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.

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.

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...

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.

In this webinar moderated by PST Ravi Verma with Anca Tanase, PST Magdalena Firlit and PST Nagesh Sharma, they propose one possible approach that evidence based Agile organizations can take to overcome these challenges. They will propose 10 steps that can be followed in 21 days or less to integrate ...

A few years back I wrote 2 popular posts that talked about the best Scrum Masters I ever worked with. This time around I am going to share some stories about the best Product Owners I have encountered. This post is about Gerry, the proxy Product Owner who was successful!

This blog post discusses client expectations from coaches.

In this article Dave West discusses the importance of Kindness and the benefits agile teams get when people are thinking about kindness.

It's hard to be a good Scrum Master. It's even harder to be a great Scrum Master! So, what sort of things should you be doing to be great? Here are some Scrum Master tips to help you get started on day one in a new job.

OKRs are a great framework for setting goals. Setting high quality goals, goal clarity, and self-management, positively affect team performance [3].

According to the 15th annual State of Agile report, there has been a tremendous increase in the adoption of agile frameworks over the last year. Within software teams, agile adoption grew from 37% in 2020 to 86% in 2021.

Hey hey hey. How's it going awesome people? I hope you had a great week and keeping excited. I have noticed that several Scrum practitioners around me think that writing the Product Backlog items as a user story is mandatory.

A few years back I wrote 2 popular posts that talked about the best Scrum Masters I ever worked with. This time around I am going to share some stories about the best Product Owners I have encountered.

TL; DR: Should Managers Attend Retrospectives? There are plenty of failure possibilities with Scrum. Given that Scrum is a framework with a reasonable yet short “manual,” this effect should not surprise anyone. A classic discussion is whether it is appropriate that (line) managers attend the Retr...

What is an Agile Coach? Are Scrum Masters agile coaches? How do they coach teams, the Product Owner and the enterprise?

On June the 8th Scrum.org hosted a webinar on the subject of using Scrum in Biotech research. The blog addresses unanswered questions from the session

As you know, in Scrum Guide 2020 there is no more prescriptions on how to run the Daily Scrum.

Of late, I've been noticing an interpretation of the Scrum Master role - the Scrum Master as An FFFCDO for Developers - a Fierce, Ferocious, Fearsome Chief Defense Officer!

In diesem Blog untersuchen wir, woher diese Grundhaltung kommt, zeigen, wie wir damit umgehen können, leisten Überzeugungsarbeit und bieten Experimente an, d. h. wir

Heeeey. What's good this week awesome people? I hope you are well and keeping safe. During the recent lockdown in Brisbane I created a video about how Professional Scrum team plan their Sprints with Kanban.

With remote work increasing we look at how Scrum can enhance and accelerate you remote working practices

When using the Scrum framework, the Retrospective is the final event in a Sprint. In this article, we will discuss ideas to use when planning your next Sprint Retrospective.

When talking about applying Scrum and Agile, we are hardwired to think about America and Europe, not about Africa. I must confess I am totally ignorant about the status of Scrum and Agile in Africa. Needless to say, I was excited to be invited to Ivory Coast for a PSM-1 and PSPO-1 training in the ci...

Can a Scrum Team simply decide to abandon Scrum? After all, the Scrum team is self-managing, according to the Scrum manual, also known as the Scrum Guide. So, let’s explore this question at the very heart of team autonomy.

In the past few months I have heard several of my clients said that Scrum does not work and ask me to fix it.

TL; DR: Linking Strategy to Everyday Work w/ John Cutler — ACB21 In this highly engaging speaker session from the Agile Camp Berlin 2021, John Cutler delves into the advantages of linking strategy to everyday work: Motivation, inspiration, seeing the big picture despite working on a small iterati...

On today’s episode of YOUR DAILY SCRUM:  Is the Scrum Master Role an Entry Level Job?

I am often asked how to create better goals. This comes up at the team level, and it also comes up for the wider organization. When we are dealing with complexity, there is no one right way, no perfect template, and no best practice. And I find it helpful to look at the goals people are using today,...