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A team that I work with decided one day to improve the general mood in the team. A member of the team (David) bought the Snakes & Ladders board game for the team. By playing the game, his goal was to counter pessimism that was generally flowing within the team. As negative remarks about the proj...
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Blog Post
In the book Scaling Up Excellence by Sutton & Rao, they discuss two different ways to think about scaling: the “catholic or buddhist” approaches. I think this is a very interesting way to think about Scaling Scrum. The jist is: catholicism scales by having standardized practices and procedur...
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Blog Post
Are you considered a leader in your organization? Do you spend your day at the top of the tower or in the trenches? Our best Agile leaders navigate an organization and fuel connections that lead to high performance across the workplace - here's how. In my travels, I am baffled by the number ...
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Blog Post
[Author’s note: I will be a Scrum Day Dallas on 27 March 2015; a great opportunity to meet me and other master Scrum Masters. Find me there and let’s talk about your Scrum Master journey. Exciting travels –Mark Noneman] So you’re a Scrum Master now. Maybe you’ve volunteered to fulfill the role or...
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Blog Post
Watch a video version of this blog or scroll down to read a text version… I used to be passionate about Agile Coaching and Scrum. I have spent many years and a lot of money to get here. So it is strange that I am now writing about how all the investment made me a gambling addict. Writing t...
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Blog Post
Setting up an enterprise-scale agile department with 200 developers working towards the same vision will ensure you are invited to speak at all of the most prestigious conferences, but is there a simpler solution? Just get Sam to do it The simplest way to build software is to find one talented...
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Blog Post
Are you part of a Team in the workplace? Odds are the answer is "yes". Do you observe other Teams in your organization doing inspiring work and wonder how they do it? We talk a lot about the characteristics of great Scrum Teams, but what does it *feel* like to be on a great Scrum Team? In my...
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Blog Post
Recently I just got an email from a QA manager who wishes to send his team members to Scrum.org Professional Scrum Master course: I’m so interested in Professional Scrum Master course. I’m working as a QA Manager on Scrum projects. Therefore, I intend to join the Prof...
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Blog Post
As a leader, your own behavior has a profound effect on the effectiveness of Scrum in the workplace. Want to embody great leadership to elevate your organization's performance? Consider adding an "apology" to your leadership toolkit. Once upon a time, there was a young and promising professi...
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Blog Post
I was coaching a number of teams and their Sprint Reviews were boring status meetings and few stakeholders attended. I see this pattern often at companies and a reason for poor stakeholder attendance is that the discussion about added value happens in other meetings. In this post I want to share a l...
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Blog Post
In 2015, Scrum.org will refine the Professional Scrum Master (PSM) assessments, PSM I and PSM II, in line with following objectives: PSM I tests practice-level insights and knowledge of Scrum required for anyone entering a Scrum Team to know how to participate. PSM II tests the ability to...
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Blog Post
Is 2015 the year for you to expand into a leadership role? Are you focused on becoming a better leader this year? As you head back to the office, consider adding "Develop a sense of empathy" to your list of New Year's Resolutions. Do you travel for your job? Extensive travel is a must in my profe...
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Blog Post
With the holiday season in full gear, many of us start crafting one or more New Year’s resolutions: A secular tradition … in which a person makes a promise to do an act of self-improvement…beginning on New Year’s Day. What are some of your resolutions? Spend less and save more? Get fit?...
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Blog Post
He could have wept tin tears, but that would not have been right. He looked at her and she looked at him, but neither spoke a word. (Hans Christian Andersen, The Brave Tin Soldier]). We raise our children and teach them to be "The Brave Tin Soldiers" that express only the “right” feelings, ha...
3.8 from 119 ratings
Blog Post
This is what you might know as the daily ‘stand up.’ It is the most abused, tortured and mistreated meeting in Scrum. Or not even Scrum. If nothing else, this is usually the part of Scrum that organizations adopt and keep. If they do nothing else then they do this. And boy do they do it! This ...
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Blog Post
My name is Peter Götz. I am an experienced software engineer. I started in 2001 and have worked in several projects and with several teams since then. Besides actually developing software I have also prepared and conducted several technical trainings (Java, JBoss, OOAD) for developers. For more than...
