In this blog post, we share our experience, recommendations, and lessons learned by providing the online PSM II class.

Many organizations I have seen in my life does not care for their Development Team. Join me in a short analysis of why that happens and what - in fact - is a Development Team.

A Sprint Review is perhaps one of the most difficult elements in the product development with Scrum.

TL; DR: Results of a Test of Using Unhangout to Host Virtual Barcamps Last week, 30-plus attendees of the 24th Hands-on Agile meetup ran a virtual Barcamp experiment w/ MIT’s Unhangout, an open-source platform for organizing attendee-driven virtual open space events. Read on and learn whether ...

The Spotify "model" pops up as either advocated practice (especially by large consulting companies) or some sort of a hoax and hated practice. I wrote this text few years back, but it appears to be valid more than ever. Join me in discovering 10 lessons from my "spotify" encounters.

Usually conversation between developers and Product Owner goes around acceptance criteria just to negotiate scope of requirements for one user story, but knowledge and context are not conveyed in the same structured way. User Story Canvas can help Scrum Team to fix these problems by focusing team to...

TL; DR: The Agile Movers & Shakers Interview w/ Ryan Ripley Today’s guest is Ryan Ripley. Ryan is a Professional Scrum Trainer (PST) with Scrum.org. He hosts the Agile for Humans podcast and most recently co-wrote Fixing Your Scrum: Practical Solutions for Common Scrum Problems with Todd Mill...

With the change in business model in the current crisis, many training organizations have had to do the unthinkable and move to Live Virtual training options. Existing wisdom was that training online, just as running teams virtually would be a disaster and reduce the student's experience. ...

Experiments, practices, and strategies that help Scrum Masters prove their value to the organization.

TL; DR: Remote Agile Transitions We are used to saying the Scrum is a perfect probe for organizations, as it will reliably discover all dysfunctionalities. Since the pandemic has forced many of us to work remotely, this unique capability has been kicked into overdrive regarding remote agile trans...

First of all, I'd like to note that models and terms I am using and discuss are not mine. They come from training and coaching sessions belonging to Vroemen from Teamchange. The connection I make to Scrum is my interpretation. 

How to make sure that the definition of Done is used properly at a sprint planning session? Continue reading ...

The contradiction and tension between the empirical process of Scrum and the often-used efficiency mindset.

Last week, 30-plus participants in the 23rd Hands-on Agile meetup had a virtual strategy session where they explored Liberating Structures’ Critical Uncertainties microstructure. They identified robust and hedging strategies for Scrum Masters and agile coaches regarding the challenges of remote work...

How do we run a virtual open space event or BarCamp with a large number of participants? Principally, we could use break-out rooms for organizing the sessions.

Scrum is all about self-organizing. But what does that mean? And more specifically, how can Liberating Structures support that? In this post, we reflect on Liberating Structures from the perspective of self-organization.

The concept I describe below is tested, proven, and modeled after my virtual Professional Scrum training classes.

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.

TL; DR: The Agile Movers & Shakers Interview w/ Christiaan Verwijs & Barry Overeem Today we welcome Christiaan Verwijs & Barry Overeem. Christiaan and Barry are both Professional Scrum Trainers (PST) with Scrum.org, dedicated early adopters of Liberating Structures, and co-authors of ...

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. Moreover, considering remote work as the new normal — where does this development leave the Scrum...

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).

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

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? How do I even support myself right now? I too have struggled (and still do on a dail...

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.

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

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

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

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

This seventh article now looks into organizing a remote Sprint Review with a distributed team: How to practice the review with virtual Liberating Structures, including and giving a voice to team members, stakeholders, and customers.

Although most people see the value of Sprint Goals, how to create them is a huge source of confusion and frustration. Is the Spring Goal there before the Sprint Backlog? How do you create a Sprint Goal out of the unrelated set of items at the top of your Product Backlog? And should everything on the...

Like many Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches and Agile Managers, I am beginning to understand organizations are complex adaptive systems.

In this episode, I will try to show how understanding mental models can significantly improve the abilities of leaders like Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches and Managers. This is because Mental Models are at the core of knowledge and learning.

This sixth article now dives into organizing a remote Sprint Planning with a distributed team: practices, virtual Liberating Structures, and lessons learned.

As promised, here is the part two of the two part series "how to lead live virtual class like a pro" where I'd be emphasising on the execution part- facilitating the class effectively.

In the business world, we continually face sudden disruption shocks in a similar way. Our senses tell us things are changing incredibly quickly, but like the COVID-19 situation, we fail to grasp the exponential nature of the change, leaving us ill-prepared to cope when it inevitably arrives.

Large numbers of Product Owners begin their work by creating requirements. In some situations, these scopes are dictated by others. Their work mainly consists of describing demands, thus apparently appearing as a scribe in their role.

The Scrum Master encourages the Scrum Team to improve, within the Scrum process framework, its development process and practices to make it more effective and enjoyable for the next Sprint.

Having a Sprint Goal in some cases is not easy. Having a good Sprint Goal is even more difficult.

Jeff Gothelf is the author of LeanUX as well as Sense and Respond. He is a thought leader in the UX space and working on his next book Forever Employable. We talk a bit about the idea of being sought after by organizations. Not just being a thought leader or an independent consultant. We're excit...

This fourth article now addresses basic remote agile anti-patterns — the pitfalls any distributed team wants to avoid to become successful.

Watch the Replay of the Remote Agile Practices & Tools Live Virtual Class At the end of March, we ran a Remote Agile Practices & Tools class with about 30 participants from all over Europe, the Eastern Seaboard, and Canada. The participants agreed on recording it and make it available to ...

Scrum.org CEO Dave West looks back at March and how the Scrum.org Community has rallied in the wake of COVID-19.

In this third post of the Remote Agile series, we address the tool at the heart of working with a distributed team as a Scrum Master, Agile Coach, or Product Owner: Zoom.

This follow-up post now delves into virtual Liberating Structures, answering the question of how we can make use of the powerful toolbox of inclusive and collaborative practices in a remote setting.

Trying to make virtual meetings work with your team? We've made many mistakes in our virtual meetings over the years. In this post, we share our ten most helpful tips for having engaging and productive meetings online.

Completing an Agile Coaching certification doesn’t make you an Agile Coach. So where do you start and how do you chart your own journey?

Agile has always been about colocation, about direct communication, physical boards, and all the other haptic and analog moments to create value in the digital realm...

The article explores the primary causes of zombified interaction between Scrum Teams and stakeholders.

One of the topics that often is unclear when starting with Scrum. You can teach ‘what’ it is. Sometimes it helps to point north to ‘why’ we do refinement. Good facilitation skills definitely help during refinement as well as a toolbox of structures and techniques will help with the ‘how’.