In this article we'll bust one of the more radical myths in Scrum; the belief that plans and planning have no place in Scrum.

Many Scrum Teams use User Stories as a technique for creating their Product Backlog Items (PBIs). But when the teams bring big stories to the Sprint, this causes lots of problems.

In this post, we’ll explain the Liberating Structure "Troika Consulting" and how we apply this facilitation technique within our Scrum training and coaching engagements.

Flashback to 1995, Jeff and Ken had presented their paper at OOPSLA on Scrum. People recognizes it as one of the new ways of working. Fast forward to Feb 2001, no ski resort gathering and no Agile manifesto.

Yes, you read it right, it was really challenging for me, and may be other PSTs have the same or different experience. A couple of times I thought about quitting it but because of some or the other reasons I continued.

In this post, we'll bust the myth that Scrum requires work to be estimated in Story Points. Although it is a useful technique, and used by many Scrum Teams, it is by no means the only technique. Above all, remember the quote by Esther Derby: “Estimating is often helpful, estimates are often not.”

"That's the problem with so many organizations around entrepreneurship. They're driven by metrics that don't matter." - Brad Feld

There is a frustrating misunderstanding of reality when one thinks that the Product Owner can reject a single story at the Sprint Review.

People in the Agile community must have heard or have came across this white paper multiple times.

"See it all. See it fairly. Be truthful, be sensible and be careful with language" - Henry Grunwald

Do you think people need to be forged into a T-shape? Think again. Focus on the aspects preventing people from employing their intrinsic T-potential.

In this blog post we’ll bust the myth that “The Scrum Master is a junior Agile Coach”. Effective change is driven from “the inside-out”. The Scrum Master - being part of the Scrum Team  - is in a better position to facilitate this change than an (external) Agile Coach.

Use "Shift & Share and Caravan" as facilitation pattern in Scrum for Sprint Reviews, brainstorms and involving stakeholders. Spread novel ideas across groups of any size with "Shift & Share" and rapidly receive feedback with "Caravan".

How to Teach a Scrum Team to Split Stories  

In this post I will review what's a Proxy Product Owner, why you can find so often this role in organizations embracing Scrum, and some proposals to avoid this role and achieve a true Product Owner.

As a Product Owner, you are responsible for Product Backlog management, stakeholder management and forecasting. Therefore, you will probably use a variety of tools and techniques to track progress, manage expectations and keep people informed.

Release Planning

Product Backlog Management

And after reading Jeff Gothelf’s and Josh Seiden’s book “Sense and Respond: How Successful Organizations Listen to Customers and Create New Products Continuously”, I realized that the world is full of complex problems. This got me thinking about the relationship between Scrum and modern organizations as they pivot toward becoming able to ‘sense and respond’. So, I decided to ask Jeff Gothelf… Here is a condensed version of our conversation.

Today we bust the myth that it is the responsibility of the Scrum Master to resolve all problems that are hindering the Development Team.

The Scrum Framework

Appreciative Interviews (AI) is a Liberating Structure that helps identify enablers for success in less than one hour. By starting from what goes well - instead of what doesn’t. In this post we'll share examples of how we've applied this structures within our Scrum training and coaching engagements.

As a Product Owner, you are responsible for stakeholder management. It's important that you know your stakeholders, their interests, what they need from you and your Product and how they may be able to help you out as well!

Value comes in many different forms, value is context dependent and the definition of value in a certain context may change over time! What? Yes, that's right! What 'value' is, or what it means, is firstly context dependent.

The Product vision describes the purpose of a Product, the intention with which the Product is being created and what it aims to achieve for customers and users. The Product vision describes a future state of the Product and what problems it tries to resolve or what ambitions it tries to fulfill.

I have created a little exercise that I like to use to help focus the on things we can change, or at least situations to seek out or avoid, to help focus change efforts. The essence of it is summarized in a picture. I call this the agile affinity model, and the dimensions the key drivers of empiricism.

In this post, we'll bust the myth that the Product Owner is a proxy for stakeholders. The bottom-line is that Scrum Teams become significantly less Agile when only the Product Owner communicates with stakeholders. Instead of framing the Product Owner as a proxy, we instead prefer to explain the Product Owner as the person responsible for including stakeholders in the conversation.

