Interview after the 3 day training with 3 students, asking them 3 questions: 1. "Why did you take this class?" 2. "What was your personal highlight of the class?" 3. "What will you do differently on Monday?" My final quote *should* say: "Only tests let you sleep like a baby at night" Peter ...

Working with a range of people, it is interesting to observe how many are aiming to “Do Scrum” or “Get Agile”. The issue with this thinking is that people are focusing on the transport, not the destination.

I'm sure you've heard of Waterfall, ever heard of Water-Scrum-Fall? Ever heard someone in a product development group tell you “they use a hybrid-agile approach”? There’s a million ways people continue using a traditional, phase gated, software development lifecycle approach and marry it with an agi...

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail! Huh? I don’t know; it’s something my father always said. I think he meant that if you don’t have the right tool for the job, you’ll use the tool you have. And if it’s the wrong tool, the job will suffer. Agile frameworks are too...

As we approach the mid-year point in our jobs, I often find that knowledge workplaces have a tendency to slow down a bit and lose some steam - even the ones that leverage Scrum. Early-year milestones have been met (sometimes at an unsustainable pace), Teams are in 'recovery mode', and forecasts for ...

Scrum.org, the home of scrum, and Pragmatic Marketing, the leader in product management and marketing, discuss how to resolve the tension and avoid getting into a cage fight between the two roles.

In this interview, Dave West, CEO for Scrum.org talks about the history of Scrum as it has turned 21 years old, why Scrum has been successful and a small look into the future of Scrum.

Fifteen crucial responsibilities of an entrepreneurial Product owner. Maximize value & Optimizer, The Product Vision, Value, and Validation, Return of Investment, Reducing the Total Cost of Ownership, Stakeholder Engagement and Collaboration, Business Agility.

In this MSDN Channel 9 interview, Scrum.org Professional Scrum Trainer Gunther Verheyen talks about the history of Scrum and how to successfully apply Scrum in an organization.

In this AppMasters podcast interview, Dave West, Scrum.org CEO discusses how he met Ken Schwaber, how he has used Scrum in projects and a little insight into his personal life.  

The 3 Scrum Roles are: The Product Owner The Scrum Master The Development team The various levels of services in the Scrum roles are: Scrum Master serves the Development Team Development Team serves the Product...

At a recent course, one of my attendees talked about his use of a "to delete" status for items in his Product Backlog. Where items had been in his Product Backlog for more than 3 months he tagged them as "to delete". He would then review this sub list with stakeholders as part of the ongoing Product...

In this talk, PST Ralph Jocham introduces your to The Core Protocols.

The role of a Scrum Master is one of many stances and diversity. A great Scrum Master is aware of them and knows when and how to apply them, depending on situation and context. Everything with the purpose of helping people understand the spirit of Scrum and hereby apply the Scrum framework better.

Over the past 10 years I have worked with many organisations and helped them to use Scrum to create innovative and sometimes market leading Products. I have seen a lot of Scrum during this time, much of it done well, but some of it done badly. Here are the 5 common anti patterns that I see with team...

Scaling Scrum. Agile at Scale. Enterprise Everything. Everyone is using the Scaled Agile Framework SAFe. Scaling, Scaling, Scaling. If you’re working in product development, you’ve probably had a few conversations on this topic. It seems to be all the rage right now. In this blog post I hope to len...

The most common question I am asked at my courses is - what makes a good Scrum Master? I always answer this question with a story from my own experience working with Scrum Masters (good and bad) over the years. The 2 best Scrum Masters I ever had the pleasure of working with had a lot in common. ...

The role of a Scrum Master is one of many stances and diversity. A great Scrum Master is aware of them and knows when and how to apply them, depending on situation and context. Everything with the purpose of helping people understand and apply the Scrum framework better.

In the past few months I've been working with a company whose products are most hardware, circuit boards, and firmware. There is some software, but it's "less than 10% of the cost and time required to release new product." So the purpose in bringing me in was speed up the hardware side of things, an...

When do you estimate and what do you do when you need more time for discussion? In this third post of this series on Product Backlog refinement you will find some good practices on how to facilitate an effective and efficient refinement meeting.

The most common question I am asked at my courses is - what makes a good Scrum Master? I always answer this question with a story from my own experience working with Scrum Masters (good and bad) over the years. The 2 best Scrum Masters I ever had the pleasure of working with had a lot in common. ...

Last week I participated in a Product Owner course facilitated by Gunther Verheyen. What triggered me was the part where we discussed the difference between having a project- or product focus. I've seen many organizations, Scrum Teams and especially Product Owners struggle with finding the balance. ...

In this blog series, you will get some good practices and guidance for having better, more effective and more vivid Product Backlog refinement

Yes, of course it is! Scrum is a framework to help teams and organisations on their path to agility, but it is by no means the only way to be agile. Back before I knew about Scrum, I worked on projects that were agile. Back then we didn’t really know what agility was all about, but that didn’t me...

One of the most challenging activities in Scrum is Product Backlog Refinement. During training courses I get many questions on this activity. What do you do during Product Backlog refinement? How do you prevent discussions going off track or in too much detail? Who should be there? When do you estim...

