Somewhere between the CEO and 1st line management level, "you do Scrum, just get it done, how much money you need, and what kind of people you need."  "It's just another framework." Salespeople were saying, "you're doing Scrum magic and making it faster." Sometimes people don't want to change.

Hello awesome people. It's me again with new learnings from the trenches. In our Professional Scrum Master and Professional Scrum Master II classes, we talk about several stances that the Scrum Master uses to improve organisation agility to deliver valuable products. 

Are we still on the right track? Answering this question in a collaborative effort of the Scrum Team as well as internal (and external) stakeholders is the purpose of the Sprint Review. Given its importance, it is worthwhile to tackle the most common Sprint Review anti-patterns.

As Scrum Trainer I get to meet a lot of teams and hear of many different ways to do Scrum. Most are valid ways, yet some seem more aligned with the values of Scrum or the purpose of the specific Scrum Element.

In this vlog, I also share some of my observations on how companies structure the relationship between Product Owner and Product Manager in a scaled Scrum environment.

In this Scrum Pulse webinar, Professional Scrum Trainers and co-authors of the new book Mastering Professional Scrum, Stephanie Ockerman and Simon Reindl share their insights helping Scrum Teams develop their team identity as a solid foundation for maximizing the benefits of Scrum.

Welcome to the Agile Movers & Shakers interview series. Today’s guest is Viktor Cessan. Viktor has dedicated his career to helping companies consciously design organizations that keep motivation, engagement, and performance levels high.

In football, the team that wins is the one that gets the ball in the other team’s goal most times. Not the one that runs the most.

This is a common question in my Professional Scrum classes.  It often comes up early when we are still learning the basics of the Scrum Framework.  And it comes up because people are already splitting their time between multiple Scrum Teams or are being told by their organizations that they will be.

I believe there are three things you need to do regardless of the framework, methodology or program you are embracing with your organization.

La agilidad puede verse como una estrategia de negocio, una estrategia empresarial a través del cual las empresas pueden mejorar, mantener y desarrollar su ventaja competitiva en el mercado.

Erik Weber is a Professional Scrum Trainer with Scrum.org and a Managing Partner with HealthChampion, and shares his experiences and expertise. (1:06:17 Minutes)

While working with plenty of Scrum Teams and teaching Professional Scrum Product Owner classes, I observed a similar anti-pattern regarding Product Owners, which resembles anti-patterns of Scrum Masters who are not empowered.

As CEO and Product Owner of Scrum.org, Dave West has collected some awesome stories and he regales us with a few in this episode of Agile Amped. (42:15 Minutes)

Many thanks to attendees at my PAL-E workshop in London on 26-27 October who reviewed & debugged my change story for "what is organizational agility?"

Scrum uses a concept called a “Sprint” to eliminate the risk of complex product development and deliver value sooner to stakeholders. These Sprints are no longer than 30 days in length.

This webinar focuses on the key areas in the new book, Agile Leadership Toolkit- Learning to Thrive with Self-Managing Teams. Peter Koning, Professional Scrum Trainer and author of the book, provides practical, concrete tools and examples to give you the ability to create an environment in which you...

Becoming an agile organization requires changing the environment in which teams operate. In this Whitepaper by Professional Scrum Trainer Krystian Kaczor, he talks about how creating an agile environment requires a different approach to leadership and decision making.

The role of Scrum Master is often completely new for many organizations, and often misunderstood. So what are the responsibilities of the Scrum Master? And what is a Scrum Master supposed to do the whole day?

Hello awesome people. Just a few weeks ago somebody from the internet sent me an email saying that his company already used Scrum but he felt that it is not more agile than when he used waterfall. 

Do you always hear the same people speak up when you present a new idea or when you ask for feedback? You might be dealing with an important voice here. The voice of the system! A voice any leader should (learn to) listen to. If you don’t? It will never go away!

In my experience, the Daily Scrum is the Scrum event with the highest anti-pattern density among all events. Learn more about the Daily Scrum anti-patterns that threaten to derail your transition.

El Framework Nexus de Scrum.org permite el escalamiento de Scrum a nivel de varios equipos, a nivel de varios productos y a nivel organización con varios Nexus usando Nexus+. Nexus es Scrum, Nexus no es un nuevo Framework.

User stories are business needs, not requirements in the traditional sense. They are oriented toward the user and a business need. The big difference between a user story and other types of requirements is that a story describes a business need, not the system’s functionality.

A User Story is the most widely used Agile Practice for capturing needs and requirements and describing Product Backlog Items. To get the most of any technique it is good to understand the why behind it not just the what. Let’s discuss how to write better User Stories in Scrum.

