Of late, I've been noticing an interpretation of the Scrum Master role - the Scrum Master as An FFFCDO for Developers - a Fierce, Ferocious, Fearsome Chief Defense Officer!

I have recently started down the path of certification with Co-Active Coaching as I wanted to improve my coaching skills; to know more about what great coaching looks like, to immerse myself in a community that will help me improve my abilities and to have credibility in my own mind about my own ski...

El Scrum Master es un líder servicial, un rol transformador, un rol de cambio. Su forma de actuar es indirecta, facilitando en todo momento la autogestión del Equipo Scrum para lograr el Objetivo del Producto. Es invisible porque actúa ayudando al éxito de los demás usando diferentes posturas o form...

Quand on parle de Scrum et d’Agilité, nous sommes habitués à penser à l’Amérique et à l’Europe, et non à l’Afrique. Je dois avouer que je suis totalement ignorant du niveau de Scrum et de l’Agile en Afrique. Inutile de dire que j’étais excité d’être invité en Côte d’Ivoire pour une formation PSM-1 e...

In diesem Blog untersuchen wir, woher diese Grundhaltung kommt, zeigen, wie wir damit umgehen können, leisten Überzeugungsarbeit und bieten Experimente an, d. h. wir

When I first started practicing Scrum, I thought that delivering a done, usable increment each Sprint was the least important part of the framework (spoiler alert: delivering a done, usable increment at least once per Sprint is critically important for reducing risk, enabling faster delivery of busi...

Are you too busy doing real work to bother about this new fad called "Evidence Based Management"? Are you tired of beating yourself up because you just don't have the time, money or energy to get on this bandwagon with the other cool kids? Well, fear not. I have a simple 8 step process to put your...

Heeeey. What's good this week awesome people? I hope you are well and keeping safe. During the recent lockdown in Brisbane I created a video about how Professional Scrum team plan their Sprints with Kanban.

With remote work increasing we look at how Scrum can enhance and accelerate you remote working practices

In this Scrum Tapas video, Professional Scrum Trainer Chuck Suscheck uses a simple exercise to explore how silence can be valuable to those doing work and why it is important for a Scrum Master for example to sometimes remain quiet rather than over explaining. (4:35 Minutes)

In this Scrum Tapas video, Professional Scrum Trainer Ryan Brook describes the Daily Scrum, ways to facilitate it, examples of discussion and outcomes, and why it is such an important event in Scrum. (3:42 Minutes)

Llevamos un año increíble, bueno algo más, unos 18 meses. La «vieja normalidad» de marzo del 2020.

When using the Scrum framework, the Retrospective is the final event in a Sprint. In this article, we will discuss ideas to use when planning your next Sprint Retrospective.

Algunos anti patrones de un Scrum Master que pueden no ayudar a ser un líder servicial.

When talking about applying Scrum and Agile, we are hardwired to think about America and Europe, not about Africa. I must confess I am totally ignorant about the status of Scrum and Agile in Africa. Needless to say, I was excited to be invited to Ivory Coast for a PSM-1 and PSPO-1 training in the ci...

In this webinar, Professional Scrum Trainer Martijn Magermans and Agile HR Expert Astrid Karsten, author of Toolkit for Agile Talent Development,will take you with them on a journey through agile HR from a Scrum perspective. This webinar is for both HR professionals with an interest in Agile & Scrum...

How effectively a Nexus works depends on its ability to eliminate dependencies. Eliminating dependencies simplifies integration. Scrum Masters who efficiently perform cross-team refinements save time. Saving time saves money. 

In March 2021, I was conversing with a CTO of a Product based company. He asked me a question that if it was worth employing a Scrum Master. We discussed the topic by exchanging opinions, and I explained my viewpoint.

There are plenty of failure possibilities with Scrum. Given that Scrum is a framework with a reasonable yet short “manual,” this effect should not surprise anyone. One area where Scrum’s nature of being intentionally incomplete causes issues regularly is whether Scrum teams shall stick to the event ...

I interviewed a Scrum Master candidate last week. This blog is inspired by him.

Desde hace 16 meses he recibido incontables preguntas relacionadas con el trabajo remoto en equipos.

One of my favorite sayings is “Inspection without adaptation is waste”. For continuous improvement it is important not only to identify things that did not go so well but to also change something in the way you are working. If you change nothing, the inspection did not have an impact at all and is a...

Does the role of the Scrum Master go away with time? For addressing the doubt, first, understand the role of a Scrum Master clearly. 

Every company has customer focus in its vision or mission statement, but is it really? As an employee of a development team, how do I know if this is the case?

When we introduce Scrum to some companies, sometimes the question arises - "Why are there so many meetings in Scrum? When do you do 'real work'?" I've been answering this question verbally for so many years, I thought it was time to write a blog. So here's my answer - don't use Scrum! It ...

