This year I was in the lucky circumstance to be part of some awesome (Scrum) teams. It certainly wasn't all "Scrum by the book" but I've learned a tremendous amount of lessons and generated lots of values insights. As always, some things turned out to be a success, other things failed miserably. Thi...

I would like to kick off a series of posts in this blog trying to debunk some common myths about Scrum. Many of them arise sometimes from a poor understanding of the Scrum Guide, and even more often, from not having read it at all. What is velocity? According to the Scrum.org glossary, Velocit...

The Sprint Goal helps provide focus on an objective we want to achieve and allows the flexibility to negotiate the work to achieve that objective. Creating a clear Sprint Goal can be challenging for Scrum Teams.  Here are four common problems with Sprint Goals and a few tips for improving them.

In a previous post describing challenges to creating a Done Increment, I identified a lack of team ownership as one of those challenges. The Scrum Team is accountable as a whole to create a valuable, useful Increment by the end of the Sprint. There are 3 specific accountabilities within the Scrum T...

As a Product Owner and the CEO of Scrum.org, Dave West was invited to speak at ProductTank NYC earlier this year about the conflict between the roles Product Owner and Product Manager.

​ Table Manners There is a striking similarity between good table manners and good agile behaviours - "agile table manners". It is even more clear when viewed through the lens of the Scrum values: Focus, Respect, Openness, Courage and Commitment. The intent of manners is to help it be as safe ...

Development Team was removed from the Scrum Guide in the 2020 release. However, the ideas expressed in this blog still provide value when understanding the dynamics of the Scrum Team. What are the characteristics of a good Development Team and how does a Development Team evolve when it is using S...

EMBARRASSING CONFESSION OK, so this will be awkward, and maybe cringe-inducing post. But we are approaching the new year. Plenty of people might be making new year resolutions. Many will be around fitness. So everyone needs to read this. I was once really impressed by 24 Hour Fitness. I used...

Sin importar donde estés en tu transición a Scrum, el rol del Scrum Master se puede malinterpretar muy fácilmente.

Sin importar donde estés en tu transición a Scrum, el rol del Scrum Master se puede malinterpretar muy fácilmente. En este webinar, Joel Francia -Professional Scum Trainer- nos guiará en la exploración de algunas preguntas comunes acerca del rol del Scrum Master y como puede afrontar las diferentes ...

Here are the slides for this webcast.

I am listing out some commonly observed Scrum Myths, Mysteries, and Misconceptions from my experience. Scrum Teams are assigned to several projects or features. This results in context switching (i.e., multitasking), and the outcome is increased cycle time and delayed value delivery to busines...

The Nexus Integration Team (NIT) is a new role that is essential within the Nexus™ framework. It is a role that is performed by a team of people. As described in the Nexus Guide, “the Nexus Integration Team exists to coordinate, coach, and supervise the application of Nexus and the operation of Scru...

I see four common reasons an agile implementation doesn't get the benefits hoped for. These reasons include a failure to limit risk, long end-to-end delivery lead times, consistent cost-overruns, and no one knows why you do what you do. Are you in this situation? Read on to see if these match up to ...

In the Professional Scrum Product Owner course, we teach that high performing Product Owners are entrepreneurial. They not only act with the business in mind, they have the authority to make important decisions. What should we do now versus later? What choices give us the best return on investment? ...

The Daily Scrum, or most of the time referred to as the "stand up." Probably the most well-known event when we talk about Scrum. An event that lasts no longer than 15 minutes and where the Development Team inspects the plan for the sprint and see whether this plan is still valid. That is it! Nothin...

Organizations who don’t understand why they want to become Agile also often take the wrong path to get there. Agility requires empowering teams and helping them make decisions on their own, learning from their experiences as they go. They must organize themselves, yet they often have Agile practices...

What were you doing on Oct 19th 1995? According to the internet, not much with most of the news reminding us of Black Monday that had happened 9 years before. But for what is now over 11 million people who practice Scrum on a daily basis, it was a big day. That was the day that Scrum was offic...

I’ve spent a lot of time looking at how organizations are using DevOps to improve their software delivery cycle time, their ability to innovate, and their ability to improve quality. I’ve heard some people go so far as to say that DevOps has replaced Agile, but I don’t think that’s true. If anything...

The Nexus Sprint Backlog is created during Nexus Sprint Planning. It is a visualization of the work across the Nexus that has dependencies. The purpose of Nexus Sprint Planning is to coordinate the activities of all Scrum Teams in a Nexus for a single Sprint. Read more to see what Professional Scru...

On July 7th the Scrum community gathered in Amsterdam (The Netherlands) for the 5th edition of Scrum Day Europe. This year's theme was 'the next iteration'. Therefore we looked back to see what Scrum brought us the last 20 years but also looked forward to the future of Scrum. Naturally, the evaluati...

Download this datasheet to learn more about the Professional Scrum Product Owner training.

An overview of documents and books to help understand the role of the Product Owner organized by assessment categories.

An overview of documents and books to help understand the role of the Product Owner organized by assessment categories.

An overview of documents and books to help understand the accountabilities of Developers on a Scrum Team working in the Software Delivery domain organized by assessment categories.

Suggested reading for anyone who is taking the Professional Scrum with User Experience assessment or just looking to learn more about Professional Scrum with User Experience.

Suggested reading for anyone who is taking the Professional Scrum Master level I certification test or just looking to learn more about being a Scrum Master.

