Professional Scrum Trainer Ravi Verma asks the question:  Have you ever been screwed by an unethical, unprofessional service provider? Watch this episode to learn how I was treated by one of my service providers and if you are brave enough to take on my Agilato Challenge!

“I added a Refactoring Story for the next Cleanup Sprint” This is an interesting statement. Let's see how often the alarm bell rang in your head. I mean how many smells you can find in that statement... Before you scroll down to read my answers, please count to 10 and try to find 3 issues. ...

"Not a tester, so what are you then?" you might ask. Being that offending is generally not helpful. Unless you try to catch the attention as I do in this blog post ;-) Let's digest the situation in detail. A friend of mine attended my Scrum Developer class and caught fire during the...

Ok... Let's make this a short one. I talked to lots of people about this statement and after lots of strange looks I got lots of comments about the behaviour. Especially about the "since it's crap". This is pretty obvious a very strong opinion about something. But hey! Maybe the code works, p...

Let me quickly describe a potential situation how this came about. During the Sprint Planning, the team had agreed to deliver the top 5 Backlog items. They had some conversations about what the items are and where the problems could lie within those. The Product Owner had the feeling that just th...

I talk to a lot of people (if the day is long enough) and so I get them to ask interesting questions like: "What have you learned recently?" or "What is your top 1 goal for 2020?" These questions and more leads us to interesting conversations about personal development and personal goals t...

“Shirley, anything worth having is worth working hard for.”, that was how my friend Steve Porter from Scrum.org put it as I pursued my journey with Scrum. MY JOURNEY WITH SCRUM My journey started a few years ago when a friend asked me to provide Scrum training to their organization. I h...

This is a very common myth, frequent on people used to develop software only within the context of a closed scope (traditional project). The Scrum framework is agnostic when it comes to set the context of software development; it just talks about “complex product development”. In general, agile soft...

Professional Scrum Trainer Ravi Verma ask us:  What can agile teams learn from basketball teams? Which of the 7 levels of winning in basketball apply to your software delivery teams and which level are you winning at? Watch this episode to find out…

Professional Scrum Trainer Ravi Verma asks us to watch this episode to learn how the 2001 Philadelphia 76’er’s introduced us to the magic of basketball and how the 2015 Golden State Warriors taught us the 7 levels of winning. How many levels can you name…?

From serving in the Merchant Marines delivering war supplies to U.S. troops in Vietnam to being the co-developer of one of the most important product development guides ever written, you might say Ken Schwaber has had an interesting career. Read on to learn more about Ken, his past, his future plan...

I was honored to participate in the Women in Agile panel discussion last week. If you missed it, you can watch the recording. I learned three things from this experience: 1) an hour goes by very fast, 2) I have a lot more to say on the topic, and 3) I want more opportunities to help women. We r...

A recurring Scrum myth I see in my training and coaching is that there is no planning in Scrum. Unfortunately, this myth can lead to two negative consequences. The people in organizations responsible for budgets, product management, sales, and marketing may be unwilling to try Scrum. ...

Professional Scrum Trainer Ravi Verma asks the question: How can you go deep in some areas and broad in others? What is the important and value?

At first sight, Zombie Scrum seems to be normal Scrum. But it lacks a beating heart. The Scrum teams do all the Scrum events but a potential releasable increment is rarely the result of a Sprint. The team also don't have any intention to improve their situation. Actually nobody cares about this team...

This post is part of a series on debunking Scrum Myths. While my business cards say Professional Scrum Trainer, I may change that to Scrum Myth Buster. This post debunks the myth that the Daily Scrum is a status meeting. This myth undermines the effectiveness of Scrum in major ways. I will share...

Join our qualified, pioneering, international panel of Women Agile Influencers as they explore these questions, share their inspiring journeys and provide actionable tips to enable more Women Agile Influencers.

People always as ask me if agile is just for software. Saying agile is just about software is like saying software is just about science. Initially, computer science was about replacing manual processes. Now, it’s about creating human experiences. Building human experiences needs to extend beyond sc...

In 2012, the airline’s senior leadership and business unit heads issued a mandate to start being agile in order to make the organization more adaptive and able to react faster to changes. To accomplish this, one team of IT developers focused on mobile applications adopted Scrum, a framework for deve...

The Scrum Team consists of 3 distinct Scrum roles that promote self-organization: the Scrum Master, the Product Owner, and the Development Team. The accountability of each role complements the accountability of the other roles. Hence, collaboration between these roles is the key to success: Th...

When Scrum is introduced in a company, most of the time, the development team embraces it with lots of enthusiasm. Scrum embodies self-organizing, autonomous, multidisciplinary teams that acknowledge individual qualities and reinforces the strengths of the team as a whole. Who doesn't want to be par...

Professional Scrum Trainer Ravi Verma asks the question: Why must all healthy families and strong, successful scrum teams steadily sip soda? Especially when taking toddlers to ballet class? Watch this episode to learn about the importance of Soda in your family and work life.

THE (MIXED) BLESSING OF NEXTGEN REWRITES About 10 years ago, I experienced the mixed blessing of being part of yet another nextgen rewrite project. I was guiding a team of about 25 really smart team members, part of a much larger team of about 150+ people. Our team was responsible for completely...

One of the recurring Scrum Myth discussions I have with colleagues, teams new to Scrum and those attending training when comparing Scrum & DevOps relate to a misinterpretation of the following paragraph from the Scrum Guide. At the end of a Sprint, the new Increment must be “Done,” which mean...

One common consequence of teams that do not deeply understand Scrum and the nature of its events is that they believe it is possible to run sprints which do not produce a Done and releasable increment of the product. This belief typically leads to dangerous consequences so it’s important to caution ...

