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Blog Post
Yes, of course it is! Scrum is a framework to help teams and organisations on their path to agility, but it is by no means the only way to be agile.
Back before I knew about Scrum, I worked on projects that were agile. Back then we didn’t really know what agility was all about, but that didn’t me...
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Blog Post
One of the most challenging activities in Scrum is Product Backlog Refinement. During training courses I get many questions on this activity. What do you do during Product Backlog refinement? How do you prevent discussions going off track or in too much detail? Who should be there? When do you estim...
4.8 from 10 ratings
Blog Post
When facilitating a Scrum Master training, the Sprint Goal is a topic that often causes a good discussion. Participants question the background, purpose and advantages of using a Sprint Goal. In this blog post I'll describe the concept in more detail, explain why using a Sprint Goal is important and...
4 from 46 ratings
Blog Post
Question from a budding Scrum Master, who is transitioning from a background as a traditional project manager:
“In order to promote team bonding and self-organization, from now on I am going to try something new with the team. In the sprint planning meeting, instead of me breaking down the tasks ...
4.8 from 2 ratings
Blog Post
This week I facilitated a Scrum Master training in which we gathered the most common pitfalls of the Scrum events. It resulted in a nice overview with lots of recognizable pitfalls. In this blog post I'll share the results with you, completed with some ideas of my own. As you will see, it's only a b...
5 from 2 ratings
Blog Post
Scrum is a framework within which people can address complex problems, and productively and creatively develop products of the highest possible value. It's tool organizations can use to increase their agility.
Within Scrum, self-organizing, cross-functional, and highly productive teams do the wor...
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Blog Post
I am sure it would not come as a surprise, but our website (www.scrum.org) needs a major refresh. The current implementation has become out of date and less and less supportive of our vision and mission. As a team, we quickly realized that we do not possess the resources needed to take on a full web...
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Blog Post
The Scrum Master is responsible for ensuring Scrum is understood and enacted. Scrum Masters do this by ensuring that the Scrum Team adheres to Scrum theory, practices, and rules.
The Scrum Master is a servant-leader for the Scrum Team. The Scrum Master helps those outside the Scrum Team understand ...
4.4 from 240 ratings
Blog Post
Recently I wrote an article about the characteristics of a great Product Owner. It gave me the idea to do the same for the Development Team and Scrum Master. This blog post focuses on the Development Team; I'll describe the characteristics, skills and conditions.
Great Development Teams...
...
5 from 2 ratings
Blog Post
After downloading and studying the Nexus guide, you have questions about how the Nexus Integration Team actually works, so here are some keys to understand the role and its fit within the Nexus.
It’s all about solving dependencies
Nexus is focused is solving the primary source of issues and ...
4.5 from 1 rating
Blog Post
During a recent Product Owner training I gave the participants the assignment to complete the sentence "A great Product Owner..." The result was a nice overview of characteristics, skills and conditions necessary to fulfill this role in a great manner. In this blog post I'll share the result, comple...
4.9 from 7 ratings
Blog Post
Last week I attended a workshop provided by Patrick Verheij, who is a board member of the Agile Consortium. Patrick explained the foundation of Agile and shared a characteristic of "Agile DNA" within organizations
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Blog Post
What is a 'Product Owner'?
Scrum is a framework for product development, and specifically well suited for complex products. The Product Owner is the role in Scrum to bring the business perspective to the team(s) creating and sustaining a software product. The Product Owner acts as the single re...
5 from 1 rating
Blog Post
Within companies that use Scrum properly, the organization is built around fixed, cross-functional, self-organizing teams who are given the freedom and responsibility to think of a strategy they believe will result in the best product. Everyone around the Development Team is focused on supporti...
4 from 2 ratings
Blog Post
At some occasions we stop to look back. We see the trail we left behind, the bigger picture, the impact we made. Small or big. We think of the impact we hoped to make, small or big. A humbling experience before making our way forward again.
Early 2011, nearly five years ago, Scrum.org launched th...
5 from 1 rating
Blog Post
This is a list of 10 questions a Scrum Master may ask a Product Owner, in order to help coach them in their role.
5 from 10 ratings
Blog Post
This blog post talks about the issues caused by unlimited budgets.
0 from 0 ratings
Blog Post
Inspiring Lessons From the Life Journey of Mr. Warrick Dunn
__________
As many of us in the USA prepare for the big college football rivalry weekend, let’s take a moment to learn about Agile leadership from Warrick Dunn, retired football star with a storied career in college and...
