A common question we get asked is how do we get started with creating a Definition of Done? Let's explore how we can obtain transparency of where you are, your destination should be, and what your possible first steps are to get there!

In this talk from Scrumday Barcelona 2021, Dave West, CEO of Scrum.org and recovering Product Owner talks about what makes the Product Owner often the most misunderstood person in Scrum.

La autoorganización es un proceso en el que alguna forma de coordinación surge de las interacciones entre los componentes de un sistema inicialmente desordenado.

Standish Group Wisdom Wednesday # 5 and CHAOS Tuesday Show # 126 is on the future of work. In this show, Dave West joins to explore what the future holds for knowledge workers with a global perspective.

If you are an agile leader - do you know whether your teams are currently operating at a sustainable pace? Do you care? Would you rather not know because you’re afraid of the answer? 

In this blog post, PST David Sabine shares a real life story focused around transparency.

Last week, we talked about common misconceptions related to the Daily Scrum.  This week we’ll focus more broadly on misconceptions impacting everything from the Product Backlog to the composition of the Scrum Team itself.  

TL; DR: Designing Powerful Questions with Daniel Stillman Powerful Conversations are the environment that drives change. Learn from Daniel Stillman how designing powerful questions helps you coach, create, connect, and lead from the 35th Hands-on Agile meetup of October 5, 2021. 📺 Watch the vi...

The Agile Manifesto hasn’t changed since its creation in 2001. Scrum however, has been updated many times. Is the connection between the Agile Manifesto and Scrum still there?

TL; DR: Ignoring the Capacity Check during Sprint Planning There are plenty of failure possibilities with Scrum. Since Scrum is an intentionally incomplete framework with a reasonable yet short “manual,” this effect should not surprise anyone. For example, the Developers are ignoring a capacity c...

Many self-managing teams struggle to reach a truly high-performing state. When an organisation moves to a self-management model, a key service centralised management traditionally played – giving feedback – is often ignored, leaving teams struggling to truly grow. In this article, we share how to g...

A culture of feedback is a critical element of an adaptive organisation. While people have talked about how to give effective feedback, little has been said on how to receive it, until now.

It might surprise you that even those with years of Scrum practice sometimes make statements about the framework that are, well, inaccurate. The Scrum Guide outlines how teams can learn to work together to deliver complex work. It’s not a how-to list of instructions, and perhaps that’s what leads to...

The Professional Scrum Product Owner (PSPO) course has evolved over the years and the PSPO I assessment has become even more difficult! I consider this assessment the most difficult of all the Scrum.org entry level assessments and it pays to be prepared. Here then, is my updated guide on how to pass...

​​​​​​​According to the 15th annual State of Agile Report, there has been a tremendous increase in the adoption of agile frameworks this year.  Within software teams, agile adoption grew from 37% in 2020 to 86% in 2021.  This rapid growth undoubtedly means many individuals working within agile frame...

In this episode of Ask a Professional Scrum Trainer, PSTs John Riley and Ben Thorp answer questions related to regulating workflow effectively and developing a test-first mindset. They provide insight on practices and techniques useful to kickstarting continuously delivering software and non-softwar...

TL; DR: The Agile Metrics Survey 2021 If you value agile practices, it is crucial to know if a job offering or a prospective business partner that claims to be “agile” really keeps its promises. Unfortunately, as agility usually cannot be observed directly, and certainly not from the outside of a...

As long as the Scrum team has the drive to learn and to run experiments to figure out what works for them, Zombie Scrum (or fake Agile) won’t find futile ground and can’t take root!

In this vlog, PST Joshua Partogi shares how Sprint Review is often misunderstood as a demo or showcasing or an acceptance testing session. In this vlog, he busts myths around Sprint Review and how a Sprint Review should look like according to Scrum Guide 2020.

As we head toward the five year anniversary of announcing the Scrum.org Global Professional Training Network (PTN) program read a reflection on the value that this group of partner organizations has brought to Scrum.org, the Professional Scrum Trainer community and most importantly the students who ...

Supposedly, Confucius said once: "Let’s start fixing the nation with fixing the concepts first". Whether he really said it or not, nobody can be sure. But what is important, I would like to specify the meaning of Kanban. Very often people understand it in their own way and when two people talk to ea...

In a recent episode of Your Daily Scrum, Professional Scrum Trainers Todd Miller and Ryan Ripley address a general question in Scrum circles: What Does a Scrum Product Owner Do All Day?

In today's vlog, PST Joshua Partogi will show you how your Scrum Team can save time and make a forecast during Sprint Planning with #NoEstimates & Kanban metrics.

