Many scrum teams use a metric called velocity as their primary metric. Velocity is commonly defined as the number of story points you finish over time, usually measured by sprints. Measured from sprint to sprint, it becomes a sort of gauge of success. If it stays the same or goes up, that’s great. If it goes down repeatedly, there’s a problem that needs to be investigated.

In this story, I describe and debrief a difficult moment I experienced as a coach. In addition to this writeup being my personal reflection, it might serve as a source of learning for you.

As the name “Test First” suggests, you write a test first before the actual code and keep them running all the time. Well, maybe not the second part explicitly. Yet what if I said to you that it actually means more than that?

With the new normal, online training has exploded, but potential students are confused about what makes a great online training course and the results seem hit and miss.

Here is a list of 8 Questions for Scrum Masters to improve the effectiveness of Sprint Reviews

Shu-Ha-Ri has been a frequent topic within Agile communities for years to capture the essence, the progress of the journey we embark on as we grow and learn better ways of working.

TL; DR: The Agile Movers & Shakers Interview w/ Christiaan Verwijs & Barry Overeem Today we welcome Christiaan Verwijs & Barry Overeem.

A physical build monitor - like a light that turns red when a build fails - is a great way to get fast feedback. Its also a fun & educational activity for Development Teams, as it gives them a product of their own they can apply their craft to. And it encourages a Developer Culture.

La realidad actual nos ha llevado a acelerar muchas decisiones. A veces esas decisiones no son las más deseadas. En estos 2 meses se han visto cosas que no lo asumíamos que eran posibles. Y aún mejor hay muchas más por llegar.

In my daily life as a Scrum Master, I witness many crazy situations. I want to share my discoveries via this comic series featuring Koos Coach, the silly Scrum Master struggling to understand and master Scrum.

User Story Mapping permite a los gerentes de producto, desarrolladores y diseñadores poner un método detrás de la continua complejidad del diseño del producto y crear una experiencia de usuario (UX) increíble.

Today, on Global Accessibility Awareness Day, I look back on how far we have come as a society in making things accessible for people with disabilities. Yet, how far behind we are in inclusive user and customer experience. Just because I ‘can’ use your product or service, it does not mean I ‘want’ too.

TL; DR: Quo Vadis, Scrum Master? — A Live Virtual Meetup on June 4, 2020 Freelancing Scrum Masters being let go, with no new projects on the horizon. Employed Scrum Masters being furloughed or fired.

The best Scrum Teams are diverse. Diverse teams are more fun to work on and deliver better products. A diverse team will provide diversity of thought because they  bring different experiences to the discussions and decisions. Today is Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD).

How much have you scored this year? My parents asked this question twice a year throughout my schooling. I was well prepared to ask the same questions to my son, but school cheated me. Have you had a similar past? If yes, then you will understand why I call it a generation gap issue.

“Our problem is that we can’t plan Sprints accurately with velocity,” he said. “Some Sprints, our velocity is really high, in others, we barely achieve anything.”

As a Scrum practitioner you may have read the famous paper The New New Product Development Game.

An introduction of the 4 symptoms, with the symptom ‘No desire for contact with the outside world’ explained in detail.

One of the most asked question that people ask me in my Professional Scrum classes is "Who should be in the development team" in Scrum?

In our work of building Agile capability in organisations and training, mentoring and coaching hundreds of teams, we saw that Scrum Teams that embraced and lived Scrums core values, exhibited the same characteristics that Google found in its quest for the secret of high performing teams.

The first insights are available from the Remote Agile Survey

The organizations must truly practice patience while applying Scrum. Scrum does not solve the problems, but it reveals all the problems that deter you from achieving your goals by making it radically transparent. Patiently work on the problems one at a time and very soon you will achieve the Business Agility you desire.

La Retrospectiva del Sprint es el momento en que el equipo de Scrum evalúa los compromisos de mejora necesarios para mejorar la entrega de valor. Este evento no es el único momento para mejorar porque estas mejoras pueden suceder durante el Sprint. Las áreas de mejora como sugerencia pueden estar asociadas a Scrum, Criterios de terminado, relaciones entre las personas, prácticas ágiles o de ingeniería y mejoras en herramientas a usar. Las discusiones pueden ser llevadas por reflexiones en temas como la mejora de la calidad del producto y los criterios de terminado. Criterios de terminado más estrictos mejoran la calidad y la transparencia del incremento de producto, criterios menos estrictos pueden derivar en aumentar la deuda técnica.

