One practice from Kanban that I think is often overlooked is related to the flow of work. Work on the Scrum board should flow from left to right - but it shouldn't flow backwards.

The Scrum Guide urges teams to base decisions on what is observed. But what does that look like in real teams, with real complexity? Let’s unpack the word and its impact.

Procurement is often the missing piece in Agile transformations. In this Scrum.org Community Podcast, Dave West is joined by Mirko Kleiner, President, Lean Agile Procurement Alliance and Simon Reindl, Professional Scrum Trainer to explore how procurement’s traditional predictive approach can clash ...

When I first started working with Scrum Teams, one of the things that struck me most was the Product Owner accountability. The Product Owner is accountable for maximizing the value of the product. It is simple but profound - they are ultimately accountable for the value that the product delivers.

User stories are one way to describe Product Backlog items, but too often they’re misused or forced into every situation. The original intent, from Extreme Programming, was about sparking collaboration through the 3 Cs: Card, Conversation, Confirmation, not filling in a rigid template. Scrum doesn’t...

In this episode of the Scrum.org Community Podcast, Dave West is joined by Magdalena Firlit and Patricia Kong to explore the role of ethics in product management. They discuss why ethical frameworks matter, the impact of transparency and bias, and how ethical decision-making builds trust and resilie...

In order to create valuable and useful products, it is necessary for the Product Owner to understand the needs and expectations of the customer. However, it is not always possible to have direct access to the end user. And that could create some challenges. In scenarios, where the Product Owner does...

In this session, Mirko Kleiner (President, LAP Alliance), Simon Reindl (Professional Scrum Trainer & Board Member, LAP Alliance) and Eric Naiburg (COO, Scrum.org), share insights from the 2025 Global Annual Report: State of Agility in Procurement & Supply. They’ll explore how the NextGen Supply Chai...

If you’ve ever been a Developer on a Scrum Team, you’ve probably experienced this moment: you’ve completed all of the work you originally planned for the Sprint, and there are still a few days left. What now? It might seem like a good idea to just pull more work into the Sprint, but that sometimes c...

The article contrasts traditional and Agile organizations through Galbraith’s Star Model, showing how strategy, structure, processes, rewards, and HR policies shift to enable adaptability in uncertain environments.

Your LLM tool doesn’t think. It’s a statistical AI parrot: sophisticated and trained on millions of conversations—but still a parrot. Teams that fail with AI either don’t understand this or act as if it doesn’t matter. Both mistakes are costly.

If you are thinking about "saving money" by eliminating the Scrum Master, think again! They are the glue that holds the Scrum Team together. What are good communication, effective events and a focus on value worth, after all? A pretty penny, I'd say.

The Scrum Master role is at risk of fading away unless the profession changes. Too many organizations misunderstand the accountability, reducing it to administrative tasks instead of leadership. The Scrum Masters who will thrive are those who grow beyond facilitation, actively protect empiricism, in...

Why the Goldilocks Approach to Context Provision Works with Generative AI — An Experiment with GPT-5.

In this blogpost, PST Joshua Partogi share his personal thoughts what does it mean for a Scrum Master to be a true leader who serves.

In this episode of the Scrum.org Community Podcast, Dave West is joined by Darrell Fernandes to tackle questions from a recent webinar on the Agile Product Operating Model and incentives (44:47 Minutes).

This blog explores the future of knowledge work with AI, arguing that teams will remain relevant due to technical debt and organizational resistance to change, even if AI tools lead to smaller teams. It also asserts that Scrum remains valuable for individuals, offering discipline, transparency, and ...

In this blog post PST Joshua Partogi explains how to use Evidence-Based Management to measure organisation agility and the importance of it.

This post challenges teams that claim to be Agile by spotlighting one brutally honest metric: Days Since Last Release. Release frequency is a clearer indicator of agility than velocity or story points. By tracking how long it has been since the last release, and striving to keep that number at zero,...

Explore the Scrum Values from AI as a Scrum Team perspective.

Scrum.org has launched "Professional Scrum Fundamentals," a new self-paced course. This course offers a flexible learning option for those new to Professional Scrum or looking to strengthen their existing capabilities, and it includes a complimentary attempt at the PSM I certification test upon comp...

In the contemporary digital marketplace, the role of a Product Manager comes with great responsibility, as they must make critical decisions on a daily basis, often with limited data and in an ever-evolving environment. The pressure to select a feature, message, channel, design, or even a combinatio...

PST Bart Versteegen recently answered some burning listener questions about the Scrum Master Accountability. Tune in for great insights!

The Scrum Master’s purpose is to improve the adoption of Scrum. Sometimes that means facilitating Scrum events — when asked or when needed. So yes, that often puts me - as the Scrum Master - in the position of leading the Daily Scrum.

With tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude, facilitators can shift from **manual mode** to **mastery mode**. You just need to know the right questions to ask of both your participants and your AI assistant.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗜 𝗥𝗮𝗰𝗲: 𝗗𝗼𝗻’𝘁 𝗟𝗼𝘀𝗲 𝗦𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗚𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗔𝘀𝘀𝗲𝘁 — 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗣𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 As of 𝗝𝘂𝗹𝘆 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟱, global AI investment is projected to reach $𝟯𝟲𝟬 𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗼𝗻 — a 𝟲𝟬% 𝘆𝗲𝗮𝗿-𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿-𝘆𝗲𝗮𝗿 𝗶𝗻𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗲. • Countries want to lead. • Corporations want to dominate. • Everyone wants to be first with the most advanced AI syste...

Scrum exposes what’s not working—but doesn’t stop there. Its real power lies in what happens next: creating moments for deliberate, continuous improvement. This post explores what that really means, and how teams can turn visibility into action.

Not everyone is ready for Scrum. This blog explores common personality types that resist Scrum ways of working, such as The Pessimist, The Perfectionist, and The Order-Taker, and explains why they struggle. You’ll also learn practical ways Scrum Masters can coach these individuals, reduce friction, ...

Adding teams rarely speeds up delivery it often makes things worse by increasing dependencies and coordination overhead. Study the system first, use proven tools to uncover real design issues. The fix isn’t more teams, it’s smarter organizational design.

Facilitators can use this prompts and phrases bank to facilitate their sessions. The items are categorized for easy access during the live facilitation

In a recent conversation with an executive leader, she shared a very interesting insight: “Leadership is a lot like being a glorified Scrum Master.” It may sound surprising to you at first, but the more I think about it, the more it makes sense to me.

This post unpacks what story point estimates really show -variance. A simple scatter plot reveals why chasing better estimates misses the point. Smaller, consistent work wins. Estimation isn’t the problem. The way we size work is.

As a Scrum Master have you ever been in a situation where you were in a team discussion and you agreed to a team decision because everyone was in for it, although deep down you were not really inclined or in agreement with the decision. Also, did it happen that at a later point in time, most, if not...

The Double Diamond design process model, introduced by the UK Design Council in 2005, is a widely recognized framework that provides a clear and comprehensive roadmap for navigating complex challenges and delivering impactful solutions.

In this episode of the Scrum.org Community Podcast, host Dave West sits down with Tyson Bertmaring, Head of Partnership Success and Adrian Veres, Chief Scientific Officer from Dyno Therapeutics, a cutting-edge gene therapy startup. They share how Dyno applies the ideas of the Agile Product Operating...

This article explores how Agile leaders can enhance customer satisfaction by integrating emotion recognition and Emotional AI into product and service delivery. Learn how to use classes of service, AI-driven insights, and human empathy to adapt faster, prioritise better, and deliver greater value in...

As a Scrum trainer, I get the chance to speak with people from many different industries—finance, healthcare, tech, education, government. Because of my unique position, I get a chance to notice trends in the industry. Here is what I am hearing a lot about lately.

Scrum doesn’t just accommodate how you work—it challenges it. By increasing transparency, Scrum helps teams discover which practices still serve them… and which don’t. Here’s how it quietly renders some habits unnecessary.

Measuring individual cycle time in Kanban misleads teams, hides real bottlenecks, and harms flow. Focus on system-wide metrics like PCE, WIP, and throughput instead.

As a trainer, I have the unique opportunity of hearing from a lot of people practicing Scrum in many different organizations. One of the recent trends that I am thrilled to hear about is that many organizations are - at last! - starting to take note of the importance of defining their products.

Transparency is a core pillar of Scrum—but what happens when the environment punishes openness? In this episode of the Scrum.org Community Podcast, Professional Scrum Trainer David Spinks joins host Dave West to explore the complexities of transparency in unhealthy organizational cultures. (29:13 Mi...

Scrum stands as a rare and transformative management innovation in a field where technical progress has accelerated but management practices have stagnated.

Organizing product groups effectively is essential as organizations grow or shift from project-based models. Ideal product teams are small, cross-functional, flexible, and self-managed. Scaling often requires approaches like Team Topologies, with Stream-Aligned, Platform, and Enabling Teams, treatin...

Continuous delivery is achievable for any software, regardless of complexity. Success depends on investment in automation, quality, and process improvement—not technical barriers.

AI is rapidly transforming the role of Product Owners. Those who fail to adapt to this new productivity engine risk becoming obsolete. The PSPO-AI Essentials course helps you mitigate this risk.

What is a real product and how to organize a product group? Using Yandex Taxi as an example, we analyze the concept of value areas and the importance of end-to-end prioritization.

Scrum provides the framework—you bring the methods. This post explores what it means that "various processes, techniques, and methods can be employed within the framework," and how to choose the ones that truly serve your team's purpose.

In today’s volatile business environment, Agile leaders must embrace a growth mindset to lead effectively. This article explores the neuroscience behind mindset theory, offers practical insights from business case studies (e.g., GE, Xerox), and shows how Agile leadership aligned with continuous lear...

This blog discusses the role of a Product Owner and how Artificial Intelligence (AI) can serve as a valuable "teammate" to help scale Product Ownership. It addresses the common criticism of the Product Owner's broad scope and explains how AI can assist with tasks, allowing Product Owners and their t...

In this ScrumPulse Webinar, PST Ben Day explores how to use GitHub Projects to implement Scrum in your software development process.