If you've been at an Agile conference, been a Scrum Master for quite some time and joined an Agile meetup group (here in The Netherlands there are several), then you probably found that games can be very quick ways to energize any meeting and to drive learning through fun.

Scrum.org has a diversity council that has been researching the topic from an agile perspective. How can Scrum Teams embrace diversity and what will be the gift from doing so?

This week, we are building our new website with a Scrum Team. Practicing what we preach, we are doing this in the most Agile, iterative way we can. So yes, we're making all the expected mistakes. In this post, we share what we learned about flow and releasing more often - with examples that are as real-life as imaginable :)

In every Scrum.org Professional Scrum Development class, we touch upon both technical and collaboration practices to help improve the development teams explore new options.

You’re likely to have been asked the question: “we need to go faster, how many more people do we need?” Most people naturally understand that just adding a random number of people isn’t likely to make us any faster in the short run.

I live many lives – in one of them, I am happily residing in the world of software development where I am also a Professional Scrum Trainer. In another, lesser known one – I am Band Manager (and former band member/musician myself) to a highly-regarded and awarded independent/underground musical act. 

I first met Sally,and then later Francis her husband, at a local user group - Agile in Leeds, where Sally delivered a fantastic 10 minute talk on how she implemented Scrum to help Francis with ADHD. 

I have an important favor to ask to Scrum practitioners who are asking their team to commit themselves to their sprint backlog at sprint planning.

Это первая из серии статей, в которых мы вместе будем исследовать вопрос узких специалистов в Скрам-командах, теорию очередей, системную/локальную оптимизации и обучение в командах.

In this post, we explain one of the more complicated Liberating Structures called Ecocycle Planning. It helps to bring clarity in your activities as an individual or as a group of people and to identify where your energy and time you should go.

Scrum prescribes one person in the role of Product Owner (PO). Not multiple people, not a committee, just one person.

This is a great exercise to learn more about your team; to find out more about each other’s concerns and dreams and, importantly, what you can do to support them. 

In deze video geef ik commentaar op de retrospective van Koos Coach. Deze derde episode gaat over eigenaarschap.

In deze video geef ik commentaar op de retrospective van Koos Coach. Deze tweede episode gaat over veiligheid en respect.

in deze video geef ik commentaar op de retrospective van Koos Coach. Deze eerste aflevering bevat tips voor het starten van een meeting.

A couple of weeks ago we looked at Monte Carlo analysis. We saw how this technique can be used to forecast Sprint capacity, and to anticipate the likely completion schedule for a given backlog of work.

The Agile Manifesto statement of “Customer Collaboration over Contract Negotiation” is less than helpful when it comes to writing contracts for projects to be worked in an Agile fashion.  Contracting for Agile software development projects continues to be a major organizational impediment.

I woke up Friday morning at 3 am for the second consecutive day and yet again I couldn't fall back asleep. The day before was the second and final day of my first experience co-training the new Scrum.org Professional Scrum Master II course.

You want to know IF and HOW you can "UP your Scrum" as a Scrum Master? Read this post by Professional Scrum Trainer Jasper Alblas.

In Scrum, Product Owner is responsible for maximizing the value of product being developed by Development Team. This implies that a product’s success relies heavily on the Product Owner role.

Last week I co-taught scrum.org's new Professional Scrum Master II course with fellow Professional Scrum Trainer (PST) Todd Mi

If you’re a veteran of the software industry, you probably remember those days where we released to production/GA every couple of months. Heck, many of the companies I meet these days still work that way.

This article is directed to all who think that being a Scrum Master is inferior, and therefore think (ab)using the term “Agile Coach” is justified.

A description of experimenting with twisting the Liberating Structure 'Shift & Share' during our recent Scrum.org PSM II class.

Most of the concepts in Scrum are easy to understand but extremely difficult to master. This is due to the fact that Scrum is designed for perfect, and reality never is. The same principle applies to the Definition of Done.

В 1970 году Роберт Гринлиф дал рождение парадоксальному термину “лидер-слуга”. Кажется, что слова “лидер” и “слуга” кажутся противоположностями друг другу. Но в этой парадоксальности заложен глубокий смысл. Вот что пишет о "лидере-слуге" Роберт Гринлиф:

Over the years, I've seen countless Scrum adaptions, and I thought perhaps it would be interesting to sum up some of the common misinterpretations. I would love to hear about the misinterpretations that you have faced, so feel free to participate in the comment section.

This article aims at helping Scrum Masters to conduct the *MOST AWESOME* Sprint Review they ever witnessed. (This article could have been titled: 41 tips that will make your Sprint Review awesome!)

This is the last in a series of 3 blogs presenting the result of an interesting research study from Sam Walker.  Walker discovered that the most successful sports teams that ever existed all shared one single element: They all had a team captain with 7 overlapping traits that made them extremely successful.

Just a thought on architecture in a complex environment. What is the value of a perfect architecture? Is there something as a perfect architecture? Perhaps more importantly, when is the architecture perfect?

What can a Scrum team learn from the World’s Greatest Sports Teams? In this the second of 3 blogs I'm sharing the character traits of an Elite Team Captain.

I remember being told, many years ago when I started university, that Information Technology is a numerate discipline.

I recently attend the Professional Scrum Master II (PSM II) course and I'd like to share my thoughts with you about it. 

What can a Scrum team learn from the World’s Greatest Sports Teams? This is the first in 3 blogs that will share a number of Leadership lessons that can be used to build high performing Scrum teams.

What is Agile HR? How HR could support this journey of transformation into an Agile company?

The Scrum Master profession spans wide variety of skills, knowledge and experience. Scrum Masters try to create high performing teams and drive organisational change. Although our primary responsibility is the process, it’s people we work with all the time.

How we used Liberating Structures, Learning 3.0 and Training from the Back of the Room to create a new learning experience with the PSM II class.

Anyone who has participated in a Professional Scrum Master (PSM) training knows how powerful the learning experience is.

In this post, we’ll explain the Liberating Structure ‘15% Solutions‘ and how we've used it. It’s a wonderful structure that can ignite big change by starting with small, individual contributions.

In Scrum classes we often ask the attendees to draw a picture of the Scrum framework, in order learn what their current understanding of the framework is. In many cases people are close to remembering the three roles, three artifacts and five events.

In this post, we explain the Liberating Structure 'What, So What, Now What' and how we use this structure within the context of Scrum.

It has been said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results, and yet we engage in an unconscious fiction of predictability every day. We work in an uncertain world, and our main goal in pursuing agility is to confront the unknown, and in doing so, to master it.

It is not often that you hear about children in school using Scrum to help them with their school work. I’ve recently come across a student on social media, who has been using Scrum for school projects. I found this story very inspiring and I thought it would be fun to share with you on our blog.

Don’t say this too loudly around agile conferences, but when it comes to the day-to-day work, Scrum and Kanban teams are very similar.

Agile coaching is a journey into irony. One of the chief discoveries you can make on this voyage is that the more experienced you become, the worse at the job others often think you get.

Hello, great people of the world. In my previous article, we have discussed how Scrum Masters need to master many things. In this article, we are going to discuss one of the stances that the Scrum Master need to master, that is the facilitation stance.

A goal, a forecast of functionality, plus the plan to deliver it. the Why, the What and the How. Sprint Goal + Sprint Backlog. How do these relate, plus a practical example.

Big organizations use Scrum as a driver of agility. But often after launching, management start focusing on the speed of development instead of quality. DoD is often weak and the company's agility is reduced as a result.