Julee Everett is a Professional Scrum Trainer with Scrum.org and won the Lean In Agile 100. In this episode of the Agile Wire Podcast, Julee chats with Jeff Maleski and Jeff Bubolz about Product Ownership, building a culture of trust and more. (1:03:37 Hours)

Jim Sammons is a Professional Scrum Trainer with Scrum.org. Fellow PSTs Jeff Maleski and Jeff Bubolz talk with Jim about spikes, taking a coaching stance, and Diversity. (01:07:50 Hours)

Just to set the scene, I haven’t figured this out yet. I can tell you my story, in all its ugliness. It’s based on a real story, but it’s changed significantly from reality to protect the innocent. I hope you still find my account useful.

Imagine a project with hundreds of people, a lead time in months, few releases a year. You could compare these as large cruise boats or tankers navigating for few weeks in the immensity and emptiness of the oceans and seas and then stopping to ports very far away from each other.

As promised, here is part two of the three-part blog series, inspired by the writings of John C. Maxwell, “The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth: Live Them and Reach Your Potential.”

Hi Duncan, I took your Scrum Training class a couple of months back. You mentioned if we had any questions, we could email you and I have an interesting situation I found myself in regarding QA’s in our Scrum teams.

I often wonder about the Trustpilot reviews straight after a workshop. Did I entertain? Did I perform? Were attendees satisfied? Are attendees inspired? It matters. I just think it matters more if the workshop made a difference to the work lives of attendees. I can't take credit. The client does the...

When working with a flow-based Kanban system there are a few statements that I would suggest most teams should bear in mind.

In this episode of the Agile.fm podcast, Professional Scrum Trainer (PST) Joe Krebs speaks with fellow PST Peter Koning who wrote the book Agile Leadership Toolkit which was released in September 2019. (22:07)

Hello awesome people. Back at it again with new learning from the trenches. Over the years working with Product Owners who mainly work in large corporations, I see common challenges.

During this Liberating Structures strategy for Scrum meetup we addressed dealing with uncertainty — a particularly useful skill in highly competitive markets. Learn more about how to train and grow the resilience of your team when dealing with the unexpected.

Food for Agile Thought’s issue #214 delves into Scrum agility; we follow a notion for time-based estimates, and we learn more about similarities and differences between Cynefin and the Stacey matrix.

In this Scrum Tapas video, Professional Scrum Trainer Ravi Verma discusses the myth that Scrum cannot be used when rewriting legacy applications. Ravi provides benefits of using Scrum during such a project and how the Product Owner can place a critical role. (6:44 Minutes)

In this Scrum Tapas video, Professional Scrum Trainer Ravi Verma gives advice on ways to manage risk when deploying applications. He gives examples of options he has taken with customers and suggestions on ways to learn and improve. (7:08 Minutes)

In this Scrum Tapas video, Professional Scrum Trainer Ravi Verma talks about his "Definition of Ready for Scrum" when it comes to whether or not your organization is ready to start adopting Scrum. Ravi goes through several questions that he will ask and some typical answers to help you determine yo...

In this episode of Ask a Professional Scrum Trainer, PST Rich Visotcky answered questions from a live audience.

As part of the Scrum.org webinar “Ask a Professional Scrum Trainer - Martin Hinshelwood - Answering Your Most Pressing Scrum Questions” I was asked a number of questions.

In organizations in which agile transitions take place, the ancient English proverb Blood is thicker than water is frequently appropriate. It is decided to adopt agile working, there is talk of Scrum, self-organizing teams, Sprints, standing meetings, sticky notes on the wall, etc. etc.

It's been a while since I wrote a blog, here is some good news, this is part 1 of a 3 part blog series, inspired by the writings of John C. Maxwell, “The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth: Live Them and Reach Your Potential.”

While teaching and consulting, I’ve had many existing Scrum Masters pull me aside looking tired, frustrated, and worn out.

In my Professional Scrum classes, I always get asked about best practices.  It may be about facilitating events, Product Backlog refinement, defining value, forming Scrum Teams, or creating good Sprint Goals.

People always have questions and concerns about Risk management and Autonomy in the Scrum Team...

Hello awesome people. It's me again with a new learning from within a Scrum Team. The Development Team I was working with around 3 months ago challenged the Product Owner about the User Story she brought into the Sprint Planning.

In this Scrum Tapas video, Professional Scrum Trainer Ravi Verma introduces the idea of ethics in software development. Ravi discusses why thinking about ethics when it comes to software development is important and shows examples of what a software development ethical code of conduct may look like...

Your Sprint is over. Your increment is “Done”, you have coded cleanly, your unit tests and integration tests are bright green, you are proud of your work. The Sprint Review is running smoothly. The Sprint Retrospective allows the team to find 1 or 2 areas of improvement without revolutionizing the w...