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

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 derde episode gaat over eigenaarschap.

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

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.

Last week I co-taught scrum.org's new Professional Scrum Master II course with fellow Professional Scrum Trainer (PST) Todd Miller. This 2-day advanced Scrum Master class is designed to be the next step that a Scrum Master takes on their journey towards Professional Scrum. We had a wonderful ...

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

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.

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.

In this Scrum Tapas video, Professional Scrum Trainer Chris Lukassen is joined by Intergamma's Scrum Master Jochen Hendriks to discuss how misinterpreted requirements can provide the completely wrong solution for the users, yet sound as if it was exactly what they wanted.  They will use a real-world...

Throughout my career I have helped many leaders adapt their style to one that better supports teams reach a high-performing state. Across a wide range of different industries the patterns of high-performing teams, and how leaders help shape them, have some striking consistencies.

Often I hear people say that Scrum does not take care of risk: there is no risk log, risk is not on the agenda of the Sprint Review or Retrospective as a standard agenda-item. The Developers need to be accountable for the quality of the product and how it's made. And ultimately each role in Scrum h...

Bottom line - Toyota Improvement and Coaching Kata is the perfect partner for flow-based retrospectives.

Bottom line - PSK improves the performance of Scrum teams, but WiP must be optimized for flow and work in progress should not relatively age compared with other in progress items

The purpose of Scrum is to deliver Increments of releasable functionality. So at each Sprint Review, a “Done” Increment is required to make transparent the progress made by the team.

Bottom line - WiP limits must be applied to improve flow of the delivery of value. It's a key lever to improve the performance of Professional Scrum Teams, and it's required by the Kanban Guide for Scrum.

The world is becoming more technologically complex, interdependent, and culturally  diverse, which makes the building of relationships more and more necessary to get things accomplished and, at the same time, more difficult.

A common question I hear in Scrum training courses and in coaching sessions is, “how much Product Backlog refinement should we do and how much detail should be in the Product Backlog?”

In this post, we bust a myth that is at the heart of why refinement feels like a chore to many Scrum Teams: the belief that ‘Product Backlog refinement’ should be done as one or more required ‘meetings’ that must be attended by everyone in the team. We also offer some alternative approaches that fit...

Based on the feedback that I have received from my blog about the most popular blog articles, I have decided to do the same for the Scrum.org video series.  Over the past few years, we have generated more than 160 videos to help people learn more about Scrum. Updated June 26, 2024

In this blog article, we provide a quick overview of the most viewed blog articles over the past 18 months, giving readers insight into what they mind valuable to read.

One of the new concepts we introduce in the Kanban Guide for Scrum Teams is the Service Level Expectation, defined as: An SLE forecasts how long it should take a given item to flow from start to finish within your workflow.

One of the key Kanban practices is Limiting Work in Progress. If you want to be pedantic, actually what this practice aims for is Reducing and stabilizing Work in Progress. This improves flow, provides predictability, and is actually even more important for creating a pull-based Kanban system than v...

In the Kanban Guide for Scrum Teams and the Professional Scrum with Kanban workshop, we introduce 4 key flow metrics that we believe Scrum teams can use to improve their flow.

Improve and Accelerate Software Delivery for Large, Distributed, Complex Projects: The Nexus Framework is the simplest, most effective approach to applying Scrum at scale across multiple teams, sites, and time zones. Created by Scrum.org–the pioneering Scrum training and certification organization f...

As a servant-leader, the Scrum Master sometimes has to make very difficult decisions. This might even include removing someone from the Scrum Team. Obviously, this a difficult decision that should not be taken light-hearted. In this post, we'll share some perspectives on the kinds of situations wher...

The questions we ask from ourselves, and the team asks from themselves are critical to influence our behavior and decisions. In this episode we explore 5 different aspects for a successful Scrum Master, and what Professional Scrum Trainer Lucas Smith has learned about them. Featured Retrospective...

In this blog post we've shared our ideas on "Your Scrum Master Journey" and the first steps we've made at a Dutch customer.This week Christiaan Verwijs and I facilitated a workshop at a Dutch customer in which Scrum Masters could provide a pitch for participating in "Your Scrum Master Journey".