2012 In March 2012, Ken Schwaber and I felt there was room for a new Scrum event in the Netherlands. We felt the need for an event that was a platform for people practicing Scrum. We wanted to crave space to talk, connect, share ideas, experiences and challenges on Scrum. On 11 July 2012 the...

When facilitating a Scrum Master training, the Sprint Goal is a topic that often causes a good discussion. Participants question the background, purpose and advantages of using a Sprint Goal. In this blog post I'll describe the concept in more detail, explain why using a Sprint Goal is important and...

Question from a budding Scrum Master, who is transitioning from a background as a traditional project manager: “In order to promote team bonding and self-organization, from now on I am going to try something new with the team. In the sprint planning meeting, instead of me breaking down the tasks ...

Last year, I was facilitating a workshop on Agile and began the conversation, as usual with introductions. I asked each attendee what was the most important burning question that brought them to the workshop. One of the attendees replied

This week I facilitated a Scrum Master training in which we gathered the most common pitfalls of the Scrum events. It resulted in a nice overview with lots of recognizable pitfalls. In this blog post I'll share the results with you, completed with some ideas of my own. As you will see, it's only a b...

This video captures the feedback from the students on the Professional Scrum Foundation workshop facilitated in India. The students share their learnings on how writing granular user stories, story splitting, defining clear Scrum roles helps with agility. They talk about values and principles like s...

Scrum is a framework within which people can address complex problems, and productively and creatively develop products of the highest possible value. It's tool organizations can use to increase their agility. Within Scrum, self-organizing, cross-functional, and highly productive teams do the wor...

This blog is the feedback on Scaled Professional Scrum using Nexus Framework and over 50 practices from the participants who attended my SPS workshop in India. {"preview_thumbnail":"/drupal/s3fs-public/styles/video_embed_wysiwyg_preview/public/video_thumbnails/hC6H5MtsClY.jpg?itok=u_s1d7fm","vide...

I am sure it would not come as a surprise, but our website (www.scrum.org) needs a major refresh. The current implementation has become out of date and less and less supportive of our vision and mission. As a team, we quickly realized that we do not possess the resources needed to take on a full web...

The Scrum Master is responsible for ensuring Scrum is understood and enacted. Scrum Masters do this by ensuring that the Scrum Team adheres to Scrum theory, practices, and rules. 
The Scrum Master is a servant-leader for the Scrum Team. The Scrum Master helps those outside the Scrum Team understand ...

Recently I wrote an article about the characteristics of a great Product Owner. It gave me the idea to do the same for the Development Team and Scrum Master. This blog post focuses on the Development Team; I'll describe the characteristics, skills and conditions. Great Development Teams... ...

Nexus and SPS have been online for a while. There are organisations around the world giving it a try and, of course, there are questions about how to set up and begin using Nexus in an organisation. These are some practical tips that helped me and my clients on our journey. Start with Scrum ...

Pradeepa Narayanaswamy shares her insights into the keys of agile testing including understanding the agile testing mindset and goals. She discusses the responsibilities of a tester in an agile team and describes the diverse skill sets required in those teams.

After downloading and studying the Nexus guide, you have questions about how the Nexus Integration Team actually works, so here are some keys to understand the role and its fit within the Nexus. It’s all about solving dependencies Nexus is focused is solving the primary source of issues and ...

During a recent Product Owner training I gave the participants the assignment to complete the sentence "A great Product Owner..." The result was a nice overview of characteristics, skills and conditions necessary to fulfill this role in a great manner. In this blog post I'll share the result, comple...

Last week I attended a workshop provided by Patrick Verheij, who is a board member of the Agile Consortium. Patrick explained the foundation of Agile and shared a characteristic of "Agile DNA" within organizations

What is a 'Product Owner'? Scrum is a framework for product development, and specifically well suited for complex products. The Product Owner is the role in Scrum to bring the business perspective to the team(s) creating and sustaining a software product. The Product Owner acts as the single re...

Recently I had a discussion with a developer about the amount of meetings we're having nowadays within organisations. Part of it was related to Scrum, "Since the introduction of Scrum all I do is attend meetings". And part of it wasn't, "Every week I need to discuss how to improve the productivity o...

The domination of software development by a paradigm of industrial views and beliefs, a copy-paste of old manufacturing routines and theories, got us in a crisis. The attempts to overcome this crisis by fortifying the industrial approach are without result. The flaws and problems are huge, known and...

Within companies that use Scrum properly, the organization is built around fixed, cross-functional, self-organizing teams who are given the freedom and responsibility to think of a strategy they believe will result in the best product. Everyone around the Development Team is focused on supporti...

Comme on l'a vu durant la présentation, l'Agilité a des impacts à tous les niveaux et touche même les bases de données. Pour être capable de travailler efficacement dans un contexte Agile, le DBA doit ajuster sa manière de travailler autant en conception, que durant la réalisation ainsi qu'au moment...

PST Simon Reindl discusses how he has guided organizations through lasting change, what makes it complex and how to overcome the complexity.

At some occasions we stop to look back. We see the trail we left behind, the bigger picture, the impact we made. Small or big. We think of the impact we hoped to make, small or big. A humbling experience before making our way forward again. Early 2011, nearly five years ago, Scrum.org launched th...

This is a list of 10 questions a Scrum Master may ask a Product Owner, in order to help coach them in their role.

This blog post talks about the issues caused by unlimited budgets.