The Sprint Goal is an important part of Scrum. It's like a burning torch that unites the Development Team and helps it move forward during the Sprint. However, the Sprint Goal is not discussed very often, and in this article, I would like to talk about the deep importance of this component. ...

The truth is, worrying about velocity is a trap: it says “we don’t care where we end up, so long as we get there fast.” That’s just wrong. Teams who measure their velocity but don’t or can’t measure customer outcomes may, quite simply, be driving in the wrong direction.

In this blog post I'll share my view on the question: Can you be a part-time Scrum Master?

True story - happened in one of my recent Professional Scrum Master workshops. I think had just mentioned that there is no "Sprint Commitment" in Scrum, only a "Sprint Forecast".

Like many old, boring people, my favorite radio channel in the car is National Public Radio. Since I live in Dallas, TX, my local channel is KERA. Of all the shows in KERA, my favorite is a show called Think With Krys Boyd. Almost each show I listen to leaves an imprint on my mind and modifies the w...

In 2016, a leading security products company adopted Scrum to support teams working in complex product development, in order to make the organization more adaptive and able to react faster to change. It began with one Scrum Team of IT developers focused on mobile applications.

The role of the Scrum Product Owner is probably the most misunderstood of the three Scrum Roles. As I look back at the different incarnations and interpretations I have seen of Product Ownership, I thought it was time to articulate the different stances I thought an Effective and Professional Scrum ...

Several of us in the Kanban and Scrum community got together recently to build a bridge between Scrum and Kanban. We are writing a series of blog posts looking at this bridge from different perspectives. In this post, we present a primer on the Scrum Framework from a Kanban perspective.

Are you ready to escape the average and become awesome? Do you want to overcome your fears and follow your dreams? We all want to escape the average and the humdrum. The essential step in achieving any great goal is to "START." Inspired by author Jon Acuff's book, Start, I've come up with this ...

Recently I attended training on Nexus at Scrum.org’s Boston headquarters. Nexus is based on the core principles and values of Scrum and allows companies to apply Scrum at scale while retaining the bottom-up intelligence of self-organisation.

Find the books written and co-authored by Ken Schwaber, our Professional Scrum Trainers and staff to help you learn more about Scrum and Agile.

I work with a lot of companies that are learning to use Scrum as a tool for agility driver. Recently, I spotted a trend: if a Scrum Team cannot articulate their Sprint Goal, the problem quite often lies with the Product Backlog.

Exploring the accountabilities in a Scrum Team through a Longship metaphor.

What is the difference between a traditional and an Agile Manager? Keep reading, if you want to learn how a manager evolves.

Many of those practicing Scrum mistakenly call the Sprint Review a Demo. Is it just a matter of terminology? From my point of view, the Sprint Review is the most underestimated Scrum Event, and for many companies, its potential is yet to be revealed. It is true that the Demonstration or Demo is an e...

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, Professional Scrum Trainer Krystian Kaczor raises the question, what is the role of a Product Owner?  He answers that question by looking at what set of skills should they have, what they should do vs. delegate and why they have the ultimate accountability.  ...

Coaching conversations typically occur in a “zone of comfortable debate.”. However, to deal with issues at their core, it’s important to enter the ZOUD: the “Zone of Uncomfortable Debate.”

If you believe the hype that all you need to do to become a next generation agile IT organization is adopt Scrum and DevOps. Scrum to empower your teams and provide a lightweight framework for getting work done, and DevOps to provide the automation, systems thinking and lean practices to deliver and...

Muchas veces sucede que la comunicación no es clara cuando se quiere definir que es terminado. Por ejemplo, cuándo un usuario especifica que requiere un reporte con cuatro columnas y que la última columna tenga un total parece algo sencillo.

"It's not our fault! The Product Owner is responsible for backlog management, the PBIs aren't well defined." "It's not my fault! The Development Team owns the Sprint Backlog, moreover, the PBIs went through refinement and they have the same level of detailing as the others." "I'm working on th...

Hi everyone! In this article, I'd like to share my list of top 30 books for Scrum Masters. I've read all of these books and used them in my practice. They actually work! :) The books cover all eight areas of the Scrum Master competency model developed by the Agile Coaching Institute: ...

Recently I had the opportunity to give a guest lecture about "Agile Essentials" at a University of Applied Science. These students, the lecturer told me beforehand, would only be partly interested and engaged. Therefore I prepared for the worst... While I watched the class going through the firs...

In one of my previous blog articles, I wrote about the Scrum Master journey through the different levels of influence to achieve greatness. In this blog, we will explore the number one skill I believe is needed for a Scrum Master (servant leader) to be effective in order to create change and impact ...

Agility is important to an organization and the path to agility becomes more clear by understanding the purpose of pursuing agility. The product owner role is key in increasing the benefits an organization can gain in their path to agility.

Do you ever wonder what determines our actions? Most people think that what we do is the outcome of our personality, however, the truth is more straightforward. It’s our mindset that controls our behavior. In this blog, we will explore few practical coaching tactics that a Scrum Master can ap...

