In this vlog, PST Joshua Partogi explains the flow of an effective Sprint Retrospectives with Kanban metrics.

Learn how individual incentives and outdated organizational structures — fostering personal agendas and local optimization efforts — manifest themselves in Scrum stakeholder anti-patterns that easily impede any agile transformation to a product-led organization.

Building a product sometimes feels like an endless race, head down, pedal to the metal, let's build it! We all run after something and as a team incrementing our product to be the best possible set of functionalities our users ever wanted, at some point we get out of breath Sprinting. As Scrum Maste...

An exploration of scientific insights. And four practical tips to encourage cohesion and coherence in your team.

7 Do-it-yourself workshops and experiments to discover new valuable features through experiments, field testing, and research.

There are five events in Scrum.  But just going through the motions and having each of the events on the calendar is not enough.  To get the most out of Scrum, your team needs to understand the purpose behind each of the five events.  

Scrum Scale Away (parody of Come Sail Away by Styx)

One of the first things that I usually hear after describing the Scrum framework and its five events to someone new to Scrum is, “that’s a lot of meetings!” I get it — at first glance, it seems like a lot. But it really isn't when I get the person to take a closer look. This article provides...

Are we still on track to accomplish the Product Goal? Moreover, how did the previous Sprint contribute to our Scrum team’s mission? Given the Sprint Review’s importance, it is worthwhile to tackle the most common Sprint Review anti-patterns.

One of the things I struggled with at the start of my Scrum Master journey was building consensus in the team. Wanting to stay objective, give everyone space and time whilst still craving for a decision was a challenge for me. My own indecisiveness with regards to how to handle this ultimately did n...

One of the primary purposes of a retrospective is to create action items, but it’s not uncommon to come up with action items that aren’t actionable.  They’re aspirational.  This blog gives you some ways to ensure your retrospectives have actionable items.

In this episode of the Scrum.org Community Podcast, Professional Scrum Trainer Dave Dame joins Eric Naiburg and Lindsay Velecina to discuss accessibility and its importance when it come to training and work in general. They discuss the importance of diversity on Scrum Teams and how it helps teams th...

​​​​​​​In my experience, it’s the Sprint Retrospective that teams are most likely to skip, berate, or otherwise bash.  When I hear teams talking about dropping it to “save time,” I want to pull a Darth Vader, shake my fist in the air, and say, “You don’t know the power of the Sprint Retrospective!” ...

Erfahren Sie mehr über 21 gängige Sprint Retrospektive Anti-Patterns aus der Scrum Anti-Patterns-Serie — von PST Stefan Wolpers.

A critical, evidence-based reflection on a hunch that Scrum Masters may often be more concerned with the quality of the process than the value of its outcomes.

The fifth blog, in a blog series about the upcoming book: Creating Agile Organizations - A Systemic Approach, by Cesario Ramos & Ilia Pavlichenko.

TL; DR: Sprint Retrospective Anti-Patterns What event could better embody Scrum’s principle of empiricism than the Sprint Retrospective? I assume all peers agree that even the simplest form of a Retrospective—if only held regularly—is far more helpful than having a fancy one once in a while, not ...

Three simple retrospective formats based on the Liberating Structures "Conversation Cafe", "Troika Consulting", and "Discovery & Action Dialogue"

Some time ago, whilst discussing this topic with my fellow Professional Scrum.org Trainer Todd Miller, he shared his experience with using White Elephant principles to enable a participative facilitation environment (thanks Todd!). It inspired me to use it and write this blog. 

Powerful Product Owner. It sounds like a threat, isn’t it?  Anyone overpowering affects the whole team’s activity and outcome. No wonder this affects retrospectives as well. 

Why many Scrum teams struggle with continuous improvement, and how you can do better

Once the team has selected a point system, they need to decide which types of items to classify as a 1, 2, and so on. In this article, we will provide an exercise that can help your team create a point system organically no matter what’s in the Product Backlog.

Keine andere Rolle in Scrum kann so sehr zu mittelmäßigen Ergebnissen beitragen wie der Product Owner — Garbage in, Garbage out. Die folgende Liste mit den häufigsten Product Owner Fehlverhalten könnte daher ein Ausgangspunkt sein, über die Tätigkeit als Product Owner nachzudenken; vielleicht gibt e...

TL; DR: Scrum Master Anti-Patterns No other role in Scrum can contribute to mediocre outcomes like the Product Owner—garbage in, garbage out. Therefore, the following list of some of the most common Product Owner anti-patterns might be a starting point to reflect on the role; maybe, there is room...

Three simple retrospective formats based on the Liberating Structures "Conversation Cafe", "Troika Consulting", and "Discovery & Action Dialogue"

Das Sprint Planning ist ein zentrales Scrum-Ereignis, welches entscheidet, wie sich das Leben Ihrer Kunden mit dem nächsten Inkrement verbessern wird. Erfahren Sie mehr darüber, wie Sie Ihren Kunden durch die Vermeidung von 20 gängigen Sprint Planning Anti-Patterns helfen können.

