Regularly, we find articles from developers detailing why ‘Agile’ in general and Scrum’s nature, in particular, deserve our collective disdain.

In today's video I will explain the Scrum Master career path.

John: “After covid-19, the world will never be the same...” Peter: “There is no “after covid-19”. Corona is here to stay” Now that we are starting to see some light at the end of the Covid tunnel, shouldn't we ask ourselves how the corona crisis brings change to our software developm...

There is no such thing as an Agile Transformation, Digital Transformation, DevOps Transformation, or any of the Whatever Transformation that you can think of or have been sold. You can’t buy agility, and you certainly can’t install it. There is no end state, no optimal outcome, No best practices. We...

What is up awesome people! In this vlog I will be sharing why the Product Backlog in Scrum is not only consists of User Stories and why it is not prioritised.

Late in the second day of my PSM classes, I usually do an exercise with my students about skills and traits.

Without skilled developers, the Scrum Framework is no more than lipstick on a pig.

In our Professional Agile Leadership training, we talk about changing your organisations hiring practices to hire more of the right sort of people to create the company that you want, not the company that you have. Hire the right people also implies that you will have to, within your cultural constr...

Your Sprint Planning Meetings don’t have to be a chore. Your Sprint Backlog doesn’t have to be a mess. Do short backlog refinement meetings twice a week and sleep a lot.

Part of the role of being a Scrum Master is to be a coach; to the team, the organisation and the individual.

Kate Hobler challenged Rich Visotcky and I to share our thoughts on the article “Commitment is not free overtime" based on the Quora question below. Rich already responded in Kate’s article and now it’s my turn. As a CEO, odds are that you are not where you are now by chance. Y...

The Siren song of SAFe

In light of the new normal and the last 20 years of technological progress, we need to re-define co-location as we no longer need to be in the same room as each other to get the 80% of communication that is non-verbal. If we are participating in an online event, we should try our best to keep our ca...

As more and more organisations move towards a higher degree of agility, they inevitably also move towards DevOps practices like Continuous Delivery to facilitate shortening the feedback loops. Firms today experience a much higher velocity of business change. Market opportunities appear or disso...

In this blog post, we share our experience, recommendations, and lessons learned by providing the online PSM II class.

Habits first and then progress follows! There is a huge power in the little things.

A few years ago, I became acquainted with a lady running a charity for a child who was having medical bills pile up. She was holding a charity bazaar to raise money for the child's family.

Personal Fitness and Business Agility have a lot in common. Both are about bringing small, sustainable changes in your day to day behaviours, habits and mindset. Many people, when they start their fitness journey expect an elaborate calorie counting scheme, that magic pill or an intense workout fram...

The Spotify "model" pops up as either advocated practice (especially by large consulting companies) or some sort of a hoax and hated practice. I wrote this text few years back, but it appears to be valid more than ever. Join me in discovering 10 lessons from my "spotify" encounters.

Like most tools, if you want to run successful training in Microsoft Teams you need to do some homework and some configuration before your class.

With the new normal, I have been delivering all of my Professional Scrum classes and consulting online. I have tried many tools from Zoom and Webex to Miro and Word. The combination that I have found gives the most security, flexibility, and features are Microsoft Teams with Mural. Both Virtu...

TL; DR: The Agile Movers & Shakers Interview w/ Ryan Ripley Today’s guest is Ryan Ripley. Ryan is a Professional Scrum Trainer (PST) with Scrum.org. He hosts the Agile for Humans podcast and most recently co-wrote Fixing Your Scrum: Practical Solutions for Common Scrum Problems with Todd Mill...

For many years, many of us have had strong opinions about the importance of having teams that are co-located.

With the change in business model in the current crisis, many training organizations have had to do the unthinkable and move to Live Virtual training options. Existing wisdom was that training online, just as running teams virtually would be a disaster and reduce the student's experience. ...

Something very close to my heart is helping folks understand the origin of the practices that are commonly used in management today. I feel that only with an understanding of history can we figure out how to change the future. I often talk about this in my classes and help folks see why things are t...

"Scrum and Organizational Design in practice" is my contribution to Gunther Verheyen book "97 Things Every Scrum Practitioner Should Know" published by O'Reilly Media and resumes my latest experience as Scrum Practitioner on how to make a company's transformation implicit rather than explicit. ...

