As 2020 comes to an end, you are probably considering how to further your career as a Scrum Master or Product Owner in 2021.

Together with my colleagues Uwe Schirmer and Kurt Bittner, I have compiled a book that contains many of our own stories and those we experienced while working with customers and students: The Professional Scrum Team. Maybe they provide value to you. 

Scrum has been around for a while, they say. The Scrum Guide holds the definition of Scrum, they say. The first, official version of the Scrum Guide was released in February 2010. So, how was Scrum defined before 2010 then? How did its definition evolve before and after 2010 and become the framework...

If you have to make a career decision early next year, you will find the industry data the Scrum Master Trends Report 2019 contains still very helpful.

This book is for anyone who works with Scrum Teams or wants to become more effective as a Scrum Team member or leader.

It's totally okay that you spent, the weekend eating, drinking and making merry. That's what festivals are for. But don't undermine the power of jumping right back on track.

How many calendar days does it take your teams to take a "Sprint Ready" item all the way to production deployment? How is your current cycle time impacting your Business? What would be possible for your Business if your cycle time was 8 calendar days? If you want to learn how to make this happen, pl...

According to the Scrum Guide, the purpose of the Daily Scrum “is to inspect progress toward the Sprint Goal” and “adapt the Sprint Backlog as necessary” and “it is held at the same time and place every working day of the Sprint.” So what is the best time to hold the event each day?

10 examples of how to use Liberating Structures during and after the Daily Scrum.

The Daily Scrum is probably the best known, and possibly the most misunderstood, Scrum event. Here’s why.

By Christiaan Verwijs, Johannes Schartau, Barry Overeem - Zombie Scrum Survival Guide is for Scrum Masters, Scrum practitioners, Agile coaches and leaders, and everyone who wants to transform Scrums promises into reality.

Today, the 18th of November 2020 Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland released an update to the Scrum Guide. If you are interested in an overview of what has changed, read about the seven main changes described with some context.

With the 2020 update to the Scrum Guide, three commitments were added to the artifacts. The idea of a commitment is to provide additional quality to the artifact to improve transparency. In the case of Product Backlog, the commitment is to the Product Goal. 

A reflection on four key changes in the 2020 Scrum Guide, why they were made, and why that is a big deal

Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland are joined by Dave West, JJ Sutherland, Don McGreal and Avi Schneier as they discuss the release of the updated Scrum Guide and celebrate 25 years of Scrum.

In the 2020 update of the Scrum Guide, the Sprint Planning section has had a very welcome update. Every part of Scrum has a purpose, a reason to why it's included in the framework, and this update made the purpose - raison d'etre - of the Sprint Planning clearer. Let's see how!

One of the more challenging aspects of Product Management is to create a tangible relationship between the work we do today and the business strategy. Product Goals are an often overlooked mechanism that can help you in this area.

This blog provides 15 tips to improve your agility in a complex world constantly changing as technological advances are driving globalization, changing our environment and influencing society which in turn calls for new solutions to these challenges.

Doing Scrum is not enough! The precious result will not be achieved just by understanding and following the rules and principles of the Scrum Framework. Every day organisations are starting and failing with business agility, praise and blame Scrum.

A Sprint Planning checklist? How dare you: Agile is a mindset, not a methodology. It is a journey, not a destination. There is no one-size-fits-all approach, and what else could you possibly cover with a checklist, the mother of all standardized processes?

From Scrum Master to Development Team members, this set of questions addresses the foundations of a Scrum Team capability to build valuable products: technical excellence and what it takes to achieve this proficiency level.

What's good awesome people? I hope you are well and safe wherever you may be when watching today's vlog. In today's vlog, I would like to share with you the answer to one of the most common questions I keep on getting, that is: "Can the Scrum Master also be a Developer?". Enjoy today's video which i...

Ideas on how to use Powerful Questions virtually and help teams find their own solutions to persistent problems.

This article shares examples of the power of transparency and how it can be used to create breakthroughs in performance.

