EMBARRASSING DISCOVERY

Dear Scrum Master!

“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 p

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

"Agile" (the label) is all over the place. Who would have guessed in early 2001?

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?

I always spend time during training classes thoroughly covering the concept of Definition of Done, sometimes abbreviated “DoD.” As a concept it’s fairly eas

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.

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.

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 place in sessions like these.

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.

This blog is part of my series on “Agile Trojan Horses – Covert Appetizers for Agile Discovery”.

The ability to create high-quality and attractive flip charts is one of the basic skills of any facilitator.

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.

Starting a team new to agility on their first sprint is one of my favorite and most rewarding things to do.

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.

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.

In the book Scaling Up Excellence by Sutton & Rao, they discuss two different ways to think about scaling: the “catholic or budd

Are you considered a leader in your organization? Do you spend your day at the top of the tower or in the trenches?

[Author’s note: I will be a Scrum Day Dallas on 27 March 2015; a great opportuni

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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?

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?

     

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?

I was coaching a number of teams and their Sprint Reviews were boring status meetings and few stakeholders attended.

In 2015, Scrum.org will refine the Professional Scrum Master (PSM) assessments, PSM I and PSM II, in line with following objectives:

Is 2015 the year for you to expand into a leadership role? Are you focused on becoming a better leader this year? As you head back to the office, consider adding "Develop a sense of empathy" to your list of New Year's Resolutions.

  With the holiday season in full gear, many of us start crafting one or more New Year’s resolutions:

He could have wept tin tears, but that would not have been right. He looked at her and she looked at him, but neither spoke a word.

This is what you might know as the daily ‘stand up.’  It is the most abused, tortured and mistreated meeting in Scrum.  Or not even Scrum.  If nothing else, this is usually the part of Scrum that organizations adopt and keep.  If th

My name is Peter Götz. I am an experienced software engineer. I started in 2001 and have worked in several projects and with several teams since then.

One of the key foundations of helping your business become Agile is the use of empiricism. Empiricism is the scientific approach based on evidence, where any idea must be tested against observations, rather than intuition.

Traditionally an individual is declared a ‘manager’ when having hierarchical control over other individuals.

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“A Scrum Master’s practical toolbox” offers o

When I first started doing Scrum I was focused on project delivery. As a software professional I wanted to find better ways of delivering customer value and Scrum made total sense to me.

Jeff Sutherland and I have helped hundreds of organizations scale their projects, enable their entire product development, and thread Scrum through their organizations. For sure, none of them were easy, and each had its own unique challenges.

I decided to conduct a Temperature Reading Sprint Retrospective after watching the video from one of the workshops of a famous American family therapist Virgi

People love stories. We love telling and listening to interesting stories. The need for this is embedded deeply by the nature. The first stories were told by our ancestors and can be seen in the preserved rock paintings.

Software is created by people; for better or for worse. That is very different from looking at software development as a robotizeable activity.

I have found that coaching managers is a different approach than with Scrum teams. While you are (most of the time) involved directly with the Scrum Team as a Scrum Master, managers are less accessible.

On more than one occasion over the years, I have encountered software development teams that are working day and night on a "challenged" project - both waterfall *and* Scrum.

There is a fundamental change in management happening under out feet that is challenging the very need for strategy. Small changes are happening every day and in ten years’ time we won’t recognise management as we have thought of it in the past.

Your plan. It will change anyway. Your detailed architecture. It should emerge. Your code. It will be refactored. Your document. It doesn’t compile anyway.