How to make sure that the definition of Done is used properly at a sprint planning session? Continue reading ...

A few years ago, I became a Product Owner. But not in the traditional ways most do.

The contradiction and tension between the empirical process of Scrum and the often-used efficiency mindset.

Lots of discussion about Taylorism. It's not as evil as people seem to think. When the work was simpler a process to optimize efficiency and find best practices make sense. However as the work got more complex and our management styles didn't keep up then dysfunction started. The transition from ...

The Scrum Master tactics series are a series of articles in which I write about and explore contemporary techniques that will aid you in your journey as a Scrum Master. The tactics explained stem from my personal experience as a Scrum Master which I accumulated over the years in working with many di...

I've learned and experienced that most symptoms can be traced back to not adhering to the Scrum Roles. Let's have a closer look at the Scrum Master role.

Scrum is all about self-organizing. But what does that mean? And more specifically, how can Liberating Structures support that? In this post, we reflect on Liberating Structures from the perspective of self-organization.

The concept I describe below is tested, proven, and modeled after my virtual Professional Scrum training classes.

The fact is, Scrum and DevOps works well together.

Many scrum teams use a metric called velocity as their primary metric. Velocity is commonly defined as the number of story points you finish over time, usually measured by sprints. Measured from sprint to sprint, it becomes a sort of gauge of success. If it stays the same or goes up, that’s great. I...

As the name “Test First” suggests, you write a test first before the actual code and keep them running all the time. Well, maybe not the second part explicitly. Yet what if I said to you that it actually means more than that?

Shu-Ha-Ri has been a frequent topic within Agile communities for years to capture the essence, the progress of the journey we embark on as we grow and learn better ways of working.

TL; DR: The Agile Movers & Shakers Interview w/ Christiaan Verwijs & Barry Overeem Today we welcome Christiaan Verwijs & Barry Overeem. Christiaan and Barry are both Professional Scrum Trainers (PST) with Scrum.org, dedicated early adopters of Liberating Structures, and co-authors of ...

A physical build monitor - like a light that turns red when a build fails - is a great way to get fast feedback. Its also a fun & educational activity for Development Teams, as it gives them a product of their own they can apply their craft to. And it encourages a Developer Culture.

Today, on Global Accessibility Awareness Day, I look back on how far we have come as a society in making things accessible for people with disabilities. Yet, how far behind we are in inclusive user and customer experience. Just because I ‘can’ use your product or service, it does not mean I ‘want’ t...

The best Scrum Teams are diverse. Diverse teams are more fun to work on and deliver better products. A diverse team will provide diversity of thought because they  bring different experiences to the discussions and decisions. Today is Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD).

How much have you scored this year? My parents asked this question twice a year throughout my schooling. I was well prepared to ask the same questions to my son, but school cheated me. Have you had a similar past? If yes, then you will understand why I call it a generation gap issue.

“Our problem is that we can’t plan Sprints accurately with velocity,” he said. “Some Sprints, our velocity is really high, in others, we barely achieve anything.”

The organizations must truly practice patience while applying Scrum. Scrum does not solve the problems, but it reveals all the problems that deter you from achieving your goals by making it radically transparent. Patiently work on the problems one at a time and very soon you will achieve the Busines...

Many folks on LinkedIn these days, seems to have a renewed interest in firing the Scrum Master. I have been asked quiet a few times personally as to what will the scrum master do now that we are heading to a ‘New Normal’.

Scrum is a straightforward framework for developing complex software products in a complex environment, but it can be challenging to implement.

It is a time of unprecedented challenge. Firms are experiencing extraordinary disruption.  Productivity is impacted. Delivery has stalled. Leaders worry about survival, remaining profitable and/or competitive in a distributed environment.

Scrum Master's role is unique, and comparing with any traditional roles will limit our thinking and exploring a beautiful journey of servant leadership.

During this virtual event, Louis-Philippe explained the Kanban metrics for Agile or DevOps teams. Although the Kanban delivery strategy is highly recommended in DevOps mode, unfortunately, its metrics are hardly used in our profession. Louis-Philippe therefore wishes to share its value with particip...