3.3 from 3 ratings
Blog Post
The role of a Scrum Master is one of many stances and diversity. A great Scrum Master is aware of them and knows when and how to apply them, depending on situation and context. Everything with the purpose of helping people understand and apply the Scrum framework better.
In a series of blog posts...
5 from 1 rating
Blog Post
Just like how the Development Team role and Scrum Master role that can be easily misunderstood, the Product Owner is also easily misunderstood by organisation who are using Scrum. Over and over again I see people who are assigned as Product Owner are not really a Product Owner, either they ...
0 from 0 ratings
Blog Post
Although the Daily Scrum seems to be a simple and straightforward event, I still encounter a lot of teams struggling with it. In this blog post, I'll share my tips & tactics. You can use it as a checklist for your own Daily Scrum, and hopefully, it helps you ensure the event to become (or stay) ...
4.8 from 2 ratings
Blog Post
I notice how many people struggle when they try to improve their understanding of Scrum. I notice it in classes, on forums, at conferences, through mail. They look for detailed instructions. They ask universal questions that demand exact and precise answers.
How long should Sprint Planning b...
4.8 from 4 ratings
Blog Post
Update: after receiving some valuable feedback, I've added the third lesson learned.
The previous week I used the Spotify Squad Health Check model to assess a team's situation and condition. One of the cards the game contained caused quite a lot of discussing during the retrospective and also ga...
5 from 1 rating
Blog Post
The concept of user stories is a well-known tool for describing requirements. In a simple format, it captures the ‘who’, ‘what’ and ‘why’ of a requirement. User stories have their roots in Extreme Programming (XP) and are an often-used tactic within Scrum. In 2001, Ron Jeffries proposed the Three C’...
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Blog Post
The Scrum Guide begins the description of the role of the Product Owner as follows:
The Product Owner is responsible for maximizing the value of the product and the work of the Development Team.
How does a Product Owner do this? Which instruments does Scrum offer to achieve this? How can a P...
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Webcast
Learning, responsibility and power - the three psychological models very useful in a Scrum Master's daily work.
3.6 from 142 ratings
Blog Post
The role of a Scrum Master is one of many stances and diversity. A great Scrum Master is aware of them and knows when and how to apply them, depending on situation and context. Everything with the purpose of helping people understand and apply the Scrum framework better.
4.5 from 3 ratings
Blog Post
The role of a Scrum Master is one of many stances and diversity. A great Scrum Master is aware of them and knows when and how to apply them, depending on situation and context. Everything with the purpose of helping people understand and apply the Scrum framework better.
5 from 2 ratings
Blog Post
The Scrum Guide requires that the Product Owner ensure that "key stakeholders" attend the Scrum Sprint Review, but who are these "key stakeholders"?
According to the Scrum Glossary, a stakeholder is "a person external to the Scrum Team with a specific interest in and knowledge of a product that...
4.3 from 3 ratings
Blog Post
The Scrum Master role can easily be misunderstood as it is harder to grasp by reading the theory; hence people often compare the Scrum Master role to Project Manager or Technical Leader. Scrum Master's primary job is to place himself in service consciously, with self-awareness, and for the benefit o...
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Blog Post
I was recently contacted by a senior executive of a mid-sized company that is evolving their product development to Scrum. He explained a situation he had been in and wanted my opinion. He accepted me to share his story here (with some abstractions, and calling him Jim) in an open-ended way, invitin...
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Blog Post
Scrum brings agility to and creates Agile organizations through the implementation of empirical process control, the process of frequent inspection and adaptation. The empiricism of Scrum serves discovering and taking advantage of opportunities and options, at all levels; people, technology, market....
4.3 from 2 ratings
Blog Post
Making a purchase can feel great when you’ve developed a rapport with the salesperson. Regardless of the product; from a tasty treat at the farmer’s market to a major purchase like a new car; a sale is much more likely when the vendor not only cares deeply about their product but also takes time to ...
0 from 0 ratings
Blog Post
A program team of over 40 people decided to move to Agile from their traditional development practices. The program was old and had been in existence for over 6 years. In these 6 years they had released multiple versions of their software product to their customers. In the rush to satisfy the custom...
