While Product Operating Models focus on developing new Products, they have implications and potential benefits for the teams operating the business and supporting these products. How can we improve the interface between product and business operations? Which elements of product operating models can ...

Struggling with unclear priorities, technical debt, or stalled progress with your Scrum Teams? Adopting a product-focused approach can unlock your team's potential and drive continuous value. Discover how one team went from nine months of frustration to delivering game-changing solutions in just wee...

In this Ask a PST session, Agile Director, Executive Coach and Professional Scrum Trainer Jay Rahman answers listener questions and offers advice about their Scrum challenges and obstacles. Jay offers strategies for avoiding and recovering from product delivery failures. (60:26 Minutes)

How to Make Retrospectives Lead to Real Change and Stop Spinning Wheels.

This article was tough to write, not because I don’t have enough mistakes to share, but because there are so many! Mistakes are where we learn, and that’s exactly what I’ve done. I hope sharing mine will help you avoid making the same ones.

In this episode of the Scrum.org Community Podcast, host Dave West, sits down with Professional Scrum Trainer Mary Iqbal. Mary shares insights into a health insurance company's shift from a waterfall model to a product-based Agile approach using Scrum, the challenges faced during this transition, an...

What makes a good Product Goal? In this article, PST Simon Flossmann shares his approach on how to use the business model equation to define a Product Goal that aligns with the company’s goals.

In questo articolo Fabio Panzavolta propone di esplorare 5 tecniche di Product Discovery che possono aiutare a capire se investire in un prodotto è giudizioso. Nello sviluppo di prodotti, è fondamentale creare soluzioni che rispondano realmente alle esigenze degli utenti.

No team is an island. It's easier for a team to succeed with the support of stakeholders. There are four main reasons: 1). Distance from the team to the customer/user has an inverse relationship with desired customer/user outcomes. 2). Distance from the team to other stakeholders has an inverse re...

The usual advice to improve goals is to ask "why." In this article, I give you 6 different questions to unlock more creativity and create better goals.

Breaking down items is often complex, requiring significant creativity and time to think things through. We've experienced teams benefiting from a Diverge-Converge Pattern. In this blog post, we describe how it works.

"PMs work on the 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁. Product leaders work on the 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 𝗼𝗿𝗴." Ed Biden Let's take it one step further. Product Leaders should work on the Product Organization using a Product Approach. Successful Product Leaders I worked with applied their Product chops to working on their Org. They H...

Rebuilding Agility from the Ground Up

In today's dynamic business landscape, product discovery is emerging as a key strategy for success. This innovative approach not only places the user at the center of development, but also significantly reduces costs and improves ROI. Through techniques such as proto-personas and impact mapping, com...

Scrum’s purpose is to simplify, not complicate. This post explores how the framework should reduce complexity. If Scrum isn’t making things simpler, it’s time to rethink your approach.

In this episode of the Scrum.org Community Podcast, PSTs Paul Kuijten, and Fredrik Wendt join Dave to discuss the "lead to value" capability in Professional Product Ownership. (27:15 Minutes)

In Scrum, the Definition of Done (DoD) plays a critical role in ensuring quality and transparency. But who defines this important concept? And what does it even mean? Let’s break it down.

"Think It, Build It, Ship It, Tweak It: A Business Fable" explores a practical, iterative approach to product development and agility. The fable highlights the importance of balancing planning, execution, and learning in real-time, emphasizing adaptability in delivering business value. By focusing o...

In this PST Spotlight Episode, PST Ryan Ripley interviews Pawel Felinski about his journey into Scrum. Pawel shares how he became a Scrum Master and the initial challenges he faced, including the misconception that Scrum Mastery is simple, and the importance of practical experience over theoretical ...

Continuous Discovery is a powerful approach to product development that ensures the product remains customer-centric, feasible, usable, and viable. By validating high-risk assumptions, engaging all team members, and employing effective discovery approaches, teams can create products that truly reson...

In this article, we explore the Kanban practice of "make policies explicit" and how it equips teams for self-management

Your organization moved to a Product Operating Model (POM), and while individual products operate more iteratively and agilely, prioritization and integration across them is still a nightmare. 😩 Aka Herding wildcats 🐆 down a huge Waterfall 💧 So what can you do?

Dive in to explore how the Agile community is coming full circle, rediscovering the essence that made Agile transformative in the first place.

If the Price is correct, the market is yours! Discover the secret behind effective pricing strategies in my latest article on Product Pricing Models.

In this episode, Dave West, our host and Mik Kersten, CTO at Planview and author of Project to Product discuss the critical shift from project-oriented to product-centric organizations.

In the competitive world of product development, success is never guaranteed. This article explores five glaring examples of failed products, from Amazon Fire Phone to Quibi, analyzing what went wrong and how proper validation could have prevented these costly mistakes. Learn how the Professional Pr...