In Leslie Morse's first Scrum.org blog post she explores the intersection of professional coaching and agile coaching, and the opportunity we have as agilists to overcome the limitations of an industrialized mindset and create space for ushering in the future of work.

On the 25th birthday of Scrum, I have a free gift for all Scrum practitioners... Do you know any Executive who is willing to spend 15 minutes to save 15% or more on the cost of their company's Scrum adoption...? ;)

TL; DR: The Cargo Cult Agile Checklist for Download You want to know the state of agility in your organization? Here we go: Download the checklist, distribute it generously among your colleagues, and run a quick poll.

Last week, someone on Reddit asked whether there would be any other profession that requires attending a 2-day training class and would then pay as well as a Scrum Master job.

As the Product Owner, you are well aware that part of the success of your product depends on your decision. Every day, you must be facing...

With the Covid 19 pandemic, I really struggled big time to create the boundary between my work life and personal life. Day by day, that boundary was getting thin. There were lofty overlaps and I sucked at creating the balance.

During my interactions with my students/ colleagues who play the role of Scrum Master, they tell me that they see gaps in how things are implemented compared to the rules of the Scrum Guide.

As per Scrum Guide – The Sprint Goal is an objective that will be met within the sprint by implementing the Product Backlog, and it guides the Development Team on why it is building the Increment.

20 ideas for using the new Scrum Mythbusters card deck in your organization

Product Owner is Accountable for Maximizing Value of The Product. As per Scrum Guide, version November 2017: “The Product Owner is responsible for maximizing the value of the product resulting from work of the Development Team” Product owner is mini CEO for Product and own the prod...

If you currently are in search of the answer to this question, enjoy this video.

The 2017 version of the Scrum Guide states, "The Product Owner is responsible for maximizing the value of the product resulting from work of the Development Team." But what does value mean anyway?

Agility is a buzz word that can be interpreted to mean different things to different people. In this session, Professional Scrum Trainer Ravi Verma and his colleague Steve Tallent will explore several questions together,

The role of the Scrum Master is a complex one. You are serving, coaching, facilitating and teaching the team all while helping to remove impediments and changing the organization.  In today's landscape it has become even more complex having to deal with people working remotely, added distractions an...

The days are getting shorter and colder. Summer is over and winter is coming. Some people are already thinking about the holidays and the preparations for it. Soon children will have their Christmas wish list ready. The wish lists my children created were always a combination of text and pictures; e...

Professional Scrum Trainer Sahin Guvenilir wrote, "Make Sure You Don’t Build High Performing Teams Just to Deliver Wrong Things Faster".

Every Executive understands that the ability for an organisation to adapt to change is critical. Radical change has forced many organisations to unexpectedly make fundamental shifts to their business models over a very short time period. Those who can’t pivot, fail. Whether change comes from stakeho...

TL; DR: 20 Questions to Ask the Product Owner to Get up to Speed as a New Scrum Master From Scrum Master to Product Owner, this set of questions addresses the future collaboration between the two individuals and the rest of the Scrum Team. The questions have been modeled after some basic principl...

I was hired by a bank to help them to get started with agile and Scrum...

Brief about me before you read this post so you can understand my perspective better. I am a software developer and Scrum Teacher...

What should the Development Team do when the Product Owner asks them to do work that was not planned during Sprint Planning?

One of the most common questions that I get in my classes is: What should the Development Team do when they've finished all of the planned Sprint Backlog before the end of the Sprint?

TL; DR: 11 Proven Stakeholder Communication Tactics - Stakeholder communication: It is simply not enough for an agile product development organization to create great code and ship the resulting product like a clockwork...

The Daily Scrum is the heartbeat of Scrum. It's a key inspect and adapt opportunity for the Development Team, encouraging them check their progress towards the Sprint Goal and adjust their plan accordingly.

Distributed teams are not new, but our global pandemic has made them the norm. Atlassian University and Scrum.org team up in this webinar to explore the myth that agile and Scrum Teams need to be colocated and walk through real-world examples of how products get delivered from distributed teams.

McKinsey and Scrum.org presented a webinar on joint research about measuring business value. There were a number of questions unanswered. This blog answers those questions.