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Webcast
In this webcast, David Dame shares strategies he has used for successfully implementing and integrating shared specialized resources (performance, UX), distributed teams, and balancing resourcing between new feature development and maintenance/escalation work.
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Blog Post
I want to tell you about a simple but extremely effective tool that definitely can find its unique place in the toolbox of any Scrum Master, Agile Coach or Trainer. The tool I’m talking about is a set of postcards or photographs. But let’s start with a small backstory. During the last year I ...
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Blog Post
One of the key foundations of helping your business become Agile is the use of empiricism. Empiricism is the scientific approach based on evidence, where any idea must be tested against observations, rather than intuition. Empiricism is based on three pillars: transparency, inspection and adaptation...
4.4 from 576 ratings
Blog Post
Traditionally an individual is declared a ‘manager’ when having hierarchical control over other individuals. There are many sorts of power that come with it. A traditional manager assigns work, follows up on the execution of the work, is responsible for the results, judges and assesses the people...
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Blog Post
There is a wonderful game from our childhood. I think many people have played it. The groups chooses one person who turns away and says: The sea is rough - one. The sea is rough - two. The sea is rough - three.(Children at this time depict the fermenting sea.) Sea figure, stop dan...
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Blog Post
Do you like drinking a cup (glass) of tea? Ever had a tea bag that was torn? Spreading tea leaves in your tasty drink? Then you know that such leaves circulate wildly and chaotically throughout your tea when you stir it, add water, or drink it. Science is somewhat more precise about the behav...
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Blog Post
There is a question that is asked many times during our Introduction to Agile course, usually about half way through when the potential of these techniques has become clear but the practicalities of applying them have begun to raise doubts. The same question is asked by people who award contract...
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Blog Post
Find out with a short test? A single instance of Scrum has one Scrum Team that works from one Product Backlog. The team sprints against the selected Product Backlog items and creates an increment of potentially shippable, or usable, functionality by the end of the Sprint If you want to test yo...
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Blog Post
“A Scrum Master’s practical toolbox” offers options, options from which Scrum Masters can select, and increase their understanding of their role as well as how the role was designed (Gunther Verheyen Directing the Professional Scrum Series, Scrum.org). It so happened that I carefully filled out t...
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Blog Post
When I first started doing Scrum I was focused on project delivery. As a software professional I wanted to find better ways of delivering customer value and Scrum made total sense to me. But as I applied Scrum, I started to realise that Scrum isn't actually about delivery; it is about change. Now...
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Blog Post
I am sitting in in a café in Singapore enjoying a well-deserved drink and dinner after teaching day 1 of the Scrum.org Professional Scrum Product Owner course. We have students from Indonesia, Singapore and Cambodia on the course. We have spent much of the first day chasing the idea of value...
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Blog Post
Jeff Sutherland and I have helped hundreds of organizations scale their projects, enable their entire product development, and thread Scrum through their organizations. For sure, none of them were easy, and each had its own unique challenges. Each had its own structure, culture, goals and strategies...
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Blog Post
I decided to conduct a Temperature Reading Sprint Retrospective after watching the video from one of the workshops of a famous American family therapist Virginia Satir. The concepts and ideas of Virginia are used far beyond the field of family therapy. Scrum is a lightweight and flexible framewor...
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Blog Post
People love stories. We love telling and listening to interesting stories. The need for this is embedded deeply by the nature. The first stories were told by our ancestors and can be seen in the preserved rock paintings. Paleontologists found them in caves around the world. They depict animals, hunt...
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Blog Post
Software is created by people; for better or for worse. That is very different from looking at software development as a robotizeable activity. The agile worldview builds on software development being a creative activity (not: industrial) undertaken by and for people (not: replaceable pieces of mach...
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Blog Post
I have found that coaching managers is a different approach than with Scrum teams. While you are (most of the time) involved directly with the Scrum Team as a Scrum Master, managers are less accessible. They have other meetings, which you are not invited to. They might not visualize their work like ...
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Blog Post
On more than one occasion over the years, I have encountered software development teams that are working day and night on a "challenged" project - both waterfall *and* Scrum. Perhaps you have lived through one of these situations: a long project that is behind schedule, over budget, and over-stresse...