Ken Schwaber was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award for Innovation from the Boston Business Journal for his work and mission of Improving the Profession of Software Delivery by co-creating Scrum and being a major driver to the Agile Movement.

Clients and training attendees ask me "Can you use Scrum for something else than software?”. What they usually mean is building some other products or organizing team’s work. Let’s explore a more exotic idea. It’s beginning of a new year, the time when people make and try to achieve new year’s resol...

The Scrum framework thrives on empirical process control. The inspection of observable results gives us insights in what might be most valuable next, always acknowledging that the future is unwritten. The Scrum events function best when employed in such forward looking mode. Inspection is pointless ...

Professional Scrum Trainer Ravi Verma asks the question: How do you prepare a meal for a special event with lots of guests? What do you have to watch out for and is it ethical to change every part of a recipe and still keep the name? Join us as we explore these profound  questions in this episode o...

One of the arguments used against Scrum and a common misconception at the same time is the idea that quality is traded for speed in Scrum. As a PST with years of experience in Quality Assurance I decided to challenge this myth. I believe and I have seen many times that proper way of implementing Scr...

Professional Scrum Trainer Ravi Verma asks the question: Have you ever dealt with a demanding customer who relentlessly challenges you to deliver more with less money, less people and in less time? Watch this episode for a real world example that might give you some ideas for responding differently.

At Amsterdam Airport Schiphol we're using an Agile approach to realize a large digital program. This program includes 5 value streams with multiple teams. Due to the increasing scale of the program, some challenges arise. For example: How to organise a Sprint Review with an increasing amount of t...

IMAGINE Imagine you have just been asked to build an Agility Enablement Organization for your company. Sounds like fun, but there are some constraints you need to work within or around… There are 100+ teams with varying levels of interest in Agile You only have a small team of enablers ...

Professional Scrum Trainer Ravi Verma asks the question: Have you experienced the blessing to buy your dream home and enjoyed the journey of making it the perfect place for your family? Join us in this episode to learn how this blessing quickly became a challenge and led to have a painful, heart-bre...

Professional Scrum Trainer Ravi Verma asks the question: What mindset might help when confronted with the common challenge of so much to do and so little time & money? Join us to discover how we used cupcakes to meet our move-in date and see if you get an epiphany to help respond to the constraints ...

NEW YEAR RESOLUTION So it's a new year. New Year, new start, yadda yadda yadda... Maybe you are considering some New Year Resolutions so I wanted to invite you to take our 2017 waste-loss challenge by decreasing your Sabotagile Quotient. This challenge builds upon my previous blog - "Agile or S...

Scrum Teams will always face impediments because the work is complex and dynamic. The question is whether we tackle those impediments or live with them. In this post I share 5 challenges and actionable tips to overcome them.

Professional Scrum Trainer Ravi Verma looks at the situation where there is so much to do and not enough time or money? Join us in this episode to learn how this challenge confounded us in our preparation to move to our new home.

In Scrum, delivery is a usable Increment by the end of a Sprint.  Because we are dealing with complex work, we do not know everything about what is needed and how to deliver it before we start working.  This is where the concept of emergence comes in.

This year I was in the lucky circumstance to be part of some awesome (Scrum) teams. It certainly wasn't all "Scrum by the book" but I've learned a tremendous amount of lessons and generated lots of values insights. As always, some things turned out to be a success, other things failed miserably. Thi...

I would like to kick off a series of posts in this blog trying to debunk some common myths about Scrum. Many of them arise sometimes from a poor understanding of the Scrum Guide, and even more often, from not having read it at all. What is velocity? According to the Scrum.org glossary, Velocit...

The Sprint Goal helps provide focus on an objective we want to achieve and allows the flexibility to negotiate the work to achieve that objective. Creating a clear Sprint Goal can be challenging for Scrum Teams.  Here are four common problems with Sprint Goals and a few tips for improving them.

In a previous post describing challenges to creating a Done Increment, I identified a lack of team collaboration as one of those challenges. Collaboration is what enables the whole team to be greater than the sum of its parts. Collaboration allows a team to work together to complete a Product Ba...

In a previous post describing challenges to creating a Done Increment, I identified a lack of team ownership as one of those challenges. The Scrum Team is accountable as a whole to create a valuable, useful Increment by the end of the Sprint. There are 3 specific accountabilities within the Scrum T...

Recently I got asked what I consider the most common challenges with Agile projects. These are projects that have such a high rate of uncertainty and complexity on how and what to build, an Agile approach is necessary. Although my gut feeling immediately provided an answer, I gave myself some more t...

As a Product Owner and the CEO of Scrum.org, Dave West was invited to speak at ProductTank NYC earlier this year about the conflict between the roles Product Owner and Product Manager.

​ Table Manners There is a striking similarity between good table manners and good agile behaviours - "agile table manners". It is even more clear when viewed through the lens of the Scrum values: Focus, Respect, Openness, Courage and Commitment. The intent of manners is to help it be as safe ...

In this video, Professional Scrum Trainer Ravi Verma answers the question as to how the kitchen island impacted the course of our life and how we can apply what we learned in the world of complex software delivery.

Because there's no easy way in telling you this, I'll just share it straight away... Next week I'll be setting up a Jira environment for the product teams I'm coaching... Yes... Jira! The issue & project tracking system for software teams created by Atlassian. It's pretty easy to find negativ...

In this video, Professional Scrum Trainer Ravi Verma answers the question: Do your teams sometimes struggle with having conversations that are necessary but so difficult that you keep sweeping them under the carpet? Does this stop you from improving and get in the way of winning the game of complex ...