to get things accomplished and, at the same time, more difficult.

When I first embarked on my own journey towards Scrum Mastery, I was eager to learn.  I attended Scrum training courses.  I went to and eventually spoke at agile conferences and meet ups.

​During this webinar we explore where HR teams can elevate their initiatives and the profession by understanding the shift in working practices in an agile organization ​as well as harnessing the power of Scrum to deliver more frequent value to their most valuable of customers - the organizations th...

Impact Mapping is a powerful technique that helps teams understand how to link the work that they do with results that their organizations would like them to achieve. We’ve been using this technique for a while in our Scaled Professional Scrum and Professional Scrum Product Owner courses.

A common question I hear in Scrum training courses and in coaching sessions is, “how much Product Backlog refinement should we do and how much detail should be in the Product Backlog?”

Why are there so many meetings?" is a complaint a Scrum Master often hears, especially from team members who are new to agile practice. It's the refrain of those in an organization which is more likely to be doing agile rather than being agile.

I need to get something off my chest. It's a personal thing, so don't mind me. But maybe it will get you thinking also. It's been on my mind for quite some time. Troublesome sometimes.... Here it goes.

In this post, we bust a myth that is at the heart of why refinement feels like a chore to many Scrum Teams: the belief that ‘Product Backlog refinement’ should be done as one or more required ‘meetings’ that must be attended by everyone in the team. We also offer some alternative approaches that fit...

I was presenting at a local user group and wanted to explain the concept of what it is to be a Servant Leader. I find that by providing an example of something people can easily relate to the concept.

In this video Richard Hundhausen, Professional Scrum Trainer talks about software delivery as a team, living the Scrum values, and using Microsoft Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) to plan and execute the work.

In this episode of the Agile for Humans Podcast, Don McGreal (@donmcgreal) and Ralph Jocham (@rjocham) joined Ryan Ripley (@ryanripley) to discuss their new book The Professional Product Owner: Leveraging Scrum as a Competitive Advantage.

Over the centuries, humans have managed to adapt to many situations and evolve to become what we are today. History shows that we have an innate ability to adapt and evolve. This remains valid as part of a change in business, such as the adoption of Scrum.

In this episode of the Agile.FM Podcast with Professional Scrum Trainer, Joe Krebs, Professional Scrum Trainers Ralph Jocham and Don McGreal share their thoughts around the role of the Product Owner and what challenges a person in that role often face.

What we avoid is still being processed and affecting our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.  Sometimes we are aware this is running in the background, and we catch ourselves thinking about it.  Then we try to distract ourselves.  Often we don’t even have awareness, and the effects still show up.

Based on the feedback that I have received from my blog about the most popular blog articles, I have decided to do the same for the Scrum.org video series.  Over the past few years, we have generated more than 160 videos to help people learn more about Scrum. Updated June 26, 2024

In this talk Dave West, CEO and Product Owner of Scrum.org talks about the roles of Scrum and how the three roles relate to your existing job titles. He describes the future of work in the context of an agile delivery model and what the implications are to job descriptions and career progression.

A description of the Liberating Structure "User Experience Fishbowl and how we've used it within Scrum.

People who attend the PSM course or the Professional Scrum Foundations (PSF) course are given two attempts at passing the Professional Scrum Master I assessment.

The fundamental result of Little’s Law is that for a given process, in general, the more things that you work on at any given time (on average) the longer it is going to take for each of those things to finish (on average). As a case in point, managers who are ignorant of this law panic when they se...

In this Scrum Tapas video, Professional Scrum Trainer Rich Visotcky describes the Product Backlog and the need to ensure that it is transparent to the entire Scrum Team. Rich talks about why everyone on the Scrum Team needs to understand what it is comprised of, the order or priority of Product Bac...

In this Scrum Tapas video, Professional Scrum Trainer Mark Noneman describes empiricism, how it is used and why it is so critical when practicing Scrum. 3:36 Minutes

In this blog article, we provide a quick overview of the most viewed blog articles over the past 18 months, giving readers insight into what they mind valuable to read.

Agile Metrics are meant to serve certain purpose(s) and can be very useful if leveraged appropriately. In this series, I want to share my experiences of how metrics may be used, abused and effectively become focal point of failure of Agile adoption in an organization.

I recently finished writing a book with fellow Professional Scrum Trainer, Don McGreal, titled,  "The Professional Product Owner: Leveraging Scrum as a Competitive Advantage." I learned a lot from this experience and wanted to share it here. 

In this session, Valerie Pearce, Senior Software Architect and Nic Easton, Nexus Scrum Master and Software Engineer III from Net Health, and Patricia Kong, Scrum.org Product Owner of Enterprise Solutions, walk through how Net Health scaled Scrum by implementing the Nexus framework in their product d...

When many organizations wanted to incorporate Scrum, it was a big disappointment. The leaders saw it as a failed experiment that did not yield the positive impact one would hope for. Nevertheless, I have witnessed the transformational results and great rewards an organization reaps when it truly emb...

Vor kurzem haben die beiden Autoren des Artikels sich einmal mehr mit der Frage beschäftigt, wie sich erfolgreiche und weniger erfolgreiche Teams unterscheiden und was die Erfolgsfaktoren für erfolgreiche Teams sind.

One of the new concepts we introduce in the Kanban Guide for Scrum Teams is the Service Level Expectation, defined as: An SLE forecasts how long it should take a given item to flow from start to finish within your workflow.

One of the key Kanban practices is Limiting Work in Progress. If you want to be pedantic, actually what this practice aims for is Reducing and stabilizing Work in Progress. This improves flow, provides predictability, and is actually even more important for creating a pull-based Kanban system than v...

In the Kanban Guide for Scrum Teams and the Professional Scrum with Kanban workshop, we introduce 4 key flow metrics that we believe Scrum teams can use to improve their flow.

In this Scrum Tapas video, Professional Scrum Trainers Ravi Verma and Ernst Perpignand discuss the importance of the Scrum Value of Respect, how teams can gain a common understanding of what Respect is and how they can work together in being respectful. 3:43 Minutes