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Blog Post
There is a fundamental change in management happening under out feet that is challenging the very need for strategy. Small changes are happening every day and in ten years’ time we won’t recognise management as we have thought of it in the past. In his the landmark HBR article Moon Shots for Mana...
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Blog Post
Your plan. It will change anyway. Your detailed architecture. It should emerge. Your code. It will be refactored. Your document. It doesn’t compile anyway.
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Blog Post
I work with a lot of companies to help them to improve their development processes and to either adopt Scrum or improve how they’re currently doing Scrum. Lately, I’ve noticed that a fair number of companies run into problems with a certain kind of project: The Rewrite Project. On this kind of p...
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Blog Post
In 1995, the first codified version of Scrum was made public. In 2010, the co-creators of Scrum, Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber, described the roles and rules of Scrum in the Scrum Guide. The Scrum Guide is globally recognized as the definite body of knowledge to Scrum. The value of the Scrum G...
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Blog Post
At Scrum.org, we sometimes dare to talk about our what we do as “bringing humanity to work.” Sometimes I get reminded this idea is more than hyperbole or aggrandizing. This week I was a guest speaker at a small symposium on DevOps in my hometown of Seattle. I spoke about Scrum.org’s take on...
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Blog Post
Recently I was involved in a discussion with Scrum.org trainers regarding the question “What is a failed Sprint?" I think we came to the same opinion and the same answer. And, in your opinion, what a failed Sprint is: If the team doesn’t complete all the forecasted Product Backlog ...
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Webcast
Dan Sloan introduces the pillar of transparency in Scrum and will navigate you through a journey of successes and challenges he’s encountered in his years of coaching and training Scrum teams around the globe.
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Blog Post
I am a Scrum Trainer with Scrum.org. I work with lots of organizations to help them become more agile. I see a lot of bad Scrum. More than my fair share. Sometimes I see so much bad Scrum that it makes me question why I do this. This post is my attempt to remind myself why. What is bad Scrum...
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Blog Post
Today we are pleased to announce the release of ScrumGuides.org, a branding-free website providing the single authoritative definition of Scrum. For the last several years, Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber, the original creators of Scrum, have worked together to maintain the rules of Scrum in t...
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Blog Post
You need quality enablement to achieve predictable delivery for your organisation which takes effort to achieve. I do a lot of ALM Assessments for companies and almost every customer that I speak to has unpredictable quality in the software delivery that they receive from their teams. This is not...
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Blog Post
In a recent Scrum training class, I had a group of skilled and experienced software Product Managers (from a few different companies) who had, earlier in their careers, worked as sales professionals in the field – so they had a deep understanding of the traditional sales professional “minds...
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Blog Post
I was talking to a friend the other day. She was looking for a job as a Scrum Master. Her background is technical and the last year or so she has been working as a professional coach. Not in IT that is. Just helping people to think and grow. We came to talk about if she should include her c...
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Blog Post
Many companies have started searching for self-organisation. That ideal or nirvana where teams can figure out how to work together effectively with limited or little direction to solve problems. Many, including some of my colleagues, believe that this search for self-organisation is ultimate...
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Blog Post
I work in the public sector as an Agile coach. One of the question I often get asked is how to estimate the size of a new project, or a new delivery, as we need to determine a budget before executing it. One practice that has proven useful for this in my work experience is what I call the wall se...
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Blog Post
Scrum.org holds a consistently high quality bar for our instructors. The result is a tremendously mature and capable cadre of experts working together to realize our shared mission of improving the profession of software development. The full list of of our PSTs (Professional Scrum Trainers) is here...
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Blog Post
Does your company culture resemble Survivor? Do you have a culture in your organisation where individuals that help others are considered slackers for not getting their own assignments complete? If you are trying to achieve agility it is imperative that your team members work together to solve ...
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Blog Post
One of the important event in Agile this year seems to be an argument around Test Driven Development (TDD). More precisely, high profile personalities in our industry debated against the statement "TDD is dead". Initially launched by David Heinemeier Hansson at the RailsConf keynote, it created quit...
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