In my previous post on Product Definition, which you can read here, I introduced the basics of how products—both internal and external—are defined in an agile organization. Today, I’m excited to share a deeper dive into this concept through a new video, where I walk you through how we apply Systems ...

The goal of a SM is to grow the teams to thrive, innovate, and deliver exceptional products. Understanding and embracing the various dimensions of the role can enhance the effectiveness of your team.

A well-crafted Business Problem Statement is key to guiding your team toward the right solutions, rather than jumping to conclusions. This article explores how to create impactful problem statements by focusing on the "Why," "What," and "Who" behind business challenges. With real-life examples from ...

Is your team changing or skipping Scrum elements to cover up deeper problems? Learn how to identify what’s missing, uncover the real issues, and find better ways to leverage the Scrum framework for more effective results.

In this series, we will be exploring the key tenets of the Capabilities and Skills of Professional Product Ownership. This first episode focuses on the "Engage with Vision" area. (25:35 Minutes)

In the latest episode of "Scrum is Hard and Disruptive," Todd Miller and Ryan Ripley discuss how Scrum is not just a process to be implemented but a powerful tool to drive change within organizations. They emphasize that many companies misuse Scrum by treating it as another procedural rollout, faili...

A roadmap is a visualization of the Product Owner’s plan to deliver the Product Goal and fulfill the product vision. But in the real world, especially in complex environments, plans change—and that’s okay.

Todd and Ryan discuss the ongoing struggle of Scrum teams against ingrained Waterfall habits and predictive thinking that undermine Agile principles. Despite shifts in workforce generations and management styles, many teams still sacrifice quality to meet deadlines and rigid plans.

“OKRs S&%k, but we don’t know anything better” This was a direct quote from a cybersecurity scaleup’s Chief of Staff, but I hear the sentiment way too often from founders, chiefs of staff, COOs, and others in the scaleup ecosystem. I started encountering OKRs when working with scaleups a coupl...

"We are a team providing services, why should we care about this new Product Operating Model?"

Is the role of Scrum Master really relevant when Scrum has become the norm while the Scrum Masters themselves have not really upskilled or reskilled to support the Scrum Teams.

This blog post explores how Scrum's intentional pressure on both engineering and product management teams drives continuous improvement and excellence. It emphasizes the importance of the "Definition of Done" and the need to close the "Effectiveness Gap" between current and target practices. Ultimat...

In 2022, Andrew Sales (Chief Methodologist and SAFe Fellow at Scaled Agile, Inc.) was talking at the Tecnifor SAFe Day. You can find the talk here. His subject was “accelerating flow of customer value”. I want to reflect on this talk and share how we can help improve flow of customer value in SAFe s...

This article delves into the darker aspects of Founder Mode, popularized by Paul Graham and others, offering a critical perspective for agile practitioners, product leaders, startup founders, and managers.

Partial implementations of Scrum often obscure critical dysfunctions in product development, preventing teams from fully benefiting from the framework's potential. Scrum Masters are vital in identifying and addressing these issues, requiring experience and leadership to drive real change.

Is data always the key to successful product development? In this article, we explore when data collection helps and drives innovation, and when it can lead to misguided decisions or wasted efforts.

Developing your company's purpose is one of the most critical steps in building a meaningful and successful business. Gone are the days when work was solely about trading time for money. Today, employees seek a deeper sense of purpose, often valuing it more than financial compensation. In this blog,...

In this Scrum.org Community Podcast episode, PSTs Paul Kuijten and Lavaneesh Gautam join to discuss the creation of the new Professional Product Discovery and Validation course, aimed at helping Product Owners and Product Managers validate product ideas before development. (30:33 minutes)

Scrum is more than a project management tool; it’s a competitive advantage that exposes organizational weaknesses and drives continuous improvement. Todd and Ryan emphasize that while Scrum highlights inefficiencies, true success requires adapting and addressing these issues rather than ignoring the...

Teams can build a product or feature exactly to specification and still fail if customers don’t respond positively to the product. In their haste to deliver the teams don’t have the necessary information to understand what their customers and users want nor why, so they build.. something. This blog ...

In this blog, we dispel a series of myths associated with product discovery in Scrum. Myths such as “it's a phase in the process and can not be done in a Sprint,” “It's only for greenfield projects,” to “ The DoD stops us from doing Discovery”.

Hypothesis-driven development promotes a structured approach to agile delivery, enabling teams to test assumptions early and make data-informed decisions. This leads to more efficient and effective outcomes. Other benefits include:Focus and ClarityHypotheses help Scrum Teams move from vague ideas an...

In this episode, Patricia Kong hosts our host Dave West to answer more listener questions from a recent webcast about the Agile Product Operating Model! (23:54 Minutes)

Scrum.org and ScrumMath partner to help organizations that are looking to hire Scrum Masters and Product Owners find candidates that have been qualified by experts in Scrum, while at the same time helping those who are already Scrum Masters and Product Owners grow throughout the process.