4 from 1 rating
Blog Post
EMBARRASSING DISCOVERY
True Story from when I was Agile Coach for a Multi-Billion Dollar, Fortune 15 Giant…
It was a large Agile program and we had new team members joining the program in waves. Not everyone was familiar with Agile and we did not have money for in-person training. So we had ...
3.2 from 241 ratings
Blog Post
Dear Scrum Master!
Being a Professional Scrum Trainer, agile coach & consultant for a while I had a chance to work with around a thousand Scrum Masters across different organizations. I see recurring patterns of misunderstanding and misapplication of Scrum usually visible in how Scrum Masters...
5 from 2 ratings
Blog Post
“Eventbrite Order Notification” – This is probably one of the best mails I receive as a ScrumTrainer It usually means I have another student with whom I can share my passion for Scrum. Sometimes it doesn’t quite work that way.
Last year, I got this notification for a student who wanted to attend...
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Blog Post
[Author’s note: I will be a Scrum Day Dallas on 27 March 2015; a great opportunity to meet me and other master Scrum Masters. Find me there and let’s talk about your Scrum Master journey. Exciting travels –Mark Noneman]
So you’re a Scrum Master now. Maybe you’ve volunteered to fulfill the role or...
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Blog Post
Watch a video version of this blog or scroll down to read a text version…
I used to be passionate about Agile Coaching and Scrum. I have spent many years and a lot of money to get here. So it is strange that I am now writing about how all the investment made me a gambling addict.
Writing t...
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Blog Post
Setting up an enterprise-scale agile department with 200 developers working towards the same vision will ensure you are invited to speak at all of the most prestigious conferences, but is there a simpler solution?
Just get Sam to do it
The simplest way to build software is to find one talented...
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Blog Post
Recently I just got an email from a QA manager who wishes to send his team members to Scrum.org Professional Scrum Master course:
I’m so interested in Professional Scrum Master course. I’m working as a QA Manager on Scrum projects. Therefore, I intend to join the Prof...
0 from 0 ratings
Blog Post
I was coaching a number of teams and their Sprint Reviews were boring status meetings and few stakeholders attended. I see this pattern often at companies and a reason for poor stakeholder attendance is that the discussion about added value happens in other meetings. In this post I want to share a l...
3.2 from 72 ratings
Blog Post
My name is Peter Götz. I am an experienced software engineer. I started in 2001 and have worked in several projects and with several teams since then. Besides actually developing software I have also prepared and conducted several technical trainings (Java, JBoss, OOAD) for developers. For more than...
5 from 1 rating
Blog Post
Traditionally an individual is declared a ‘manager’ when having hierarchical control over other individuals.
There are many sorts of power that come with it. A traditional manager assigns work, follows up on the execution of the work, is responsible for the results, judges and assesses the people...
4.9 from 13 ratings
Blog Post
Find out with a short test?
A single instance of Scrum has one Scrum Team that works from one Product Backlog. The team sprints against the selected Product Backlog items and creates an increment of potentially shippable, or usable, functionality by the end of the Sprint
If you want to test yo...
5 from 1 rating
Blog Post
When I first started doing Scrum I was focused on project delivery. As a software professional I wanted to find better ways of delivering customer value and Scrum made total sense to me.
But as I applied Scrum, I started to realise that Scrum isn't actually about delivery; it is about change. Now...
0 from 0 ratings
Blog Post
I am sitting in in a café in Singapore enjoying a well-deserved drink and dinner after teaching day 1 of the Scrum.org Professional Scrum Product Owner course.
We have students from Indonesia, Singapore and Cambodia on the course. We have spent much of the first day chasing the idea of value...
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Blog Post
Software is created by people; for better or for worse. That is very different from looking at software development as a robotizeable activity. The agile worldview builds on software development being a creative activity (not: industrial) undertaken by and for people (not: replaceable pieces of mach...
4.6 from 8 ratings
Blog Post
I work with a lot of companies to help them to improve their development processes and to either adopt Scrum or improve how they’re currently doing Scrum. Lately, I’ve noticed that a fair number of companies run into problems with a certain kind of project: The Rewrite Project.
On this kind of p...
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Blog Post
Recently I was involved in a discussion with Scrum.org trainers regarding the question “What is a failed Sprint?" I think we came to the same opinion and the same answer.
And, in your opinion, what a failed Sprint is:
If the team doesn’t complete all the forecasted Product Backlog ...
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