As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, Professional Scrum Trainer John Davis takes on part 2 of a discussion started by Simon Bourk where he digs deep into what it means to be a self organizing team including 3 areas of focus. 7:11 Minutes

Most of the Agile transformations I have witnessed have started like this: First, a company raises a strategic initiative on so-called Agile implementation. A large budget is allocated and a tender is arranged to purchase Agile coaching services from companies on the market. Then employees are train...

“The secret of success is to be ready when your opportunity comes” - Benjamin Disraeli A glance back at “Done” A few weeks ago we looked at the Definition of Done, which describes the conditions which must be satisfied before a team’s deliverables can be considered fit for release. Th...

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, Professional Scrum Trainer Simon Bourk talks about how we have evolved from Taylorism way of thinking of focusing on incentives to Self Organization where teams make decisions on how they should work, inspect that work and adapt to improve their way of workin...

I hear it all the time. Whether it is a consulting engagement or in a Professional Scrum Course, the desire to modify Scrum comes up frequently. 4 Questions to Ask 1. Where does the transparency hurt? Transparency usually brings pain, especially when you are early in your Scrum adoption....

People don't always think of Scrum Teams handling customer needs. But, for a Scrum Team to have success understanding the customer is key.

This blog post will focus on how to get started and succeed with Zombie-Scrum. What do you really need to have in place? What are the tips & tricks to give your Zombie-Scrum implementation a kick-start? How to make it sustainable? This article will offer you some nice recommendations.

Just as teams benefit from diverse, multi-functional teams, at the macro-level organizations can benefit from diverse practices such as systems thinking, design thinking, Lean practices and Agile. Too often I’ve seen companies, when one of those models individually doesn’t achieve the overall goal, ...

After experiencing my fair share of frustrating Sprint Review moments, I want to share some tips to improve the feedback you receive.

Some companies develop 1 product with 10s to 100s of people using Scrum. And they do that without adding any roles, events or processes to Scrum. They can do this because they use an organisational design that optimises for the right goals. Design Goals An organisation has a design, just like ...

I have read in several Lean and DevOps sources that the Sprint events imply a kind of waste, so teams are supposed to move to a Continuous Delivery or Kanban lifecycle as they become mature. This post is to discuss that is simply not true, regardless what lifecyle each team chooses as their favourit...

Agile practices rely on empiricism for the best solution to emerge. But what is ‘empiricism,’ anyway? And how does that affect the development of the optimum product? In this session, Professional Scrum Trainer Mark Noneman looks at what it takes to be a Product Owner who practices empiricism. 

In their first attempt at attaining agility, Intralinks took a well-intentioned “mechanical” implementation of Scrum - done in good faith and with lots of hard work - but failed to deliver against their goal of greater agility. So, they took on a “Scrum Reboot” and succeeded by augmenting the mechan...

In this blog post I'll share my view on the question "What is a Scrum Master actually doing during the day?" I will use different sources and perspectives to answer this question and clarify the title and describe a day in the life of a Scrum Master.

In part 1 of this blog, we looked at what software inventory is and why it's problematic for business. Basically, software inventory is investment we have made (salary, taxes, benefits, servers, overhead, etc.) for which we are not yet realizing return or benefit (which can only be achieved by relea...

Scrum is often called the art of the possible. This means we do the best we can with what we know and what we have. This means we repeatedly take imperfect action in an intentional way. I believe this also means Scrum is about creating our own luck. It might seem a little strange to hear...

This blog post will be about the question: can you rotate the Scrum Master role? With rotating the Scrum Master role I mean frequently changing the person fulfilling this role.

The Sprint Goal is an important part of Scrum. It's like a burning torch that unites the Development Team and helps it move forward during the Sprint. However, the Sprint Goal is not discussed very often, and in this article, I would like to talk about the deep importance of this component. ...

The truth is, worrying about velocity is a trap: it says “we don’t care where we end up, so long as we get there fast.” That’s just wrong. Teams who measure their velocity but don’t or can’t measure customer outcomes may, quite simply, be driving in the wrong direction.

In this blog post I'll share my view on the question: Can you be a part-time Scrum Master?

Check out this job advertisement: At Acme drainage system, we are building on our success by finding only the finest people and helping them achieve their full potential. The ideal candidate will be inspired to learn and grow, not to settle for good enough but demand excellence both of themselv...

Are you ready to get your Scrum effort underway, but your company won't fund it until you have a detailed business plan outlining the exact results and all the people, resources and other needs it will take to get them?  

True story - happened in one of my recent Professional Scrum Master workshops. I think had just mentioned that there is no "Sprint Commitment" in Scrum, only a "Sprint Forecast".

Like many old, boring people, my favorite radio channel in the car is National Public Radio. Since I live in Dallas, TX, my local channel is KERA. Of all the shows in KERA, my favorite is a show called Think With Krys Boyd. Almost each show I listen to leaves an imprint on my mind and modifies the w...

