As a Product Owner, there is nothing more frustrating than having to use valuable development time to deal with technical debt. Like death and taxes, it’s just never a good time when those lurking defects decide to unravel.

Have you ever been in a situation where someone is talking to you and when they ask a question like, “What do you think?” you realize that you were zoned out?

In this Scrum Tapas video, Professional Scrum Trainer Don McGreal reviews how he runs a Sprint Planning session with his Scrum Teams. Don focuses on how the Development Team works with the Product Owner to understand what is in the Product Backlog and how they populate the Sprint Backlog. 5:20 Minu...

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, Professional Scrum Trainer Ty Crockett provides an overview of the Sprint Review and guidance on ways to make them more effective. Ty addresses some of the issues that come up when he is working with Scrum Teams and ways he has overcome them. 8:00 Minutes

Hello great people of the world. Welcome back to Professional Software Delivery with Scrum (PSD) blog series with yours truly. This time we're going talk about how to use Scrum And DevOps. I am interested to discuss this topic because it's quite common I get a question from someone in the agile comm...

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, Professional Scrum Trainer Mark Noneman talks about ways to measure the impact of agile practices on an organization. He looks at this in 4 parts, Development, Outputs, Outcomes and Impacts. 3:31 Minutes

Ralph Covino Ph.D., Professor in the Information Systems Department at BU, wanted to reinvigorate the curriculum to be more Agile focused. He understood that having Agile knowledge was increasingly important to recruiters as they looked for jobs post-graduation, and those who had Agile experience du...

In this blog post we’ll share the string of Liberating Structures we used at a Retrospective for a rapidly growing startup.

In this webinar, Professional Scrum Trainer Ravi Verma proposes a rigorous, framework independent approach that constructively channelizes the valid desire for governance. He frames governance in terms of value that helps us unify organizations without getting sucked into polarizing conversations ab...

One of the most common questions I am asked in my Professional Scrum Master (PSM) courses and in coaching engagements is: How do we build trust? This is a complex topic. And there are no simple or quick processes or techniques that will guarantee an outcome. Nor can you know how long it w...

Agile For Humans' Ryan Ripley interviews Patricia Kong and Kurt Bittner from Scrum.org on the Nexus framework for scaling Scrum.

When coaching for organizations, I am often met at the doors of the cathedral by exasperated management.  Frustrated for how Scrum is transformed to meet personal agendas and bias. 

As an Agile Coach, you frequently encounter situations which demand quick thinking to get things moving in the right direction. Over time I have found few techniques which come out handy and always keep these in my playbook in case need arise. This is the fourth part in the series of tools that I ha...

Originally Broadcast on the Passionate Team Podcast in this episode they talk with Dave West, CEO and Product Owner of Scrum.org about how Scrum enables passion among Scrum Team members.

“Most executives, many scientists, and almost all business school graduates believe that if you analyze data, this will give you new ideas. Unfortunately, this belief is totally wrong. The mind can only see what it is prepared to see.” - Edward de Bono If you are ever hired as an agile coach,...

When your product gets really big and you need to work with teams at scale, what options do Product Owners have? In this episode, Scrum.org CEO, Dave West joins the show to discuss the Nexus framework and what PO’s need to know in order to work in this type of scaled environment. We cover some of th...

As an Agile Coach, you frequently encounter situations which demand quick thinking to get things moving in the right direction. Over time I have found few techniques which come in handy and always keep these in my playbook in case needs arise. This is the third part in the series of tools that I hav...

An organization with a diversity of gender, race, sexuality, and disability make fuller products and services.

What can you do as a Leader to help your Scrum Teams to become mature? Discover a 5-level maturity pattern that you can use as a reference.

I would like to discuss Scrum and XP because I often get a question "When should I use Scrum or XP?" from people in the community.

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, Professional Scrum Trainer Charles Bradley looks that the Scrum Value of Focus and ways to help improve and maintain it. He uses an excellent example about how the Sprint Goal helps individuals and the Scrum Team stay focused throughout the Sprint. 3:18 Minu...

This short video provides an overview of the Professional Scrum Foundations (PSF) course. Course stewards and Scrum.org Professional Scrum Trainers (PSTs) Jill Graves and Rich Visotcky give you insight into the structure of the class and what you will learn. 1:59 Minutes

We regularly work with teams that see the Daily scrum as irrelevant, disruptive, and boring. They are often right. Here are three common anti-patterns and three potential solutions.

It’s been so exciting to hear so much positive feedback and interest in the new Scrum.org Kanban Guide for Scrum Teams and the accompanying Professional Scrum with Kanban class. Creating the class and guide together with Daniel (Vacanti) & Steve (Porter) and then working on getting it to market ...

Working as a Scrum Master I asked myself... "How do I know if my team are demonstrating the Scrum Values? What can I use to show their current state?" Remembering an exercise I did some years ago whist at my local Agile group - Agile Yorkshire, I thought I could use a "Spider Web" to visua...

