Find resources
Resource search filters
Blog Post
Father's Day offered an annual moment for me to reflect on the journey of a humble and influential man whose life was tragically cut short in 2002 - my Dad. Although it has been a number of years since his passing, he continues to shape my mindset in meaningful and profound ways.
I hope all of ou...
0 from 0 ratings
Blog Post
Recently discussing design and programming with an external programmer, he explained me his approach of defensive programming.
But before going in detail of his explanations, Wikipedia help us to define the defensive programming:
Defensive programming is a form of defensive design intended to en...
0 from 0 ratings
Blog Post
The Scrum Master role can easily be misunderstood as it is harder to grasp by reading the theory; hence people often compare the Scrum Master role to Project Manager or Technical Leader. Scrum Master's primary job is to place himself in service consciously, with self-awareness, and for the benefit o...
0 from 0 ratings
Blog Post
I was recently contacted by a senior executive of a mid-sized company that is evolving their product development to Scrum. He explained a situation he had been in and wanted my opinion. He accepted me to share his story here (with some abstractions, and calling him Jim) in an open-ended way, invitin...
0 from 0 ratings
Blog Post
Companies have two avenues for growth: acquisition, or organic growth. Regardless of how they are growing their increasing size increases the difficulty of the company successfully responding to change. Retaining as much as possible of advantage of that small company’s ability to rapidly piv...
0 from 0 ratings
Blog Post
Scaled Professional Scrum is based on unit of development called a Nexus. The Nexus consists of up to 10 Scrum teams, the number depending on how well the code and design are structured, the domains understood, and the people organized. The Nexus consists of practices, roles, events, and artifacts t...
5 from 2 ratings
Blog Post
Scrum brings agility to and creates Agile organizations through the implementation of empirical process control, the process of frequent inspection and adaptation. The empiricism of Scrum serves discovering and taking advantage of opportunities and options, at all levels; people, technology, market....
4.3 from 2 ratings
Blog Post
I’ve been witness to the start of hundreds of teams and projects. There’s a point at which, during the launch of a new team even before the first Sprint, I can tell with fair certainty whether the team will be successful or not. I’ve been thinking about what the root causes of this are, and here’s m...
0 from 0 ratings
Webcast
n this session, we examine some common and not- so-common metrics before introducing how we can use them as a guide for continuously measuring business goals, aligning them with software development efforts, and then deciding what to do next.
5 from 1 rating
Blog Post
One of the challenge working as a Professional Scrum Trainer is reading what is in people's mind when they are silent. In a classroom setup, silence can mean many things and it depends on the local culture. In some culture, silence can be a form of respect to the person who is talking. Silence c...
0 from 0 ratings
Blog Post
History
In 2012 in one of my Professional Scrum Master classes I met a true gentleman. Much older than the average IT specialist in Poland, jeans and button-up shirt, amazing manners, spotless language and a perfectly kept medium-length black beard with shining strings of white. The kind of a per...
4.5 from 1 rating
Blog Post
Making a purchase can feel great when you’ve developed a rapport with the salesperson. Regardless of the product; from a tasty treat at the farmer’s market to a major purchase like a new car; a sale is much more likely when the vendor not only cares deeply about their product but also takes time to ...
0 from 0 ratings
Blog Post
Do you want to pass a small test? It is very simple - please reproduce in the exact sequence literally four values of Agile Manifesto.
Well, how did it go? If you succeeded, then you get my congratulations.
3 years ago I failed the test, though I knew the Scrum Guide almost literally and was...
5 from 1 rating
Blog Post
An analogy I can think of is... I want my dart to hit the dart board, and not necessarily the bull's eye.... as it calls for a lot of details which apparently is missing during estimation. However, if my dart doesn’t hit anywhere on the dart board... it's almost like shooting in the dark; a very dis...
0 from 0 ratings
Blog Post
In his book Good to Great, author Jim Collins asks the reader:
Do you have a "to do" list?
Do you also have a "stop doing" list?
He goes on by saying:
Those who built the good-to-great companies, however, made as much use of "stop doing" lists as "to do" lists. They displayed a re...
0 from 0 ratings
Blog Post
In today's rapidly changing world of disruptive innovation organizations need to be nimble enough to support this. We are asking our workforce to do this by becoming 'agile'. We want the agility to quickly pivot and seize new opportunities. We want to deliver to market sooner. We want ou...
0 from 0 ratings
Blog Post
“To win in the marketplace you must first win in the workplace.” - Doug Conant, CEO of Campbell’s Soup
To create Organizational Agility you need to find the harmony between People, Process, and Tools. Agile speaks of putting people first, however from my experience, people are the poor step ch...
