This is the start of a series of articles about the Scrum.org PSM II class. It will address the most common questions asked. This article is focused on the difference between the PSM and PSM II class.

One of the most important things we can do to help individuals and teams improve is coach them to embrace the agile mindset. The Manifesto for Agile Software Development provides values and principles to help guide teams in navigating the complexities of product delivery.

The Scrum Team consists of accountabilities devides over three roles. The only three roles needed in Scrum. But all needed! And all equally important to be successful. If we would practice Scrum within our companies the way described in this way we can all be successful in delivering incremental val...

The 2019 Scrum Master Trends Report by Scrum.org and the State of Agile 2018 shows numbers that provide insight in the maturity of agile adoptions.

The purpose of Scrum is to create a potentially releasable Done Product Increment, in order to realize business value. Many teams struggle in improving their Definition of Done. The technique described here allows for greater transparency on what the Definition of Done is, and what the next steps ar...

Struggling to integrate UX Designers into Scrum? Use these actions to make Scrum teams more user-centric and UX Designers full-time members of the Scrum Team!

We all know that developing ourselves intellectually requires sustained dedicated effort toward continual learning. We take classes, read books, read from experts online, we find mentors, we collaborate, and many of us learn by teaching others.

Scrum is easy to understand, yet difficult to master. The Scrum Guide says so and it's true. If you have worked with Scrum in your organization you probably recognize it also. It's not difficult to start with Scrum.

Scrum is intended as a simple, yet sufficient framework for complex product delivery. Scrum is not a one-size-fits-all solution, a silver bullet or a complete methodology.

In this blog post, we describe how to use Conversation Cafe, as a Liberating Structure, within Scrum.

Agility is a continuously evolving state that is unique to a specific organization, given the organization’s people, its constructs and its history. A traditional (industrial) approach to becoming more Agile (adaptive) commonly creates no more than an illusion of agility.

The 2019 Scrum Master Trends Report is an update to the 2017 Scrum Master Salary Report that Age of the Product conducted in 2017. By partnering, we have secured a larger sample and broadened the reach of the research, growing from over 500 to more than 2,100 respondents and adding more geographies ...

Hello, great people of the world. Welcome back to the Scrum Master blog series with yours truly. As we enter the new year, we are seeing Scrum becoming the most commonly used framework to manage complex product delivery in the industry.

A few days back I did a Scrum Tapas Video explaining a few of the rules within Scrum. Besides these rules, there are also certain guidelines which help Scrum Teams to make the best possible use of Scrum framework to create maximum Business Impact.

The Scrum framework deliberately leaves the manager role out, thus allowing business to structure and organize how it sees fit. 

As an agile coach and trainer, I have had the opportunity to reach thousands of students that are just beginning their journey into the Scrum and agile world.

Once you have started to create a strong foundation, the second action of an effective servant-leader is to empower and enable others.

Most organizations are using Scrum, however, many of them feel like the agility of their organization has degraded, and they might be right! Often, using Scrum starts out as a way to improve development efforts coordinated within an IT division or department, but that is not the most effective organ...

Scrum is based on self-managed teams. Self-managed teams are able to evolve and adapt quicker in today’s highly complex working environments than traditional command-and-control management structures.

In Scrum, “Done” doesn’t support adjectives like “nearly”, “pretty much” or “almost”. Work is “Done” or it isn’t . And there is a very powerful, compelling reason behind this: the Scrum Framework only helps to reduce the risk of wasting money and effort when you deliver “Done” software every Sprint;...

I’ve been in a situation a few times where I’ve interviewed a candidate for a role. I’ve matched their CV to a well-prepared job specification...

Recently, I connected with Evan Cook, the founder of Head Down Heart Up (HDHU), a fitness and nutrition organization that has “The Perfect Fitness Framework,” which is a program based on Scrum, designed to simplify food and fitness.

In this video, Scrum.org Professional Scrum Trainer and Professional Scrum with Kanban (PSK) course steward Yuval Yeret talks about the PSK course, helping viewers to understand more about the structure of the class and what they will learn when attending. 

This short video provides an overview of the Professional Agile Leadership Essentials (PAL-E) course, course stewards and Scrum.org Professional Scrum Trainers (PSTs) Ryan Ripley and Ron Eringa give you insight into the structure of the class and what you will learn over the 2 days. (3:05 Minutes)

I’ve had this ongoing discussion with a few of my colleagues who says that the term “agile leader” is an oxymoron - that the ideal organization is a bunch of Scrum Teams and not much else. Even in an ideal world, I disagree, and here’s why in a nutshell: I’ve never seen, and have not even heard of, ...

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?

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. 

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. I attended a get together / workshop style event in which we discussed how we could support each other in our day to day lives. I'd l...

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 ...

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

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!)

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

In 2015, Cathay Pacific had a major project on their hands which concerned the development of a new Internet Booking Engine (IBE). They needed a framework that would help them deliver within a specific time line.

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. The course is challenging and helps people discover a deeper understanding of the Scrum framework to enable the benefits of business agility. With the launch of the Professional...

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.

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.

This is the fifth in a series of posts exploring Scrum Mastery. In our first post, we introduced the 4 dimensions of Scrum Mastery:  Team Identity, Team Process, Product Value, and the Organization.  In this post, we will explore the Organization dimension.

Read more about how the PSM-II class deepens and expands your understanding of Scrum and helps you in your professional journey as a Scrum Master.

A story of two fairly naive Dutch guys and how they created an advanced class for Scrum Masters with Scrum.org.

With the launch of Professional Scrum Master II (PSM II) – An Advanced Scrum Master Class, Scrum.org has built a course that is aimed directly at enabling the Scrum Master.

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.

The Times News were on a journey to re-platform their system. While working diligently behind feature flags, using elements of Scrum, it wasn’t clear to the stakeholders the value being delivered and how well the teams were progressing towards their end goal.

This presentation by Professional Scrum Trainer, Chuck Suscheck describes the discovery techniques of BDD and exemplifies an end-to-end automated business scenario so that you can see the direct tie between business needs and software execution possible with BDD.

Agility is the ability of an organization to adapt to new conditions and to change its direction. The modern service-based format of the production-based economy of the previous century renders the competence of companies to change even stronger than before.