In this series, I want to Introduce some helpful tips for Scrum Masters on “Systems Thinking” - a diagnostic Tool and a disciplined approach for examining problems more completely and accurately before acting. Lights on! Camera ! Read the Scripts, Role Play , Post me back the experimentati...

I’m lucky enough to work with different teams on a regular basis. In some cases, these teams have been doing scrum for years. These teams have become highly proficient when it comes to the events in Scrum. They always have Done software to be inspected at the Sprint Review. They have excellent, deep...

This is second part in the series of tools that I have found useful in my role as Agile Coach – Timeboxing.

You’ve implemented Agile into your organization and hired professionals with Agile experience on their résumé to back it up. Yet, something is still not right. The gains that Agile promised don’t seem to be coming to fruition. Delivery times aren’t faster than they were before.

Work is complex, and to honour the empirical approach is harder. It requires trust, in order to be transparent. To enable the responsiveness that agile promises there needs to be discipline and rigour.

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, Professional Scrum Trainer Chris Lukassen talks about how he used Scrum when working with a group of children to build a bee house and how this experience can apply to any team looking to deliver a product using Scrum. (4:20 minutes)

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, Professional Scrum Trainer Evelien Roos discusses why having a Scrum Master also hold other roles on the Scrum Team is not a good idea and how it can cause conflicts of interest resulting in negative team impact. (2:21 Minutes)

This short video provides an overview of the Scaled Professional Scrum with Nexus (SPS). In this video, course stewards and Scrum.org Professional Scrum Trainers (PSTs) Ravi Verma and Fredrik Wendt give you insight into the structure of the class and what you will learn over the 2 days. (

Kurt Bittner, VP of Enterprise Solutions presented "5 Things You Need to Know About Digital Transformation" at Agile 2018.

This short video provides an overview of the Professional Scrum Master (PSM) course created by Scrum co-creator and our founder Ken Schwaber. Course stewards and Scrum.org Professional Scrum Trainers (PSTs) Stephanie Ockerman and Simon Reindl give you insight into the structure of the class and wha...

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, Professional Scrum Trainer Pawel Mysliwiec talks about why it is important for a Scrum Master to be patient.  He gives examples of his experience as a Scrum Master and trying to deal with issues too quickly and without thinking of the bigger picture. He looks...

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, Professional Scrum Trainer Andrzej Zińczuk discusses his experience working with a Scrum Team that was questioning their need to conduct Sprint Retrospectives each Sprint. He used a football analogy to help them understand the importance of a Sprint Retrospe...

In this presentation from Scrum Day India, Professional Scrum Trainer Venkatesh Rajamani discusses how self-organization is not about eliminating leaders, but rethinking their role in a more balanced way. (51:32 minutes)

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, Professional Scrum Trainer Ralph Jocham discusses the evolution of mindset from a project to product point of view. He looks at some of the differences and benefits of thinking about a product rather than a project. (5:05 minutes)

Simon Sinek in his book „Start With Why“ talks about the importance of knowing why we are doing things before we think about what and how to do it. I think it is a good idea for Scrum Teams also to start with why for their product development. An important point for Simon is „people don’t buy wha...

In this webinar, we provide an overview of Nexus, describe how it is being used around the world to help organizations scale their Agile efforts with Scrum. Our presenters then demonstrate how these real-world scenarios using Nexus can be applied within the VersionOne Lifecycle solution. 

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, Professional Scrum Trainer Punit Doshi discusses the difference between having your entire schedule driven by plans that are created at the beginning of a project vs defining the plans on a Sprint by Sprint basis to help ensure that you are always focused on ...

As an Agile Coach, you frequently encounter situations which demand quick thinking to get things moving in the right direction. Over time I have found few techniques which come out handy and always keep these in my playbook in case need arise. This is first part in the series of tools that I have fo...

Try organizing a party in a “Yes, but…” atmosphere. The result is probably a zillion obstacles identified, but no party.

TRIZ is a facilitation technique to stop counterproductive activities and make space for innovation.

Professor Dr. Sabine Jaritz teaches a course within the Project Management major at the university called Project Controlling. This 14-week course looks at traditional vs. Agile project and portfolio management. Jaritz came to the realization that with Agile becoming more prominent, she needed to le...

In everything we do there should be some value - some importance in what we do. If not, then why do it? Without any worth, the thing that you're doing becomes a chore or you can easily drift on to something else. So we need to see the value in what we're doing. However, as a team we don't alwa...

"The most important metrics are: did we execute the way in which we said we would, and did we deliver the value to the business that we had promised?" - Jamie S. Miller In an earlier post we took a critical look at metrics and at how easily they can be abused. Pretty much anything can be meas...

Chris is a true example of an new type of leader. Not because he is a great speaker, nor because he has a big vision or has world changing ideas. Just because of one seemingly simple skill. A skill which is very hard to master. He recognizes the defining moments when he has to live the ambition. He ...

In this episode of Agile.FM, host Jochen Krebs talks with Steve Porter who is a Professional Scrum Trainer on staff, working closely with the PST community at Scrum.org where he is also responsible for the curriculum.