When talking about Scrum, people often imagine the picture above: framework and its roles, artifacts, and events. Scrum rules are fairly simple, and they are thoroughly described in the Scrum Guide.

“Do not accustom yourself to consider debt only as an inconvenience; you will find it a calamity” - Samuel Johnson A few weeks ago we looked at the problem of technical debt, and at the challenges a Development Team faces when managing it. Technical debt can be defined as the longer term cons...

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, Professional Scrum Trainer Ralph Jocham discusses what the role of a Product Owner looks like, traits that they should have and those that may get in the way.

Respect is essential in solving complex problems and growing high performing teams.  This likely seems obvious, so I am going to share some of the more subtle examples of the value of respect in Scrum.

Many times, clients ask Agile Coaches like me to come in and share our "expertise" with them. But sometimes they really don't want our "Expertise". What they really want is someone with lots of TLA's to come and tell them that there pre-existing opinions are correct.

As Agile become mainstream increasingly organizations are looking to double down on the role of the Product Owner encouraging them to manage the intersection between technology and the business.

"Few ideas work on the first try. Iteration is key to innovation.” - Sebastian Thrun The Agony and the Ecstasy Have you ever seen the 1965 film The Agony and the Ecstasy, where Charlton Heston plays Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel? Each day the Pope looks up and asks him “When w...

Commitment is essential in solving complex problems and growing high performing teams.  Commitment in Scrum is often misunderstood as a promise to deliver a set scope by a set date.  That was never the intention of the word commitment in the Scrum Guide.  I hope this post helps illuminate the value ...

It was only about 30 minutes into the meeting when the senior developer uttered the dreaded words: “Rewrite”. That was the point where what should have been a simple 6-step upgrade turned into a 9 month nightmare upgrade/rewrite costing us millions with nothing new to show for it and left us with a ...

"There are no shortcuts when it comes to getting out of debt" - Dave Ramsey Technical debt can be defined as the longer term consequences of poor design decisions. In a sense it’s like any other debt - there ought to be a clear understanding of why it is incurred, and how and when to pay it b...

When is a Scrum Team successful? Which criteria do you use to determine if a Scrum Team is doing a great job? From my point of view a Scrum Team is doing a great job if they deliver an increment with the highest valued features, with the best possible quality and they continuously strive for improv...

Over the last weeks I've been working on a paper about the role of a Business Analysts within Large Scale Scrum, and I thought I'd write a little post on it too, here it goes. On the website of the IIBA you can find their definition of a Business Analyst. a liaison among stakeholders in order ...

I've recently been involved with several Scrum Teams that are struggling to have the right level of detail in their Product Backlog items. Some symptoms: difficulty during Sprint Planning sessions, a massive or very small Product Backlog, or a lack of understanding during a Sprint. All of the teams ...

The Scrum Values are easy to remember, but it can be difficult to understand what they mean, how to apply them, and how to recognize them in teams and individuals. These values are essential to maximize the benefits of Scrum. In this article, we look at how courage is essential in solving complex pr...

As I get older, I'm turning into one of those annoying nostalgic-types who reminisces too much. Things were better back in the day, son. We had standards see, and there was less of this "dumbing-down". Yip.

In this podcast, recorded at the Agile New Zealand conference in November 2016, Shane Hastie, InfoQ Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to David West, CEO and Product Owner of Scrum.org, about the history of Scrum, the importance of empiricism and improving the profession of software delivery.

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, Professional Scrum Trainer, Charles Bradley discusses ways that a Product Owner can spread their knowledge across multiple Scrum Teams. He looks at a few techniques and refinement activities.

Dave West, Product Owner & CEO for scrum.org discusses his road towards becoming a Product Owner (which includes a well known three letter acronym), we go in to the three most important things a Product Owner should master.

"Gross ignorance is 144 times worse than ordinary ignorance" - Bennett Cerf Acceptance Criteria: The conditions under which a piece of work may be held to be complete and fit for potential release. Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD): A development approach in which acceptance crit...

In this article I'll describe two topics that I've used as a tailor made Product Owner self-assessment. One is about Roman Pichler's Product Management framework. The other concerns the acronym DRIVEN which is described in Geoff Watts new book "Product Mastery - From Good to Great Product Ownership"...

In this blog post I've shared my experiences using the Team Radar as a Retrospective format.

If someone asked you “what is the role of the Project Management Office in an agile organization”, what would you say to them?

A review of the Scrum Guide section in the Sprint Backlog to consider and debunk the myth that the Sprint Backlog is a fixed Commitment by the Development Team.

In this introductory-level article we look at the mechanics of a Sprint, and at how team members are expected to collaborate in order to produce a release-quality increment. The first day: Sprint Planning The whole team, including the Product Owner, meet on the first day of the Sprint and cond...

A Scrum myth that I have encountered: Not finishing all Sprint Backlog Items in a Sprint is perceived as a failure. I have seen organizations go as far as implementing performance indicators around Sprint Backlog completion percentage (yikes!).