Resources

In this article on Monster.com, they look at what it takes to hire and train software developers in for agile organizations.  They interviewed several IT executives including Scrum.org CEO Dave West.  

We talk about coaching a lot in the agile world. However, what we are actually expected to do is not usually about coaching.  We do other things. We teach.  We facilitate.  We advise. We solution.  We manage.  

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, Professional Scrum Trainer Rich Visotcky discusses the impact of Capital Expenses and Operational Expenses when transitioning from Waterfall to Scrum.  Rich provides some advice, things to look out for and an overall explanation of the different methods.  This discussion is hosted by fellow trainer Ravi Verma.  12:38 Minutes

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, we take a peek into part 2 of a conversation about overcoming blocked agile adoptions. Professional Scrum Trainers,  Pradeepa Narayanaswamy, Robert Pieper, Chad Beier and Stacy Martin talk about why it is important to have the entire organization on board, how to get them aligned and some techniques they have used.  2:45 Minutes

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, we take a peek into part of a conversation with Professional Scrum Trainers,  Pradeepa Narayanaswamy, Robert Pieper, Chad Beier and Stacy Martin as they discuss some of their experience in dealing with stalled agile change within organizations, reasons that it has occurred and ways to overcome the challenges to get it moving again.  8:28 Minutes

We find this a common thread amongst our customer teams, which can be attributed to a lack of backlog refinement.

We would all agree that “happy teams create happy results”, but the big piece to the puzzle is how to create those happy and engaged teams…  In this edition of Scrum Pulse, Professional Scrum Trainer Nagesh Sharma discusses the psychological aspects of the human brain connects the dots with Scrum. A Scrum Master can be helped by better understanding the chemical makeup of the human brain to create more happy and engaged teams by leveraging the Scrum framework and embracing Servant leadership.

"It's not our fault! The Product Owner is responsible for backlog management, the PBIs aren't well defined."

The previous weeks I've taken some time to re-write the white paper "The 8 Stances of a Scrum Master". Given my sessions at Scrum Day London, Scrum Day Warsaw and Scrum Day Europe I wanted to offer the participants a paper with my latest insights and lessons learned. In this blog post I'll share the changes in this 2nd edition. I hope you enjoy the result!

This white paper contains Professional Scrum Trainer Barry Overeem's personal experiences acting as a Scrum Master and the 8 stances he's documented with an in-depth perspective: The Scrum Master as a Servant Leader, Facilitator, Coach, Manager, Mentor, Teacher, Impediment Remover, and Change Agent.

Recently I had the opportunity to give a guest lecture about "Agile Essentials" at a University of Applied Science. These students, the lecturer told me beforehand, would only be partly interested and engaged. Therefore I prepared for the worst... 

This article in ADT Magazine (Application Development Trends) looks at Scrum and DevOps and how they fit well together based off of the keynote from DevOps Connect presented by Scrum.org CEO Dave West and DevOps Institute CEO Jayne Groll.

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, we take a peek into the third part of a conversation with Professional Scrum Trainers, Ravi Verma, Chad Beier, Charles Bradley and Victor Oliveira  as they discuss what it means to be a product. In this video, they look the definition of a product and how the definition could impact stakeholders. 8:07 minutes

Does this headline make you cringe or cheer? Scrum.org’s Steve Porter and ActionableAgile’s Daniel Vacanti weigh in on whether we should blend these two approaches.

In one of my previous blog articles, I wrote about the Scrum Master journey through the different levels of influence to achieve greatness. In this blog, we will explore the number one skill I believe is needed for a Scrum Master (servant leader) to be effective in order to create change and impact a Scrum team and organization.

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, Professional Scrum Trainer Ian Mitchell takes a look at the Nexus Framework, the Spotify Model and Scrum.  He compares, contrasts and discusses ways to scale Scrum

Agility is important to an organization and the path to agility becomes more clear by understanding the purpose of pursuing agility. The product owner role is key in increasing the benefits an organization can gain in their path to agility.

Many organizations have achieved sufficient success at the single team level with Agile approaches like Scrum that they want to bring Agile to their entire enterprise.

Do you ever wonder what determines our actions? Most people think that what we do is the outcome of our personality, however, the truth is more straightforward. It’s our mindset that controls our behavior. 

When talking about Scrum, people often imagine the picture above: framework and its roles, artifacts, and events. Scrum rules are fairly simple, and they are thoroughly described in the Scrum Guide.

“Do not accustom yourself to consider debt only as an inconvenience; you will find it a calamity” - Samuel Johnson

"As remote teams become more and more common, Scrum Masters must find a way to effectively do Scrum while working with far flung team members."