Scrum celebrated its 25 year anniversary last year with an update to the Scrum Guide and lots of socially distanced parties. Over that quarter of a century, Scrum has gone from a niche method used by software developers to mainstream adoption with many millions of people using Scrum or at least part...

All teams have leaders. They're re accountable, amongst other things, for their team’s effectiveness. Perhaps the best way to enable this effectiveness is to empower the team. But how to empower the team? This article covers three easy tips to do just that.

Being a Scrum Master can be tough. You are accountable for helping organisations change the way they approach complex work. If you upset enough of the wrong people you may end up “changing” yourself out of a job.

There are plenty of failure possibilities with Scrum. Since Scrum is an intentionally incomplete framework with a reasonable yet short “manual,” this effect should not surprise anyone.

SmoothApps, Fringe Technology and Scrum.org collaborated on a site that shows steps to take to unify your team to one Nexus, and walks you through step-by-step how you can easily configure your own Atlassian Jira and Confluence products to enable your Nexus! Please review the Scaling Scrum with Nexu...

The 2020 version of the Scrum Guide dropped the classic “three questions” of the Daily Scrum. Yet many teams stick with the practice, even when it doesn’t produce the collaboration that is the hallmark of a valuable Daily Scrum. When a Scrum Team I worked with said that their Daily Scrum was lacklus...

The more ambiguous the requirement, the more difficult it is to calculate how long something will take. But teams still need to estimate their work to forecast releases. Relative sizing provides a realistic method for estimating. Ultimately, your team will find their own value scale and their own la...

(And that should benefit experienced Scrum Masters too)

In today's vlog I would like to come back to the fundamentals of Scrum ... Done Increment.

TL; DR: My Top Ten Worst Scrum Anti-Patterns I recently was invited to a Scrum.org Webinar, and I picked a topic close to my heart: the worst Scrum anti-patterns.

A Scrum Event is a meeting. So why don't we just call it that? Why create a new word? Given the poor reputation that meetings have, maybe it's not a surprise. Rather than replicate the name and pain of meetings, the Scrum Events are designed to replace them and be all that you need. The power of the...

So many times, I’ve heard that round about 50–70 % of all software features are rarely or never used. In the Cloud we can now even measure it.

In June 2012, I wrote the world's first ever article that advised readers on how to pass the Professional Scrum Master I (PSM I) assessment from Scrum.org. It was hugely popular and I'm flattered that it's been copied so many times. In the meantime, the world has changed, Scrum has evolv...

The Scrum Guide has a lot to say about the Product Backlog, and rightly so. It's pivotal to everything a Scrum Team does. But one thing the Scrum Guide doesn't tell you, is how you create a Product Backlog. So, here's one way you can do exactly that.

When you first start to use Scrum you will need to decide which day to start your first Sprint, and there will be implications to that decision. Here are some possibilities and their implications to help you make the best decision.

Scrum of Scrums describes one of the first approaches to scale Scrum and is often confused with Nexus Daily Scrum.  

In today's vlog, we will explore the ingredients to use Scrum with User Experience (UX).

TL; DR: The Obsession with Commitment Matching Velocity Despite decades-long efforts of the whole agile community—books, blogs, conferences, webinars, videos, meetups; you name it—we are still confronted in many supposedly agile organizations with output-metric driven reporting systems. At the he...

Measurement is important, but it's not just about what we measure. It's about understanding why we measure and how we use those measures. In this post, I will share some common patterns I have noticed that lead to using measures poorly.

In this talk, Dave West, CEO of Scrum.org discusses the reality of agility and how it is the tip of a fundamentally different way of working required for the post-industrial age. He describes the elements of agility and how they weave together to provide the foundation for managing uncertainty, risk...

Agile isn’t the right fit for every business problem–it’s simply a tool in the toolkit–one of many.

This latest update to the interview guide addresses Product Owner anti-patterns from Product Backlog management and refinement to the Sprint Review.

What drives you to achieve? Money? Promotion? Skill mastery? Whatever it is that motivates you, that’s okay — be thankful that you are motivated to move forwards. Without motivation in any form, you can personally and professionally stagnate to a point where you become a detractor in a team environm...

The past 18 months have been a whirlwind. Coronavirus, elections, inequality and conflict – a quagmire of micro and macro complexities that impact the feelings and behaviours of Scrum Teams. In my opinion, it would be fair to say that teams who consistently attempt to mitigate environmental and soci...

When we are confident that we know everything, certain that our perspective is correct and our plan is good, we miss things. Sometimes these things are critical.

Learn from Johanna Rothman how to adapt your leadership style for agile success as a manager in an agile organization in this 54-minute long video from the Agile Camp Berlin 2021.

If you are looking to fill a position for a Scrum Master (or agile coach) in your organization, you may find the following 54 interview questions useful to identify the right candidate.