Scrum tools are useful in many situations, not only for their original purpose. For example, you can use the burndown-tool to track meetings and make them more efficient. In addition, the participants of the meeting get a feeling for Scrum and it's focus as well as its transparency. This is, how it ...
I recently received an interesting scientific article from Gunther Verheyen titled "Getting Things Done: The Science Behind Stress-Free Productivity" (Heylighen & Vidal, in press). The article discusses possible scientific explanations for the success of a personal productivity approach called "...
Ralph M. Jocham, an internationally successful Scrum coach, speaks with Rebecca Vogel, CEO & Marketing Assistant at Bosshard & Partner, on the subject of Scrum.
Well isn’t that great? Your team is now supposed to do Scrum and now there is another set of meetings cutting into the time you would rather use to actually get something done. In popularity, “meetings” tend to be viewed as enjoyable as a dentist appointment. We have books like &ld...
A frequently recurring question is on the combination of agile and fixed price bids (and contracts). Here are my thoughts: I have an opinion...
Professional Scrum Foundations is my favourite course to teach as it balances fun and learning with practical experience.The Professional Scrum Foundations course is from Scrum.org and, over two days covers all of the core concepts of Scrum.
Organizations usually don’t adopt Scrum because they like its name. Instead, they have heard that software development is better if they use Scrum – quicker, cheaper, higher quality, more satisfied customers and employees. Sometimes things are so bad in software development that they try...
I have been fortunate. I have been involved in some larger scale Scrum transformations. I have learned much. I have much to learn.
Here are some basics that are fundamental to set the right expectations for a enterprise Scrum transformation. I will relentlessly repeat and remind these. Because in...
Agile is not only about the ‘process’ we follow to build software products. Agility is not just achieved by following a method. Agile is also about the behavior we show while creating software products. But agile is certainly also about the software craftsmanshipwe show in...
Quite often people come up to me in training or coaching and ask me if it is possible to "tweak" or "alter" Scrum. Well, the answer to this is quick: Sure you can. Just go to https://www.scrum.org/Scrum-Guides/Change-the-Scrum-Guide and continue from there. Changing Scrum is like changing any other ...
Scrum is a very powerful framework to drive out the right requirements and thereby delivering the best possible product in a given time frame. This is made possible by frequent inspection and adaptation based on ongoing transparency. One of the empirical process-control-feedback loops is the Sprint ...
The most common complaint I hear from developers is that their managers push unrealistic deadlines on them. The managers come and say something must by done by this date – and won’t take “no” for an answer. The developers then work nights to deliver on a promise they...
The Scrum Guide describes the basic rules of the game of Scrum. You can easily detect whether you are doing Scrum. It takes no more than 9 questions. If you can answer every question with a ‘Yes’, you are doing Scrum. Congratulations. We got rid of the “ScrumBut” expressions....
Often, when working with a team new to Scrum and agile software development, I’m asked “How will we know when we’re agile?” At other times, managers will contact me, saying “We’re doing Scrum but we we’re not getting the benefits we expected.” By using...
Today I came across yet another job ad for a ScrumMaster—sadly posted to an Agile online group. Here it is, in its essence. I have bolded the terms that especially jarred, but the tone of the whole thing was seriously misguided...