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If Your Scrum Team is Rigid, Something Is Broken

June 16, 2022
When Scrum Teams constantly push back on changing priorities, stakeholders begin to blame Scrum for the rigidity. Teams with large investments of time and energy are resistant to change. Break up this rigidity by delivering the smallest possible value. Get feedback quicker. Start anticipating change and embrace it.
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5 typische Herausforderungen im Leben eines Scrum Masters und Tipps, um diese zu meistern

June 16, 2022
Ein Scrum Master zu sein, ist schwer. Es ist genauso schwer, wie guten Code zu schreiben, gut zu zeichnen oder eine Fremdsprache fließend zu sprechen. Der Grund hierfür ist, dass das Meistern jeglicher Fähigkeiten Beständigkeit, Reflexion und bewusstes Handeln erfordert – alles Dinge, für die es dem Durchschnittsmenschen an Engagement fehlt. Hier einige der Herausforderungen, denen ich über die Jahre als Scrum Master mehrfach gegenüberstand und Tipps, wie du diesen begegnen kannst. Ich hoffe, meine Erfahrungen inspirieren dich, damit du dich auch morgen aufs Neue den Schwierigkeiten stellst, die eine Einführung von Scrum mit sich bringt.
Blog Post

Meaning of Purpose

June 15, 2022
Scrum Guide 2020 mentions Sprint Goal and Product Goal because Scrum teams must have a Share Goal. The Share Goal is always essential, even though the Scrum Guide didn't say it before. Basically, the Common Goal helps the Scrum Team become consciously Autonomous. Because Autonomy will lead to chaos if the group doesn't have a Share Goal. (See picture below) In this article, I would like to share the problems the Scrum Team usually faces when setting their goals and making plans not to be unified or linked to achieving a Common Goal. Thereby, I share with everyone a compact tool that makes it easier for you to define the valuable Share Goals.
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Constraints, work capability, throughput and flow

June 15, 2022
Today I want to tell you a little bit of a story about a festival in England. You know what the English summertime is like. We went to a thing called Pub in the Park in Marlow, and it was raining. It rained really heavily. And we were wondering what to eat and we saw these different stalls and we were disappointed with the food we were getting. I was waiting a long time for my pizza, but I noticed something that they weren’t overloading themselves because they were taking their time taking the orders. They slowed down the arrival rate of orders coming to the pizza stall. So it meant, there was really like a very good flow, that The people were working completely in tandem. I could see there was a constraint there on the pizza oven. They probably could have done with two pizza ovens and that person seemed to be under a lot of pressure. But they didn’t take on any more work than they had the capability to take on. They were fully utilized but they first optimized their flow. It was like a really tiny portion for a lot of money. And so we said, let’s get some pizza. And we went to a pizza stall and there was a big, long queue. I asked my family to go in under a tent and I just had an umbrella, luckily, and I had rain gear and I waited in the queue and I was waiting for quite a while.
Blog Post

Why you shouldn’t modify Scrum

June 14, 2022
The Scrum Framework is very lightweight, and it seems to get less restrictive with each release of the Scrum Guide.  What is included is really important, though.  Every piece of the framework is there for a reason.  In this article, I will discuss five common ways that teams modify the Scrum framework and the negative impacts of each.  
Blog Post

Kein UX-Designer im Team? Mit diesen 3 einfachen Techniken kann dein Scrum Team noch heute mit UX-Research beginnen

June 13, 2022
Kein UX-Designer im Team? In meinem neuen Artikel findest du 3 einfache Techniken, damit dein Scrum Team noch heute mit UX-Research beginnen kann. Die Erkenntnisse, die dein Team mit diesen Research-Techniken über eure Nutzer erhält, können dir helfen: - User Storys zu schreiben, die wirklich auf wahren „Geschichten“ eurer Nutzer basieren. - Endlose Diskussionen im Sprint-Review mit den Stakeholdern abzukürzen. Jetzt kannst du objektiv begründen, warum das Feature so designt wurde, da nur so die Nutzer bei ihrer täglichen Arbeit entlastet werden. - Im Product Backlog für mehr Übersichtlichkeit zu sorgen, da du die Einträge nach Nutzergruppen bündeln kannst.
Blog Post

Designing the Product Owner Role

June 11, 2022
In this blog, a short description of one workshop from Chapter 11: Guiding The Product Ownership. Misconceptions about the PO role often lead to reduced agility, development bottlenecks, and teams that do not understand the customer domain well enough to make autonomous decisions during a Sprint. 
Blog Post

36 Scrum Stakeholder Anti-Patterns

June 6, 2022
Learn how individual incentives and outdated organizational structures — fostering personal agendas and local optimization efforts — manifest themselves in Scrum stakeholder anti-patterns that easily impede any agile transformation to a product-led organization.
Blog Post

The paradox of Sprinting at a Sustainable Pace

June 3, 2022
Building a product sometimes feels like an endless race, head down, pedal to the metal, let's build it! We all run after something and as a team incrementing our product to be the best possible set of functionalities our users ever wanted, at some point we get out of breath Sprinting. As Scrum Master and Coach I often have to remind people that our goal is not to run but build a pace we can be confortable with for a long period of time, a sustainable pace.
Blog Post

Answering Some Concerns on Product Ownership

June 3, 2022
Product Ownership is a complex and often confusing idea, but if done right those accountabilities can help the Scrum Team deliver valuable, amazing Products. In this blog, we discuss and address some common concerns about the idea of Product Ownership.

