Recently I had the opportunity to give a guest lecture about "Agile Essentials" at a University of Applied Science. These students, the lecturer told me beforehand, would only be partly interested and engaged. Therefore I prepared for the worst... While I watched the class going through the firs...

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, we take a peek into the third part of a conversation with Professional Scrum Trainers, Ravi Verma, Chad Beier, Charles Bradley and Victor Oliveira  as they discuss what it means to be a product. In this video, they look the definition of a product and how the...

Does this headline make you cringe or cheer? Scrum.org’s Steve Porter and ActionableAgile’s Daniel Vacanti weigh in on whether we should blend these two approaches.

In one of my previous blog articles, I wrote about the Scrum Master journey through the different levels of influence to achieve greatness. In this blog, we will explore the number one skill I believe is needed for a Scrum Master (servant leader) to be effective in order to create change and impact ...

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, Professional Scrum Trainer Ian Mitchell takes a look at the Nexus Framework, the Spotify Model and Scrum.  He compares, contrasts and discusses ways to scale Scrum

Agility is important to an organization and the path to agility becomes more clear by understanding the purpose of pursuing agility. The product owner role is key in increasing the benefits an organization can gain in their path to agility.

Many organizations have achieved sufficient success at the single team level with Agile approaches like Scrum that they want to bring Agile to their entire enterprise.

Do you ever wonder what determines our actions? Most people think that what we do is the outcome of our personality, however, the truth is more straightforward. It’s our mindset that controls our behavior. In this blog, we will explore few practical coaching tactics that a Scrum Master can ap...

When talking about Scrum, people often imagine the picture above: framework and its roles, artifacts, and events. Scrum rules are fairly simple, and they are thoroughly described in the Scrum Guide.

“Do not accustom yourself to consider debt only as an inconvenience; you will find it a calamity” - Samuel Johnson A few weeks ago we looked at the problem of technical debt, and at the challenges a Development Team faces when managing it. Technical debt can be defined as the longer term cons...

"As remote teams become more and more common, Scrum Masters must find a way to effectively do Scrum while working with far flung team members." "We are not a software development company, what you are talking works only for software development. We operate in a very different business. That stuff...

Most of the organizational change initiatives focus on the "hard" aspects such as organizational design, process or tools. Although those are critical, often other "soft" aspects such as values, principles or culture are overlooked. As the iceberg metaphor: consider them or they may sink yout Scrum ...

How Much Software Inventory Do You Have? When I ask this question of people in IT departments, even among senior managers and finance people, I get a variety of responses.

There is generally no bigger organization that government and with government comes politics and hierarchy, yet most government agencies around the world are attempting to become “more agile”. To achieve the goal of agility, many agencies are adopting Scrum, but with self-organization and servant le...

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, Professional Scrum Trainer Stephanie Ockerman discusses the role that Scrum plays in creating higher levels of business agility. She takes a look at the ability to deliver value with a continuous feedback loop to ensure that the organization doesn't go too fa...

Leadership is developed, not discovered (I have found inspiration in John C. Maxwell's various books).  John defines leadership as influence, and a good Scrum Master has to climb the different levels of influence to achieve a good to great mindset.

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, Professional Scrum Trainer Ralph Jocham discusses what the role of a Product Owner looks like, traits that they should have and those that may get in the way.

Respect is essential in solving complex problems and growing high performing teams.  This likely seems obvious, so I am going to share some of the more subtle examples of the value of respect in Scrum.

I am sharing the learnings from my recently read books which helped me improve my listening skills. Inspired by one of the tools from the Book "People Tools" by Alan C Fox  here is the first Tool/Tactic for Scrum Masters.

Many times, clients ask Agile Coaches like me to come in and share our "expertise" with them. But sometimes they really don't want our "Expertise". What they really want is someone with lots of TLA's to come and tell them that there pre-existing opinions are correct.

Sometime back I read a short SciFi story in a book named People Tools, Story was about a spaceship conducting man’s third ten year expedition to the nearest star. The first two voyages didn’t succeed when the four member crew neared earth. Scientists were puzzled as there were no technical issues wi...

As Agile become mainstream increasingly organizations are looking to double down on the role of the Product Owner encouraging them to manage the intersection between technology and the business.

Traditional software organizations have diametrically different values and operation from an Agile, Scrum based organization. You cannot simply paste a new approach on top of a traditional organization. Ken Schwaber wrote this presentation on this problem and how to measure its impact on staff. 

"Few ideas work on the first try. Iteration is key to innovation.” - Sebastian Thrun The Agony and the Ecstasy Have you ever seen the 1965 film The Agony and the Ecstasy, where Charlton Heston plays Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel? Each day the Pope looks up and asks him “When w...

Commitment is essential in solving complex problems and growing high performing teams.  Commitment in Scrum is often misunderstood as a promise to deliver a set scope by a set date.  That was never the intention of the word commitment in the Scrum Guide.  I hope this post helps illuminate the value ...

