Barry Overeem

Many Scrum Masters seem to limit themselves to team-level work, avoiding the broader organizational challenges where real change often happens. This narrow focus raises questions about the role’s value and whether it's living up to its potential. Maybe it's time to rethink expectations—or redefine the role entirely.

Can you do 100% Scrum and SAFe at the same time? In this post, I explore that question through a real-life training story, highlighting the tradeoffs and tensions that surface when frameworks collide. The key takeaway: it’s less about purity and more about mindful, context-driven choices.

Over the years, I've noticed recurring challenges and red flags that can seriously limit Scrum's effectiveness. Spotting these symptoms early can mean the difference between Scrum thriving or turning into "mission impossible." In this blog post, I'll highlight the key pitfalls to watch out for.

How "Strategy Knotworking" turns ideas and ambitions into reality, and why it's an excellent structure for your Sprint Retrospective.

A Scrum Master's pitfall is getting too attached to their role. They no longer address impediments because they fear losing their freelance assignment or permanent role and negatively impacting their career. In this blog post, I share why they should be willing to get fired.

This blog post describes a 1-hour Retrospective format to help teams reflect on the empirical pillars of Scrum.

A glue role connects different parts of an organization, ensuring smooth team communication, collaboration, and integration. These roles are essential for implementing change and solving systemic issues that impact multiple departments. It’s easy to see the connection to the purpose of a Scrum Master, right?

You can't force a team to improve; instead, create the conditions where they want to. Improvement must come from within, and your role as a Scrum Master, leader, or manager is to make that journey possible. In this article, I'll share questions to reflect on and offer tangible recommendations to get started.

The Scrum framework offers clear rules, guidelines, and constraints. Teams can use these as boundaries to self-manage and self-organize their work, minimize risk, and deliver value to their stakeholders. When teams are relatively new to Scrum, strictly following the rules and constraints makes sense. But what if a team wants to change the rules of Scrum? In this blog post, I share my thoughts.

Making the state of Agile transparent by shining light on problems, obstacles, and successes touches on the essence of what coaches and Scrum Masters should do. Yet many don't use a 'flashlight.' They wander through organizations in the dark, trying to figure out what’s happening. In this post, I explain why using a flashlight matters and how you can get started.