When we introduce Scrum to an organization, many people are skeptical of the monetary benefits and ROI of the Scrum Master position. The question I am often asked is - "How do you justify the salary of the Scrum Master?"

Can a Scrum Team simply decide to abandon Scrum? After all, the Scrum team is self-managing, according to the Scrum manual, also known as the Scrum Guide. So, let’s explore this question at the very heart of team autonomy.

A Scrum team consists of three clear accountabilities: one Scrum Master, one Product Owner, and Developers.  Often, when working with a Scrum team struggling with excessive conflict or a lack of trust, I find the culprit is a lack of clarity around each of these accountabilities.  Even with the best...

In this blog post, I share 10 success factors that emerged from a community meetup. These factors helped Scrum practitioners prevent or fix Zombie Scrum in their team and organization.

In the past few months I have heard several of my clients said that Scrum does not work and ask me to fix it.

1. I did not clarify up front to my prospects how important their ROI is to me 2. After closing the deal, I did not educate my clients on the definition of ROI 3. I did not educate them in the research backed approach from the ROI Institute that helps organizations manage the ROI of Learning...

In 2020 and 2021, more than 1,153 participants from over 20 countries and organizations from less than 50 to more than 10,000 employees participated in a hands-on survey on agile metrics launched by Berlin-Product-People. The goal of this survey was to learn about who is using what agile metrics in ...

TL; DR: Linking Strategy to Everyday Work w/ John Cutler — ACB21 In this highly engaging speaker session from the Agile Camp Berlin 2021, John Cutler delves into the advantages of linking strategy to everyday work: Motivation, inspiration, seeing the big picture despite working on a small iterati...

On today’s episode of YOUR DAILY SCRUM:  Is the Scrum Master Role an Entry Level Job?

I am often asked how to create better goals. This comes up at the team level, and it also comes up for the wider organization. When we are dealing with complexity, there is no one right way, no perfect template, and no best practice. And I find it helpful to look at the goals people are using today,...

He sido un defensor del marco de gestión basada en evidencias (Evidence Based Management, EBM) de Scrum.org durante algunos años.

Professional Agile Leadership – Evidence-Based Management (PAL-EBM) is the newest course in the Scrum.org portfolio. To prepare the launch and our trainer community for this one-day workshop, we ran several train-the-trainer events. I enjoyed participating in one of those, and I am glad to share my ...

The role of an agile leader is to create and foster an environment where empiricism thrives to support the delivery of value. Evidence Based Management supports this, by providing a framework to link goals and objective measures to provide insights in to how effectively the organisation is working.

When I’m describing the Key Value Areas (KVAs) of Evidence-Based Management, I find Time to Market is often misunderstood to mean “just go faster.” We need to scrub off the scent of “we know what we need to do, we just need to do it faster.” In complexity, goals and execution have a lot of unknowns,...

Today, Scrum.org launches the new Professional Agile Leadership - Evidence Based Management ™  (EBM) training course.

Discover how EBM solves many challenges for Product Owners.

EBM provides organizations with an opportunity to use empiricism to improve customer outcomes by delivering greater value. It helps to improve collaboration by elevating conversations from opinion-based discussions to evidence-based discussions and decisions. EBM may feel awkward at first, but it wi...

In industries ranging from financial services to consulting and defense, we can find countless examples of how organizations employed incentive plans that produced behavior not aligned to the organization's desired strategic goals.

Previously, I have described some challenges with the Evidence-Based Management implementation. There are plenty of challenges regarding the process of applying Evidence-Based Management, there are also great results.

We have now launched a new Scrum.org course – Professional Agile Leadership – Evidence-Based Management (EBM), and it is an exceptional occasion to share my experience with implementing the framework.

One personality trait we look for in managers is confidence. And rightfully so: It is needed to be able to make decisions and stand by them in adverse circumstances. The manager personalities I have met in my years of consulting, training and coaching management in transformation contexts have m...

Sprint Planning is an important event that has a significant impact on the team’s effectiveness and productivity during the Sprint. The most critical aspects of successful sprint planning are the level of the team’s commitment to the goal of the sprint and handling the Sprint Backlog. To encourage...

Q: What is the relationship between EBM and OKRs? A: OKRs are a powerful technique for setting goals and measuring against goals. Some organizations use OKRs as a practice that helps them with EBM. What EBM adds to the OKR technique is an agile and iterative way for the organization to improve t...

La Gestión basada en evidencia de Scrum.org es un marco de trabajo que provee un enfoque empírico para mejorar continuamente el valor entregado a los clientes, las capacidades organizacionales para entregar ese valor y los resultados de negocio en un entorno de alta incertidumbre.

More than 10 years of helping organizations travel on the path to Agility have taught me some hard lessons about what differentiates the organizations that practice self-defeating pseudo agility from those who practice authentic, evidence based agility.