Impulsores de la Agilidad

May 31, 2022
La agilidad está de moda y su adopción es un tema pendiente en muchas organizaciones. La agilidad promueve un cambio cultural que se basa en los principios y valores ágiles que llevan a adquirir capacidades de respuesta al cambo para hacer frente a la dinámica del contexto del mercado con foco en la entrega de valor en los clientes.   La agilidad requiere el uso del enfoque empírico para generar valor de forma incremental, la base de Scrum, complementado luego con la inspección de los resultados basada en el aprendizaje de los clientes para generar una adaptación apropiada.
Blog Post

Guiding Teams in Multi-Skill Development

May 31, 2022
The work of solving a complex problem (for example, a feature) with interdependent tasks rarely distributes evenly among the people in a cross-functional team. The solution is a team of multi-skilled specialists. A team of multi-talented people experience fewer bottlenecks as they can help overloaded team members, and therefore reduce the time to solve a complex problem end-to-end. The team develops multi-skilled members by working in three preferred modes: pairing, mob-programming, and swarming continuously. Some other techniques are: StarMap, visualizing the flow of work, and Slack Time.
Blog Post

The Purpose of the Five Scrum Events

May 31, 2022
There are five events in Scrum.  But just going through the motions and having each of the events on the calendar is not enough.  To get the most out of Scrum, your team needs to understand the purpose behind each of the five events.  
Blog Post

4 Misunderstandings About "Carryover"

May 31, 2022
In my last article, I explained why we need to stop talking about "carryover" and how it's not actually a thing in Scrum. "Carryover" is really just partially done work at the end of a Sprint. Now I will take you deeper and share the 4 common misunderstandings often associated with this concept, and how we can make the shift to creating better conversations about what really matters.

8 cosas para ser mejor gestor de equipo ágiles

May 28, 2022
La gestión de equipos es la capacidad de un individuo o de una organización para administrar y coordinar un grupo de individuos para realizar una tarea. La gestión de equipos implica el trabajo en equipo, la comunicación, la colaboración, el establecimiento de objetivos y la evaluación del rendimiento.
Blog Post

Should I Become A Scrum Master?

May 27, 2022
As the demand for Scrum continues to grow, more people are considering a switch to being a Scrum Master. Changing jobs and careers is a big step. How can you know if it will be the right move for you?

Objetivos de Scrum y del marco de Gestión Basada en Evidencia

May 26, 2022
Scrum es marco basado en el empirismo. Un punto de partida para entender este concepto es que se refiere a la capacidad de adaptación a partir del aprendizaje de los clientes. Entregar valor a los clientes en el largo plazo es riesgoso debido a la incertidumbre de lo que puede suceder en el camino y no conoces. Scrum provee el Objetivo de Producto y el Objetivo del Sprint como formas de proveer dirección y propósito y a la vez que mejoran este empirismo a través de ciclos cortos de adaptación y entrega de valor desde el Sprint hacia el objetivo de producto.
Blog Post

Scrum Events Reduce Meetings

May 24, 2022
One of the first things that I usually hear after describing the Scrum framework and its five events to someone new to Scrum is, “that’s a lot of meetings!” I get it — at first glance, it seems like a lot. But it really isn't when I get the person to take a closer look. This article provides a description of each event and how you can reduce the need for other meetings by practicing them.
Blog Post

Guiding the Organization in Multi-Skill Development

May 23, 2022
Working from a single product backlog creates an inevitable knowledge gap in single-skilled team members. Over time, team members develop secondary or even tertiary skills and become multi-skilled specialists. On an organizational level introduce cross-functional managers that focus on the whole team development. Also you need to create a system of human operations that supports multi-skilled specialists.
Blog Post

Five Ways to Build Consensus

May 22, 2022
One of the things I struggled with at the start of my Scrum Master journey was building consensus in the team. Wanting to stay objective, give everyone space and time whilst still craving for a decision was a challenge for me. My own indecisiveness with regards to how to handle this ultimately did not serve the teams I worked with well as discussions did not seem to go anywhere and decision making was slow. Over time I learned that there are actually many already existing useful techniques that help with consensus building, and when and how to use them depends on the context and the situation you are in. Here are a few that have served me well as a facilitator.
Blog Post

Prinzipien sind essentiell für Produkterfolg

May 22, 2022
Scrum ist ein leichtgewichtiges Rahmenwerk um komplexe Probleme zu lösen. Die Regeln wie wir sie im Scrum Guide finden sind wichtig. Und dennoch wage ich zu behaupten, dass die unterliegenden Prinzipien noch wichtiger für einen nachhaltigen Produkterfolg sind. Erst dann kann das volle Potential von professionellem Scrum genutzt werden. 

Porqué decimos agile coach cuando queremos decir otra cosa

May 22, 2022
Me he encontrado varias veces que la gente en general no sabe qué hace un agile coach para las personas, los equipos y las organizaciones. Ser agile coach requiere un desarrollo de serias competencias, que en muchas sitios no están del todo bien comprendidas. Vamos a ver porqué decimos agile coach cuando queremos decir project manager agilizado o gestor de personas.