0 from 0 ratings
Blog Post
A program team of over 40 people decided to move to Agile from their traditional development practices. The program was old and had been in existence for over 6 years. In these 6 years they had released multiple versions of their software product to their customers. In the rush to satisfy the custom...
4 from 1 rating
Blog Post
Do you hold the job title of Scrum Master in your organization? In most big companies today, this role is still misrepresented as a Project Manager, which is hindering the pursuit of organizational Agility and hurting the professionals who are genuinely attempting to make this challenging job change...
0 from 0 ratings
Blog Post
To imbibe Agility in an organization which is a state of high responsiveness, speed, and adaptiveness organizations should promote a new organizational culture of openness, transparency, respect for people, constant learning, improving, and constant adaptation. Even with so much of awareness, cultur...
3.6 from 238 ratings
Blog Post
When reading the role of the Scrum Master in the Scrum guide, one of the core competencies is to facilitate meetings. While in a meeting, a Scrum Master might want to visualize what the team is thinking or expressing. Or he might want to enhance the collaboration through an activity. Colored Post-It...
0 from 0 ratings
Blog Post
In this short video, I explain the challenges of scaling Scrum and how to create a Nexus™ to manage multiple Scrum teams to deliver an integrated increment every Sprint.
0 from 0 ratings
Video
In this short video, Ken Schwaber explains the challenges of scaling Scrum and how to create a Nexus™ to manage multiple Scrum teams to deliver an integrated increment every Sprint.
5 from 2 ratings
Blog Post
EMBARRASSING DISCOVERY
True Story from when I was Agile Coach for a Multi-Billion Dollar, Fortune 15 Giant…
It was a large Agile program and we had new team members joining the program in waves. Not everyone was familiar with Agile and we did not have money for in-person training. So we had ...
3.1 from 248 ratings
Blog Post
Dear Scrum Master!
Being a Professional Scrum Trainer, agile coach & consultant for a while I had a chance to work with around a thousand Scrum Masters across different organizations. I see recurring patterns of misunderstanding and misapplication of Scrum usually visible in how Scrum Masters...
5 from 2 ratings
Blog Post
“Eventbrite Order Notification” – This is probably one of the best mails I receive as a ScrumTrainer It usually means I have another student with whom I can share my passion for Scrum. Sometimes it doesn’t quite work that way.
Last year, I got this notification for a student who wanted to attend...
0 from 0 ratings
Blog Post
Years ago I was complimented on “improving the group dynamic” by bringing in a cafetiere for the my agile team to use. We developed a bit of a ritual around this object. One person had made it clear that the kettle needed to be left to cool so the coffee was not burned, procedures were in place fo...
0 from 0 ratings
Blog Post
"Agile" (the label) is all over the place. Who would have guessed in early 2001? When the Manifesto for Agile Software Development was created and the English adjective ‘agile’ obtained its specific meaning in the context of software development. What is this manifesto, commonly known as the Agile M...
5 from 2 ratings
Blog Post
Have you ever been in a meeting where you felt afraid to share a difficult and truthful statement? Was "the obvious" in the room the whole time, but no one would speak up and talk about it? If so, then the time has come for your organization's leadership to embrace the role of a Courageous Communica...
0 from 0 ratings
Blog Post
I always spend time during training classes thoroughly covering the concept of Definition of Done, sometimes abbreviated “DoD.” As a concept it’s fairly easy to understand and people generally see the value right away. And in practice, for many teams, this concept is the single biggest game changer ...
5 from 1 rating
Blog Post
Are you a Manager that believes in the power of Scrum? There is a difference between thinking, believing and knowing. Don't miss out on a huge opportunity to become the next market leader in your space. It's time to understand your role and how it needs to change in order to survive in a creative ec...
4.5 from 1 rating
Blog Post
File this one under: “how do you do Sprint Reviews when you have lots of teams?” Indeed, the traditional presentation format gets long, boring, and ineffective when you have more than a handful of teams presenting at a Sprint Review. From the point of view of an executive, this is exponentially tr...
0 from 0 ratings
Blog Post
One of the favorite activities of HR departments seems to be herding people into teamwork trainings. In these trainings they will have endure learning about all sorts of ideas related to teamwork. Most of them with no scientific validity. Learning to give feedback to other team members has its sure ...
5 from 1 rating
Blog Post
As people and organizations grow and mature their implementation of Scrum, they regularly check with us at Scrum.org about particular points of interest. Recently we have seen an increase in the need for help and inspiration in scaling Scrum and in ways to educate and assess Scrum practitioners.