Executives: there are many reasons for agility. You already know this.

Many folks on LinkedIn these days, seems to have a renewed interest in firing the Scrum Master. I have been asked quiet a few times personally as to what will the scrum master do now that we are heading to a ‘New Normal’.

Scrum is a straightforward framework to develop complex software products in a complex environment but hard to practice.

As a coach, I’ve gotten many inquiries from colleagues and students asking for advice. How do I support my team during a time when we have and are still experiencing so much change and high levels of uncertainty?

It is a time of unprecedented challenge. Firms are experiencing extraordinary disruption.  Productivity is impacted. Delivery has stalled. Leaders worry about survival, remaining profitable and/or competitive in a distributed environment.

Scrum Master's role is unique, and comparing with any traditional roles will limit our thinking and exploring a beautiful journey of servant leadership.

am bracing myself to hear, “Sorry, we have not updated our [insert product] [insert service] for accessibility under new health guidelines” or “Sorry for the inconvenience, please check back to see when we have updated to accommodate accessibility.” Sorry is not inclusive.

What is agile – I asked everyone what it means to them. Got responses like “being flexible,” “respond faster,” “move quickly,” and “adapt to change,”

I struggled in the past when people were asking me to explain Scrum quickly and without putting metaphor and success stories.

There has been no shortage of articles on how to work remotely recently, including our series on Remote Agile.

"What is worry about our product is keeping you up at night? What can we build or test this Sprint to make you sleep a bit better?". In this post we share this and 9 other Powerful Questions to help your team find better Sprint Goals. And what to do when these questions don't help you at all.

Like other PSTs, I was recently approached by few agilists to help them with PSPO-I certification. Here is one such conversation -

During a 20/20 vision on my writings, I discovered clusters of knowledge that are essential to Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches: Genuine coaching techniques, knowledge of psychological principles and above all, understanding and developing “Self” awareness.

Difference between Project Manager and Scrum Master.

Treacherous bottlenecks can nullify all your hard work, no matter how industrious you are.

The Scrum values help build the foundation of Trust. Transparency, Inspection, and Adaptation, the three pillars to embrace empiricism flourish on the foundation of Trust.

Can Developers work on more than one Scrum Team at a time? Here is what is not written in the Scrum Guide.

Inspiration for fulfilling the stances of a Scrum Master, remotely.

Covid19 turned our lives upside down in scrambling to find new ways of how to socialize, shop for groceries, and change the way we work. However, this gives us a new opportunity to re-imagine the way we work as we shift from the ‘workplace’ to the ‘workspace’.

This eighth article now looks into supporting a distributed Development Team organizing a remote Daily Scrum.

*Covid is a fictional character based on my imagination that represents the strain of CoronaVirus that is causing the disease Covid-19. This is just a very simple and sincere attempt to put my knowledge and understanding about Covid-19 to test in this article and I tried making the connection with Scrum. I hope you enjoy it.

In my daily life as a Scrum Master, I witness many crazy situations. I want to share my discoveries via this comic series featuring Koos Coach, the silly Scrum Master struggling to understand and master Scrum.

This blog post uses a metaphor to illustrate the potential impact of having more than one product owner per product.

The COVID19 pandemic gives us plenty of opportunities to think about uncertainty, complexity, and how to deal with those using Empiricism.

Emotions are part of the human experience. Emotions are essentially energy in motion (e-motion).  When our emotions are flowing freely, they can bring us energy and provide the fuel for us to transform and grow.

A number of weeks ago I was chatting to Jeff Gothelf the co-author of Lean-UX and co-creator of our Professional Scrum with User Experience class. He described a project that he is working on which sparked my interest and is something I believe to be relevant to our Scrum community. I wanted to share some of this discussion with you.

Have you always wondered about the difference between agile and Scrum? You’re not alone, these words are commonly interchanged for one another but they are not the same thing at all.