Listen to five of the most respected Scrum.org PSPO Trainers – Ralph Jocham, Mark Noneman, Erik Weber, Hiren Doshi, and Simon Reindl in our Scrum Pulse Lean Café on Product Ownership as they guide an enquiry through the mysteries of product ownership.

Today I changed my Twitter and LinkedIn profile. I removed Agile Coach and replaced it with Scrum Master. 100% Scrum Master. Although it seems a small change, it raised quite some concern when I suggested the idea a couple of weeks ago... "You should stick with Agile Coach. As a freelancer, th...

Glossary of Scrum Terms This glossary is meant to represent an overview of Scrum-related terms. Some of the mentioned terms are not mandatory in Scrum, but have been added because they are commonly used in Scrum. To learn more about the Scrum framework, to identify which of these terms are requir...

This glossary represents an overview of terms specific to software development teams using Scrum and agile software development techniques. To learn more about the Scrum framework, we highly recommend that you reference the Scrum Guide™ and the Scrum Glossary. A A/B Testing: extends the ide...

Scrum.org CEO and Product Owner Dave West has come a long way from being a RUP Product Manager to where he is today.

Scrum.org CEO and Product Owner Dave West has come a long way from being a RUP Product Manager to where he is today. After realizing RUP wasn't helping developers or enabling them to build great software, Dave took a Scrum class where a light bulb went off. He saw that if you gave a team enough safe...

What really makes a transformation of your organization successful? Which elements should be in place? Which complicated framework for scaling agile should I choose? I tend to feel disappointed when trying to think of the number of organizations which actually succeeded in such a transformation. We,...

During the 5th edition of Scrum Day Europe, Laurens and I facilitated a workshop on how to “Add Visual Flavor to Your Organization Transformation with Videoscribe.” The theme of the conference, “The Next Iteration,” was all about the future of Scrum. We wanted to tie our workshop into the theme o...

These days scaling Scrum is a hot topic. How can I use Scrum to deliver a big product with multiple teams? The most common approach I see at my customers is scaling Scrum by adding more Scrum teams with a Product Owner and Scrum Master per team. Scaling Scrum using Copy-Paste Sc...

In Scrum, Product Backlog refinement is an ongoing activity for a single team; however, it is not a mandatory event. As explained in the Nexus Guide, due to the added complexity of many teams working together on a single product, Refinement is an official and required event in the Nexus Framework. ...

If you’ve learned Scrum and tried to implement it in any large organization you’ve likely run into a few issues. Getting dedicated people on your team is hard. Building cross-functional teams is really hard.

As Agility in Mind launch our new training course designed to help distributed teams work effectively, we share our experiences on the reality of remote working, offshore development and virtual teams. Real life is about compromise Designing an effective IT product delivery capability is a ...

The purpose of Scrum is to create a potentially shippable Increment by the end of a Sprint. This is so important that people now use many terms to describe this Scrum artifact. Working. Releasable. Done. Done done. However, many teams struggle to produce a done Increment. Without working soft...

In my last post, I explained the pattern of the evolution of the Product Owner. This blog is about the evolution pattern of a Scrum Master. Do you want to know more about what it takes to be a good Scrum Master? Would you like to know how to grow in your role? Then you should probably keep read...

The Nexus framework was created by Ken Schwaber, co-creator of the Scrum framework, and was released by his organization, Scrum.org, along with a body of knowledge, the Nexus Guide, in 2015. This paper written by Professional Scrum Trainer Simon Bourk and Scrum.org Product Owner for Enterprise Solu...

What is a good Product Owner and am I the right person to fill in this role? If you have ever struggled with this question, you should probably keep reading. The advantage of being a trainer and a consultant at the same time is that you get the chance to meet a lot of Product Owners. I hear the ...

Scrum.org, the home of scrum, and Pragmatic Marketing, the leader in product management and marketing, discuss how to resolve the tension and avoid getting into a cage fight between the two roles.

Fifteen crucial responsibilities of an entrepreneurial Product owner. Maximize value & Optimizer, The Product Vision, Value, and Validation, Return of Investment, Reducing the Total Cost of Ownership, Stakeholder Engagement and Collaboration, Business Agility.

The 3 Scrum Roles are: The Product Owner The Scrum Master The Development team The various levels of services in the Scrum roles are: Scrum Master serves the Development Team Development Team serves the Product...

At a recent course, one of my attendees talked about his use of a "to delete" status for items in his Product Backlog. Where items had been in his Product Backlog for more than 3 months he tagged them as "to delete". He would then review this sub list with stakeholders as part of the ongoing Product...

Over the past 10 years I have worked with many organisations and helped them to use Scrum to create innovative and sometimes market leading Products. I have seen a lot of Scrum during this time, much of it done well, but some of it done badly. Here are the 5 common anti patterns that I see with team...

Scaling Scrum. Agile at Scale. Enterprise Everything. Everyone is using the Scaled Agile Framework SAFe. Scaling, Scaling, Scaling. If you’re working in product development, you’ve probably had a few conversations on this topic. It seems to be all the rage right now. In this blog post I hope to len...

The most common question I am asked at my courses is - what makes a good Scrum Master? I always answer this question with a story from my own experience working with Scrum Masters (good and bad) over the years. The 2 best Scrum Masters I ever had the pleasure of working with had a lot in common. ...