The Product Owner role is totally different from traditional roles that are know in most organizations. Some people think that the Product Owner is a kind of 'Agile project manager' or that the Product Owner is sort of a 'business analyst'. This is not true!

 

In this blog, we'll cover some tips and tools for starting Product Owners, to help you in your new role.

Here I am sitting in my hotel room while looking at my half-empty wine glass and the stars outside while preparing for my last Professional Scrum Master (PSM) class for the year 2017 and pondering about all of the classes I have facilitated over this year. PSM has been a transformational course for me because it has changed me by seeing how it has changed the life of many of my students. 

Scrum is a framework that thrives on self-organizing teams.  It gives you boundaries (e.g. time-box of a Sprint), clear accountabilities (e.g. Product Owner optimizes value), and goals (e.g. “Done” Increment).

System optimization: Upgrading Team Competencies When developing complex innovative products, the Development Team will have different a workload for each one of their members.

LEAN is an excellent way for companies to start optimizing their way of working and make sure the production of waste is kept to a minimum. Scrum itself is based on those very principles.

Looking to hire a Scrum Master? You may go through this job description that talks about the role of a Scrum Master? and what to expect from a Scrum Master.  

At a recent course, one of my students asked me to share what Scrum “looked like” for me at TheScrumMaster.co.uk. This post is my response to that question. This describes my current process which has evolved via inspection and adaptation over 5 years.

In this post, we'll the myth that the Product Backlog is ‘prioritized’. Although a seemingly trivial change of wording, the Product Backlog is ‘an ordered list’ instead.

The latest release of the Scrum Guide is all about addressing common Scrum misunderstandings. In this blog post I will present the top 5 misconceptions that are set straight in this latest release of the Scrum Guide.

Values and principles can often seem lofty and intangible so many agile practitioners prefer to focus on tools and practices. That's understandable but unfortunate. Because values and principles have the potential to provide us with clarity and guidance that transcends what practices and frameworks can achieve.  Ideally - part of your empiric inspection and adaptation process should explore whether you are living according to your values/principles. To achieve that you can try a value-based retrospective.

‘25/10 Crowd Sourcing’ is a structure that allows you to rapidly generate and sift through a group’s boldest actionable ideas in less than 30 minutes. In this article we'll explain how to use this structure to spice up your Scrum Events.

"To ensure continuous improvement, [the Sprint Backlog] includes at least one high priority process improvement identified in the previous Retrospective meeting." - The Scrum Guide, November 2017 That old familiar feeling

I once worked for an organization with many opportunities for improvement. To be honest, it was a mess.

In this post, we’ll bust the myth that a Product Backlog has to consist entirely out of User Stories. By describing the purpose and characteristics of the Product Backlog, we'll also busted the related myth; that User Stories are an inherent, necessary part of Scrum.

The Intent of Scrum Scrum allows development organisations to invest a little time at regular intervals to allow teams with autonomy over their work to identify and enact frequent, small improvements to the process and the plan.

One of the most common critiques about Scrum that I've heard from smart software engineers are "Scrum does not care about technical practices, Scrum is for wimps". I've also heard managers down the hallway say that "Scrum is for wreckless developers because its main concern is only about fast delivery".

There are a number of things that you have to think about when selecting a modern source control system. Some of that is purely about code, but modern source control systems are about way more than code.

Scrum is a mindset, an approach to turning complex, chaotic problems into something that can be used. eff Sutherland and I based it on these pillars: Small, self-organizing, self-managing teams; Lean principles; and, Empiricism, using frequent inspection and adaptation to guide the work of the teams to the most successful outcome possible.

Open Space is one of the methods that allows organizations to make inspirational meetings and events. I was lucky enough to use Open Space in various contexts, with Scrum Teams. The concept has always worked.

"Perfection has to do with the end product, but excellence has to do with the process." - Jerry Moran

Today I facilitated the workshop "The Scrum Master as a Manager" at the conference "Agile Spain 2017" in Sevilla. In this blog post I'll share the outline of the workshop "The Scrum Master as a Manager". This gives you the opportunity to facilitate the workshop within your own organisation as well.