Teams with high diversity are more innovative. They have more perspectives that create a higher rate of idea flow. More new ideas are generated that lead to new products and innovations than in homogeneous teams. What is innovation? Innovations are the steps that lead to improved products. ...

In the "Scrum from the trenches" blog post series I like to address topics that I encounter in practicing Scrum in the real world, with real Scrum Teams. Sharing where theory comes into practice, what challenges teams encounter along the way and ways to help Scrum practitioners use the power of empi...

Hello great people of the world. Welcome back to Professional Software Delivery with Scrum (PSD) blog series with yours truly. This time we're going talk about how to use Scrum And DevOps. I am interested to discuss this topic because it's quite common I get a question from someone in the agile comm...

In this blog post we’ll share the string of Liberating Structures we used at a Retrospective for a rapidly growing startup.

One of the most common questions I am asked in my Professional Scrum Master (PSM) courses and in coaching engagements is: How do we build trust? This is a complex topic. And there are no simple or quick processes or techniques that will guarantee an outcome. Nor can you know how long it w...

When coaching for organizations, I am often met at the doors of the cathedral by exasperated management.  Frustrated for how Scrum is transformed to meet personal agendas and bias. 

“Most executives, many scientists, and almost all business school graduates believe that if you analyze data, this will give you new ideas. Unfortunately, this belief is totally wrong. The mind can only see what it is prepared to see.” - Edward de Bono If you are ever hired as an agile coach,...

What can you do as a Leader to help your Scrum Teams to become mature? Discover a 5-level maturity pattern that you can use as a reference.

I would like to discuss Scrum and XP because I often get a question "When should I use Scrum or XP?" from people in the community.

I’m lucky enough to work with different teams on a regular basis. In some cases, these teams have been doing scrum for years. These teams have become highly proficient when it comes to the events in Scrum. They always have Done software to be inspected at the Sprint Review. They have excellent, deep...

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, Professional Scrum Trainer Andrzej Zińczuk discusses his experience working with a Scrum Team that was questioning their need to conduct Sprint Retrospectives each Sprint. He used a football analogy to help them understand the importance of a Sprint Retrospe...

As an Agile Coach, you frequently encounter situations which demand quick thinking to get things moving in the right direction. Over time I have found few techniques which come out handy and always keep these in my playbook in case need arise. This is first part in the series of tools that I have fo...

TRIZ is a facilitation technique to stop counterproductive activities and make space for innovation.

Today we announced a new class Professional Scrum With Kanban. This class helps teams practicing Scrum to apply the practices of Kanban without breaking Scrum. It shows how visualization and flow are great partners in delivering Done software and how Scrum with Kanban helps teams become more profess...

I have recently been helping a new Scrum team get started with the framework and helping them to set themselves up with the best chance of being successful with Scrum. After a two week sprint in which they did deliver an increment and learned a lot about the product that they would be work on, it...

In this post, we address the myth that the Sprint Review is primarily an opportunity to ‘demo’ the increment to stakeholders. Although a demo certainly can be part of a Sprint Review, it fails to capture what the Sprint Review is actually about...

A friend sent me an e-mail, asking me to summarize Nexus and the Scaled Professional Scrum class. Here's the gist of what I sent in return. Why Nexus? If you know Scrum, you already know the basic principles and most important things needed to scale Scrum: inspect and adapt cycles, and the imp...

Improve your Scrum events with the Liberating Structure “1-2-4-All”. Unfold open conversations and sift ideas and solutions in rapid fashion. Your Scrum events (and other meetings, events, workshops) will never be the same!

Stop the traditional introduction rounds and start using Impromptu Networking. A facilitating technique to rapidly share challenges and expectations and build new connections.

Back in the early days of Scrum, the Scrum Master role was exciting. The days of the pigs & chickens, the days when being a Scrum Master was considered dangerous. In those times there was the saying a dead Scrum Master is a useless Scrum Master  And even today I still use that when selecting a...