Professional Scrum Training Courses
Enables all members of the Scrum Team to learn Scrum while doing it, experiencing what it is like to deliver products using the Scrum framework
Learn Scrum theory, roles, events, and artifacts through individual and group activities along with trainer instruction.
In this advanced class, experienced Scrum Masters learn to overcome challenges they face through immersive facilitated exercises.
Students learn how to maximize the value of products and systems through instruction and team-based exercises.
Mastering the Product Owner Stances course focuses on helping experienced practitioners expand their ability to establish a solid vision, validate their hypotheses, and ultimately deliver more value.
Enables all members of a software-focused Scrum Team to learn Scrum while doing it, experiencing what it is like to build products with modern Agile and DevOps practices.
Hands-on workshop teaching managers and other leaders how to best support, guide, and coach their teams.
Teaches Scrum practitioners how to apply Kanban practices to their work without changing Scrum, bringing greater transparency and flow.
Learn modern UX techniques and practices that effectively enable Scrum Teams to best work with customers and their feedback to deliver higher value.
Designed for anyone involved in building products across multiple teams to learn how they can scale product delivery with Scrum.
Professional Scrum Competencies
Scrum.org has created these Professional Scrum™ Competencies to help guide an individual’s personal development as they learn Scrum.
New and Now at Scrum.org
Scrum Guide 2020
Resources Describing Scrum Guide Changes
Find a series of resources that discuss and describe the changes between the 2017 and 2020 versions of the Scrum Guide.
Train-the-Trainer
Interested in an all women Train-the-Trainer event?
Please see this page to learn more and provide feedback.
White Paper
Scrum: A framework to reduce risk and deliver value sooner
An overview of the Scrum framework, for people new to Scrum and those who’d like to refresh their understanding. The aim of this white paper was to write in a practical, down-to-earth manner from the perspective of what the Scrum framework makes possible. This paper should be easy to read, clear up potential confusions and deepen your understanding.
Why Scrum.org
What Makes Scrum.org Different
Learn how Scrum.org is unique in the market as a mission based organization that provides consistent experiential training around the world.
Professional Scrum Certification Assessments
There are three levels of Scrum Master assessments to validate and certify your knowledge and understanding of Scrum and the Scrum Master role.
There are three levels of Product Owner assessments to validate and certify your knowledge and understanding of the Product Owner role.
The Professional Scrum Developer assessment validates and certifies you knowledge and understanding of the Development Team Member role in Scrum.
The Professional Agile Leadership assessment validates and certifies an understanding about how leaders can best support their teams in an agile environment.
The Professional Agile Leadership - Evidence Based Management assessment validates and certifies an understanding about how leaders can best support their teams in an agile environment.
The Scaled Professional Scrum assessment validates and certifies an understanding of scaling fundamentals to enable multiple Scrum Teams working together.
The Professional Scrum with Kanban assessment validates and certifies an understanding of how to use Scrum with Kanban to improve value creation and delivery.
The Professional Scrum™ with User Experience assessment validates a fundamental level of understanding of integrating modern UX practices into Scrum.
Featured Videos
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New Blog Posts
Ryan Ripley
On today’s episode of YOUR DAILY SCRUM: Who Decides the Sprint Length for A Scrum Team? Today's question asks about who decides the sprint length for a Scrum Team. Ryan and Todd discuss different roles each Scrum Team member plays in figuring out the best sprint length (planning horizon) for the team. Check out the video and let us know what you think below!
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Ryan Ripley and Todd Miller are the author of Fixing Your Scrum: Practical Solutions to Common Scrum Problems. They are the co-founders of Agile for Humans, the premiere Scrum and Kanban training organization.
Join Ryan and Todd in a Professional Scrum training course: https://www.scrum.org/agile-humans
Apr 13, 2021
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Ryan Ripley
On today’s episode of YOUR DAILY SCRUM: Who Decides the Sprint Length for A Scrum Team? Today's question asks about who decides the Sprint length for a Scrum Team.
Apr 13, 2021
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John Coleman
Have you ever noticed people keep talking about things, but they've not aligned with what their words mean? I have seen agility measured as the number of "agile teams" and the "number of training attendees" more often than I like to admit.
