“Scrum begins with Done”. The assertion might seem counter-intuitive, as though we must start by defining the end.

“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...

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...

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.

"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...

This myth is my favorite. There are three challenges with this myth. First, it misses the point of Scrum. Second, it sets teams up for failure. Third, it's impossible to prove.

I was honored to participate in the Women in Agile panel discussion last week. If you missed it, you can watch the recording. I learned three things from this experience: 1) an hour goes by very fast, 2) I have a lot more to say on the topic, and 3) I want more opportunities to help women. We r...

One of the arguments used against Scrum and a common misconception at the same time is the idea that quality is traded for speed in Scrum. As a PST with years of experience in Quality Assurance I decided to challenge this myth. I believe and I have seen many times that proper way of implementing Scr...

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? ...

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...

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.AA/B Testing: extends the idea of hypothe...

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...

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...

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.

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...

PST Peter Gfader talks about organizations and teams and how to grow together as a team.

Scaled Professional Scrum is based on unit of development called a Nexus. The Nexus consists of up to 10 Scrum teams, the number depending on how well the code and design are structured, the domains understood, and the people organized. The Nexus consists of practices, roles, events, and artifacts t...

I always spend time during training classes thoroughly covering the concept of Definition of Done, sometimes abbreviated “DoD.” As a concept it’s fairly easy to understand and people generally see the value right away. And in practice, for many teams, this concept is the single biggest game changer ...

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...

Mark Noneman discusses  how the phrase “technical debt” has become a commonly used phrase in software development.

One of the most controversial updates to the 2011 Scrum Guide has been the removal of the term “commit” in favor of “forecast” in regards to the work selected for a Sprint. We used to say that the Development Team commits to which Product Backlog Items it will deliver by the end of the Sprint. Scrum...