TL; DR: Scrum Master Anti-Patterns The Sprint Planning is a core event that defines how your customers’ lives will improve with the following Product Increment. Learn more on how to improve its effectiveness by avoiding 20 common Sprint Planning anti-patterns. 🇩🇪 Zur deutschsprachigen Versio...

Die Gründe, warum Scrum Master den Geist des Scrum Guides verletzen, sind vielschichtig. Scrum Master Fehlverhalten reichen von unpassenden persönlichen Eigenschaften über die Verfolgung persönlicher Agenden bis hin zur Frustration mit dem Scrum Team selbst.

The reasons Scrum Masters violate the spirit of the Scrum Guide are multi-faceted. Typical Scrum Master anti-patterns run from ill-suited personal traits to complacency to pursuing individual agendas to frustration with the team itself.

Three simple retrospective formats based on the Liberating Structures "Conversation Cafe", "Troika Consulting", and "Discovery & Action Dialogue"

Scrum ist ein taktisches Framework für die Entwicklung von Produkten, vorausgesetzt, Sie erkennen im Voraus, was es wert ist, entwickelt zu werden. Aber selbst nach einer erfolgreichen Produktentdeckungsphase, neudeutsch: Product Discovery, kann es Ihnen schwer fallen, das Richtige auf die Beine zu ...

When you aspire to a Scrum Master role, some form of certification on your resume is a must. Scrum.org offers the acclaimed PSM learning journey to support Scrum Masters to professionalise their skills. I am a Professional Scrum Trainer for scrum.org and I have trained hundreds of Scrum Masters over...

Scrum is a tactical framework to build products, provided you identify what is worth making in advance. But even after a successful product discovery phase, you may struggle to create the right thing in the right way if your Product Backlog is not up to the job—garbage in, garbage out.

This blog talks about Integrating UX with Scrum.

When I coach, consult and teach classes, I often get questions about creating an agile maturity tool or defining agile maturity metrics. Agile Maturity metrics are used by many businesses to better understand their present agile practices and monitor to improve them. I understand the need for this k...

How to support Scrum Teams to effectively bridge the gap between their current and desired state

Willkommen zum Sprint Anti-Patterns-Artikel aus unserer Serie über Scrum-Anti-Patterns. Ich adressiere in diesem Artikel sprintbezogene Fehlverhalten der drei Scrum-Rollen, der Stakeholder bzw. Interessenvertreter sowie des IT-Management.

​​​​​​​The concept of iterative, incremental Product delivery is included in the Scrum Guide.  But did you know that the Agile Manifesto refers to incremental, iterative delivery in at least 3 of the principles?   

TL; DR: 28+2 Sprint Anti-Patterns from Sprint Stuffing to Gold-Plating Welcome to the Sprint anti-patterns article from my series on Scrum anti-patterns, covering the three Scrum roles—pardon me: accountabilities—and addressing the contributions of stakeholders and the IT/line management. Moreove...

Teams that change the framework are not using Scrum and are missing out on some of its benefits.  The Scrum framework consists of 5 events, 3 accountabilities, 3 artifacts and five values.  Today, we will talk about the order of the events in Scrum. 

TL; DR: 24+2 Daily Scrum Anti-Patterns In my experience, the Daily Scrum is the Scrum event with the highest anti-pattern density among all events. Learn more about Daily Scrum anti-patterns that threaten your Scrum team’s success, from becoming a reporting session to assignments to answering the...

A detailed description of how the Scrum Master role embodies 6 stances, and why I don’t consider “servant leader” and “manager” valid stances anymore

Professional Teaching is a complex skill that requires practitioners to probe, sense and respond to a changing learning environment. As Scrum Masters, we are naturally at home within complexity, and therefore the ability to apply empiricism to learning should be simple.

Scrum is simple, but that simplicity means that each of its elements is essential.  The values, accountabilities, artifacts and events are all part of the framework for a reason.  Teams that mess with the framework are messing with Scrum.  Teams that make changes to the elements limit Scrum's effect...

In this 18 part series of short Scrum Tapas videos, Professional Scrum Trainer Ryan Brook walks viewers through the Scrum Framework piece-by-piece, explaining each area and providing insights into how Scrum is used.  

Welcome to Scrum Sutra — a series where I shall share a 2-min overview of each element of Scrum and how it connects with the other elements in the bead to form Scrum Sutra. Today, I shall talk about Sprint Backlog.

TL; DR: Scrum Master Success — My Top-Nine Indicators How would you know that your Scrum Master is competent? What are indicators for Scrum Master success? Is the regular use of the Confluence retrospective template one of the desired signals? Or is the quest to understand contributing factors fu...

Three simple retrospective formats based on the Liberating Structures "Conversation Cafe", "Troika Consulting", and "Discovery & Action Dialogue"

With the rapid increase in the adoption of Scrum and other Agile frameworks over the past several years, I’m not surprised that a few misconceptions and myths about Scrum have surfaced.  While many more organizations embrace Scrum, many individual practitioners have not undertaken formal training.  ...

A learning model is a must to build a learning organization/team. Identifying and creating learning loops and cycles within the learning model is extremely important. In this article, I would like to share a learning model that I applied to the teams, helping them learn and develop.