Apr 12, 2021
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Stefan Wolpers
TL; DR: Three Wide-Spread Scrum Master Failures
There are plenty of Scrum Masters failures. Given that Scrum is a framework with a precise and concise yet short “manual,” this effect should not surprise anyone.
Learn more about three widespread examples of how Scrum Masters fail their team in three short video clips, totaling 5 minutes and 31 seconds.
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TL; DR: Three Wide-Spread Scrum Master Failures
Let me “walk” you through often observed Scrum Master anti-patterns, from dogmatism to the pursuit of useless metrics to a lack of creativity:
Dogmatism
Some Scrum Masters believe in applying the Scrum Guide literally which unavoidably will cause friction as Scrum is a framework, not a methodology. However, the problem is that teaching feels good:
Team members come and ask for help; now, the Scrum Master has a purpose
When Scrum team members follow the rules, the Scrum Master has influence or authority
The Scrum Master may easily attribute the Scrum team’s progress or success to their teaching; now, they also have proof regarding their mastery of Scrum.
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Metrics Fetish
The Scrum Master keeps track of individual performance metrics such as story points per developer per Sprint. Or worse, probably to report the metrics to that person’s line manager. (Which is an effective supervisor hack to reintroduce command & control through the back door, creating a cargo-cult version of Scrum in the process.)
In another manifestation, the Scrum Master focuses their work on producing a daily update to the burn-down chart. If the team considers a burn-down chart useful to monitor progress toward the Sprint Goal—that is their call. However, if the burn-down chart is solely maintained to track the output for reporting purposes the team needs to challenge this attitude.
Lastly, a pre-installed report in the team’s Jira instance does not mean that it is a suitable tool.
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Groundhog Day
The Sprint Retrospective never changes in composition, venue, or length. There is a tendency in this case that the Scrum team might revisit the same issues repeatedly–it’s Groundhog Day without the happy ending, though.
What you can do about it? For example:
Create a repository of Sprint Retrospective exercises for all five stages and never run the same Retrospective format twice.
Do you need ideas on how to run a Retrospective? Well, use Retromat, Tasty cupcakes—or be creative with Liberating Structures and Training from the Back of the Room exercises.
Talk to your fellow Scrum Masters; the Hands-on Agile Slack community—see below—is a particularly well-suited place to ask for help.
Don’t forget to have fun, for example, by theming Retrospectives. Why not have a Halloween-spective?
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Possible Reasons Why Scrum Masters Leave the Path
The reasons why Scrum Masters violate the spirit of the Scrum Guide are multi-faceted. They run from ill-suited personal traits via the pursuit of their own agendas to frustration with the team itself. However, I like to point you to one particular reason—the frustrated Scrum Master:
The Scrum Master has been working his or her butt off for months, but the team is not responding to the effort. The level of frustration is growing. There are many potential reasons for a failure at this level: the lack of sponsoring from the C-level of the organization, a widespread belief that ‘Agile’ is just the latest management fad, and thus ignorable. The team composition is wrong. There is no psychological safety to address the team’s problems, and the company culture values neither transparency nor radical candor. Or individual team members harbor personal agendas unaligned with the team’s objective—just to name a few. If the Scrum Team does not manage to turn its ship around, it will probably lose its Scrum Master. Please note that the Scrum Master cannot solve this issue by herself or himself. This is an effort of the whole Scrum Team.
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The Conclusion: Three Wide-Spread Scrum Master Failures
There are plenty of possibilities to fail as a Scrum Master. Sometimes, it is the lack of organizational support. Some people are not suited for the job. Others put themselves above their teams for questionable reasons. Some Scrum Masters simply lack feedback from their Scrum Teams and stakeholders. Whatever the case may be, though, try and lend your Scrum Master in need a hand to overcome the misery. Scrum is a team sport.
What Scrum Master failure have you observed? Please share them with us in the comments.
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📖 The Scrum Master Failures — Related Posts
Product Owner Anti-Patterns — 31 Ways to Improve as a PO
27 Sprint Anti-Patterns Holding Back Scrum Teams
28 Product Backlog and Refinement Anti-Patterns
Apr 12, 2021
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