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, Professional Scrum Trainer Ian Mitchell discusses what a servant leader is and some ideas on how to be a good one.

It was only about 30 minutes into the meeting when the senior developer uttered the dreaded words: “Rewrite”. That was the point where what should have been a simple 6-step upgrade turned into a 9 month nightmare upgrade/rewrite costing us millions with nothing new to show for it and left us with a ...

This presentation from by Professional Scrum Trainer Erwin Van Der Koogh from Agile India looks at scaling Agile. 

"There are no shortcuts when it comes to getting out of debt" - Dave Ramsey Technical debt can be defined as the longer term consequences of poor design decisions. In a sense it’s like any other debt - there ought to be a clear understanding of why it is incurred, and how and when to pay it b...

In this ScrumPulse Webcast, Professional Scrum Trainers Peter Gotz, Gary Pedretti, Fredrik Wendt and Rich Visotcky discuss how they address concerns about architecture when delivering software using Scrum.

Ken Schwaber, the co-creator of Scrum and founder of Scrum.org, created the Nexus framework and corresponding Nexus Guide to help organizations scale Scrum.  This datasheet provides a brief overview of Nexus and some ideas on next steps.

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, we take a peek into the second part of a conversation with Professional Scrum Trainers, Ravi Verma, Chad Beier, Charles Bradley and Victor Oliveira  as they discuss what it means to be a product. In this video, they look at how you should not define a product...

Today Scrum.org announced a partnership with the DevOps Institute to provide a foundation to building stronger working relationships between the Scrum and DevOps communities

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, we take a peek into a conversation with Professional Scrum Trainers, Ravi Verma, Chad Beier, Charles Bradley and Victor Oliveira as they discuss what it means to be a product. How you define product and when you should combine different pieces into a single ...

When is a Scrum Team successful? Which criteria do you use to determine if a Scrum Team is doing a great job? From my point of view a Scrum Team is doing a great job if they deliver an increment with the highest valued features, with the best possible quality and they continuously strive for improv...

The Scrum Guide talks about coaching as a part of the Scrum Master role.  First, let's define what coaching is.  You can find many definitions, and here is how I describe coaching.

Over the last weeks I've been working on a paper about the role of a Business Analysts within Large Scale Scrum, and I thought I'd write a little post on it too, here it goes. On the website of the IIBA you can find their definition of a Business Analyst. a liaison among stakeholders in order ...

The blog post covers 8 preferred stances of a Scrum Master and common misunderstandings.

In this video as part of Scrum 2017 in The Netherlands, Scrum.org founder and co-creator of Scrum, Ken Schwaber is present for the first time via hologram to talk about how Agile delivery helps drive innovation and efficiency. Ken speaks to and takes questions from the audience.

I've recently been involved with several Scrum Teams that are struggling to have the right level of detail in their Product Backlog items. Some symptoms: difficulty during Sprint Planning sessions, a massive or very small Product Backlog, or a lack of understanding during a Sprint. All of the teams ...

The Scrum Values are easy to remember, but it can be difficult to understand what they mean, how to apply them, and how to recognize them in teams and individuals. These values are essential to maximize the benefits of Scrum. In this article, we look at how courage is essential in solving complex pr...

As I get older, I'm turning into one of those annoying nostalgic-types who reminisces too much. Things were better back in the day, son. We had standards see, and there was less of this "dumbing-down". Yip.

In this podcast, recorded at the Agile New Zealand conference in November 2016, Shane Hastie, InfoQ Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to David West, CEO and Product Owner of Scrum.org, about the history of Scrum, the importance of empiricism and improving the profession of software delivery.

Having ‘agile expertise’ is in high demand these days – it seems everywhere I turn there are companies and recruiters looking for agile experts. Agile knowledge is important, but the expertise of being an effective change agent is even more important.

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, Professional Scrum Trainer, Ravi Verma discusses what why making small bets over time is much less risky than one large bet. He addresses the economic costs of a Scrum Team and why breaking work into smaller Sprints can help reduce the risk of money and time...

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, Professional Scrum Trainer, Charles Bradley discusses ways that a Product Owner can spread their knowledge across multiple Scrum Teams. He looks at a few techniques and refinement activities.

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, Professional Scrum Trainer, Chuck Suscheck discusses his thoughts on vertically slicing architecture with an analogy on human anatomy.

Dave West, Product Owner & CEO for scrum.org discusses his road towards becoming a Product Owner (which includes a well known three letter acronym), we go in to the three most important things a Product Owner should master.

The Scrum Values are easy to remember, but it can be difficult to understand what they mean, how to apply them, and how to recognize them in teams and individuals. These values are essential to maximize the benefits of Scrum.  In this post, we look at how focus is essential in order to get anything...

The Scrum Values are easy to remember, but it can be difficult to understand what they mean, how to apply them, and how to recognize them in teams and individuals. These values are essential to maximize the benefits of Scrum.  In this post, we see how openness is crucial when we are dealing with co...