In 2016, a leading security products company adopted Scrum to support teams working in complex product development, in order to make the organization more adaptive and able to react faster to change. It began with one Scrum Team of IT developers focused on mobile applications.

The role of the Scrum Product Owner is probably the most misunderstood of the three Scrum Roles. As I look back at the different incarnations and interpretations I have seen of Product Ownership, I thought it was time to articulate the different stances I thought an Effective and Professional Scrum ...

Several of us in the Kanban and Scrum community got together recently to build a bridge between Scrum and Kanban. We are writing a series of blog posts looking at this bridge from different perspectives. In this post, we present a primer on the Scrum Framework from a Kanban perspective.

Having been part of this recent activity, allow me to share with you my personal account of my first Global Face-to-Face meeting with the Trainers Community.

Although I’m generally considered to be a strong leader with the people I am privileged to serve, I am still susceptible to making mistakes. We all get caught up in the moment every now and again, and sometimes forget that it’s all about empowering, engaging, and empowering our people. Even great le...

Are you ready to escape the average and become awesome? Do you want to overcome your fears and follow your dreams? We all want to escape the average and the humdrum. The essential step in achieving any great goal is to "START." Inspired by author Jon Acuff's book, Start, I've come up with this ...

Pour avoir un aperçu de la perception et compréhension des personnes de quelque chose, il suffit de regarder les réseaux sociaux.

To get an insight into people's perception and understanding of something, just look at the social networks. This message coming from a company looking for a lead DevOps makes me ask myself a big question about the perception and understanding of the market about DevOps. But is DevOps real...

"Coming together is a beginning, keeping together is progress, working together is success." - Henry Ford What do the Ford Motor company (Henry Ford, Clarence Avery, Peter Martin, Charles Sorensen), the Google team (Sergey Brin, Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, Omid Kordestani), and Walt Disney and ...

Recently I attended training on Nexus at Scrum.org’s Boston headquarters. Nexus is based on the core principles and values of Scrum and allows companies to apply Scrum at scale while retaining the bottom-up intelligence of self-organisation.

Although Scrum has been around for more than 21 years, and is practiced by more than an estimated 18 million people around the world, we are always learning. In this webinar, learn some of the basics of Scrum and how to apply them.

One of the most important things to understand in modern business (and quite possibly life in general) is the concept of complexity. While we use the words complicated and complex almost interchangeable in everyday language, they mean very different things. Let’s explore my favourite model on comple...

Find the books written and co-authored by Ken Schwaber, our Professional Scrum Trainers and staff to help you learn more about Scrum and Agile.

I work with a lot of companies that are learning to use Scrum as a tool for agility driver. Recently, I spotted a trend: if a Scrum Team cannot articulate their Sprint Goal, the problem quite often lies with the Product Backlog.

Ah, the Daily Scrum, so often misused as an instrument of status (see https://youtu.be/i7_RPceEIYE for a discussion). Often the way the Daily Scrum is conducted lends itself to a report of status. The team answers 3 questions in a round robin fashion. It often sounds like this: What did you do...

We always hear athletes talking about being 'in the zone.' But you don't have to be LeBron James to feel this type of hyper-focus. Learn how Scrum teams can harness it.

Several of us in the Kanban and Scrum community got together recently to build a bridge between Scrum and Kanban. We are writing a series of blog posts looking at this bridge from different perspectives.

What makes a great team? Why do some teams achieve greatness, seeing their vision become reality, while others seem to go nowhere?

Exploring the accountabilities in a Scrum Team through a Longship metaphor.

If agility is why your organization adopts Scrum, look for more sophistication in employing Scrum. Through Scrum, teams and organizations create the opportunity of having a releasable version of product no later than by the end of each Sprint, where a Sprint takes no more than 4 weeks, and often ...

Learn how to Maximize the value delivered by a combination of internal and external Scrum Team members as we walk through the steps of creating a client-agency partnership using Scrum with Scrum.Org and Blue Coda.

What makes the software development work great? Obviously, technology, right... Wrong! In an interesting article in "Peopleware", authors Tom and Timothy describe how the most important aspect of software development is not technology, but people.

What is the difference between a traditional and an Agile Manager? Keep reading, if you want to learn how a manager evolves.

Have you ever sat on a bus or plane, and rather than offering the vacant seat next to you to others, you hope that no one takes it, so you might have more space.

Congratulations! You replied to the job advert for an agile position, and you’ve got an interview. Genuinely keen to work in an agile way, you know that the organization must have picked up on your credentials.

In this edition of ScrumPulse, Hiren Doshi, Scrum.org Trainer and Coach talks through his practical experience leading numerous Agile Transformations for clients like Tesco, BookMyShow, DELL EMC, Bank of America, Sabre Travels, etc. on what it takes to be an effective Scrum Coach.