0 from 0 ratings
Blog Post
This blog is part of my series on “Agile Trojan Horses – Covert Appetizers for Agile Discovery”. This series helps spark conversations that restore focus on Agile Fundamentals, whet the appetite to discover more about Agile and help apply Agile in day-to-day decision-making.
I am writing this b...
5 from 1 rating
Blog Post
The ability to create high-quality and attractive flip charts is one of the basic skills of any facilitator. If you are the Scrum Master, Agile Coach, business coach or just a person who used to capturing thoughts using paper and markers and prefers the old timeless classics - these simple rules wil...
0 from 0 ratings
Video
In this video, hear from some of the Professional Scrum Developer trainers and their thoughts on what it means to be a Professional Scrum Developer.
3.2 from 76 ratings
Webcast
In this webcast, Ravi Verma, Scrum expert, and founder of SmoothApps discusses self-managing teams, a fundamental element core to agile software delivery and any Scrum Team.
0 from 0 ratings
Blog Post
Young Jimmy is in 3rd grade. He's constructed an immaculate paper-mâché volcano. It took every spare minute of the last to weeks to make. His mom carefully loads it in the back of the minivan. The anticipation is too much for Jimmy, he can't even look. Arriving at school, Jimmy helps her carry ...
5 from 1 rating
Blog Post
Starting a team new to agility on their first sprint is one of my favorite and most rewarding things to do. The enthusiasm, newness, sense of accomplishment, teamwork, and the communication displayed in just the first sprint is usually enough to leave most folks happily surprised.
“Wow, I nev...
0 from 0 ratings
Blog Post
If I had a penny for every minute I sat in a meeting where teams argued about what was and was not “Agile” I would be a gazillionaire by now. Sometimes, the most vocal and dominant voices are the least aware of the fundamentals of Agile. To many, Agile is a buzz word and does not mean more than what...
0 from 0 ratings
Blog Post
A team that I work with decided one day to improve the general mood in the team. A member of the team (David) bought the Snakes & Ladders board game for the team. By playing the game, his goal was to counter pessimism that was generally flowing within the team. As negative remarks about the proj...
0 from 0 ratings
Blog Post
In the book Scaling Up Excellence by Sutton & Rao, they discuss two different ways to think about scaling: the “catholic or buddhist” approaches. I think this is a very interesting way to think about Scaling Scrum.
The jist is: catholicism scales by having standardized practices and procedur...
0 from 0 ratings
Blog Post
Are you considered a leader in your organization? Do you spend your day at the top of the tower or in the trenches? Our best Agile leaders navigate an organization and fuel connections that lead to high performance across the workplace - here's how.
In my travels, I am baffled by the number ...
4 from 43 ratings
Blog Post
[Author’s note: I will be a Scrum Day Dallas on 27 March 2015; a great opportunity to meet me and other master Scrum Masters. Find me there and let’s talk about your Scrum Master journey. Exciting travels –Mark Noneman]
So you’re a Scrum Master now. Maybe you’ve volunteered to fulfill the role or...
0 from 0 ratings
Blog Post
Watch a video version of this blog or scroll down to read a text version…
I used to be passionate about Agile Coaching and Scrum. I have spent many years and a lot of money to get here. So it is strange that I am now writing about how all the investment made me a gambling addict.
Writing t...
0 from 0 ratings
Blog Post
Setting up an enterprise-scale agile department with 200 developers working towards the same vision will ensure you are invited to speak at all of the most prestigious conferences, but is there a simpler solution?
Just get Sam to do it
The simplest way to build software is to find one talented...
0 from 0 ratings
Blog Post
Are you part of a Team in the workplace? Odds are the answer is "yes". Do you observe other Teams in your organization doing inspiring work and wonder how they do it? We talk a lot about the characteristics of great Scrum Teams, but what does it *feel* like to be on a great Scrum Team?
In my...
0 from 0 ratings
Blog Post
Recently I just got an email from a QA manager who wishes to send his team members to Scrum.org Professional Scrum Master course:
I’m so interested in Professional Scrum Master course. I’m working as a QA Manager on Scrum projects. Therefore, I intend to join the Prof...
0 from 0 ratings
Blog Post
As a leader, your own behavior has a profound effect on the effectiveness of Scrum in the workplace. Want to embody great leadership to elevate your organization's performance? Consider adding an "apology" to your leadership toolkit.
Once upon a time, there was a young and promising professi...
5 from 1 rating