Most of the organizational change initiatives focus on the "hard" aspects such as organizational design, process or tools. Although those are critical, often other "soft" aspects such as values, principles or culture are overlooked. As the iceberg metaphor: consider them or they may sink yout Scrum adoption!

How Much Software Inventory Do You Have? When I ask this question of people in IT departments, even among senior managers and finance people, I get a variety of responses.

There is generally no bigger organization that government and with government comes politics and hierarchy, yet most government agencies around the world are attempting to become “more agile”. To achieve the goal of agility, many agencies are adopting Scrum, but with self-organization and servant leadership being somewhat new to the world of government, how does that work? 

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, Professional Scrum Trainer Stephanie Ockerman discusses the role that Scrum plays in creating higher levels of business agility. She takes a look at the ability to deliver value with a continuous feedback loop to ensure that the organization doesn't go too far before learning and adapting. 3:39 minutes

Leadership is developed, not discovered (I have found inspiration in John C. Maxwell's various books).  John defines leadership as influence, and a good Scrum Master has to climb the different levels of influence to achieve a good to great mindset.

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, Professional Scrum Trainer Ralph Jocham discusses what the role of a Product Owner looks like, traits that they should have and those that may get in the way.

This is it.  The last in a five-part series about the Scrum Values.

I am sharing the learnings from my recently read books which helped me improve my listening skills. Inspired by one of the tools from the Book "People Tools" by Alan C Fox  here is the first Tool/Tactic for Scrum Masters.

Many times, clients ask Agile Coaches like me to come in and share our "expertise" with them. But sometimes they really don't want our "Expertise". What they really want is someone with lots of TLA's to come and tell them that there pre-existing opinions are correct.

Sometime back I read a short SciFi story in a book named People Tools, Story was about a spaceship conducting man’s third ten year expedit

As Agile become mainstream increasingly organizations are looking to double down on the role of the Product Owner encouraging them to manage the intersection between technology and the business.

Traditional software organizations have diametrically different values and operation from an Agile, Scrum based organization. You cannot simply paste a new approach on top of a traditional organization. Ken Schwaber wrote this presentation on this problem and how to measure its impact on staff. 

"Few ideas work on the first try. Iteration is key to innovation.” - Sebastian Thrun

We are in the home stretch.  This is the fourth in a five-part series about the Scrum values.

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, Professional Scrum Trainer Ian Mitchell discusses what a servant leader is and some ideas on how to be a good one.

It was only about 30 minutes into the meeting when the senior developer uttered the dreaded words: “Rewrite”.

This presentation from by Professional Scrum Trainer Erwin Van Der Koogh from Agile India looks at scaling Agile. 

In this ScrumPulse Webcast, Professional Scrum Trainers Peter Gotz, Gary Pedretti, Fredrik Wendt and Rich Visotcky discuss how they address concerns about architecture when delivering software using Scrum.

"There are no shortcuts when it comes to getting out of debt" - Dave Ramsey

Ken Schwaber, the co-creator of Scrum and founder of Scrum.org, created the Nexus framework and corresponding Nexus Guide to help organizations scale Scrum.  This datasheet provides a brief overview of Nexus and some ideas on next steps.

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, we take a peek into the second part of a conversation with Professional Scrum Trainers, Ravi Verma, Chad Beier, Charles Bradley and Victor Oliveira  as they discuss what it means to be a product. In this video, they look at how you should not define a product based on the organizational structure, but instead on how the customer views it and its value.

Today Scrum.org announced a partnership with the DevOps Institute to provide a foundation to building stronger working relationships between the Scrum and DevOps communities

Today Scrum.org announced a partnership with the DevOps Institute to provide a foundation to building stronger working relationships between the Scrum and DevOps communities

Scrum.org and DevOps Institute are partnering to launch ScrumOps, which offers a new model for software delivery. “I believe that without agile, DevOps lacks direction, as agile is the heartbeat of empiricism and places focus on inspection and adaption.

Scrum.org, which is dedicated to improving the profession of software delivery, and the DevOps Institute, which is dedicated to fostering a community around emerging practices in Continuous Delivery and DevOps, today announced an alliance that seeks to build a bridge from agile to DevOps. It will include scrum teams, agile practices and DevOps. I think this partnership could have huge implications for both the Agile/Scrum and DevOps communities.

Scrum.org and the DevOps Institute are teaming up on ScrumOps, a new approach to software delivery. ScrumOps is designed to transform IT organizations into the next-generation, agile era of working by bringing Scrum and DevOps together.

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, we take a peek into a conversation with Professional Scrum Trainers, Ravi Verma, Chad Beier, Charles Bradley and Victor Oliveira as they discuss what it means to be a product. How you define product and when you should combine different pieces into a single product.