A couple of months ago I blogged about some of the tools and toys that live in the trunk of my car. I take these along everywhere I teach and coach. Since posting, people have suggested additional items that just must be in my toolbox.

In the past years I’ve been the king of procrastination... there's a way to reduce anxiety by thinking differently, this article explains my way of doing it.

Now that we’ve covered the essentials of self-organization and intrinsic motivation, let’s dive into how you make decisions that enable and empower others.

The year 2018 was about amplifying. Amplifying my message, thoughts, ideas, inspiration and passion. My energy and stamina are not what it once was. The journey ahead of me is smaller than the one behind me.

About 40 people gathered at the nlScrum meetup dedicated to physical and digital tools for the agile workspace. Tools that help developers, coaches and trainers to survive in the toughest environments.

In this episode of the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast, Patricia Kong and Kurt Bittner explore Nexus, a scaling framework developed by Scrum.org to tackle just that: the use of Scrum in larger organizations and multi-team product development efforts.

A few days back I did a Scrum Tapas Video explaining a few of the rules within Scrum. Besides these rules, there are also certain guidelines which help Scrum Teams to make the best possible use of Scrum framework to create maximum Business Impact.

In this Scrum Tapas video, Professional Scrum Trainer Hiren Doshi describes value streams, how Scrum can help surface issues and impediments within the value stream and ways to "open the pipe" to create greater efficiencies.

The Scrum framework deliberately leaves the manager role out, thus allowing business to structure and organize how it sees fit. 

As an agile coach and trainer, I have had the opportunity to reach thousands of students that are just beginning their journey into the Scrum and agile world.

In this episode of Ask a Professional Scrum Trainer, PST Chad Beier hosted an interactive Q&A session on how to rationalize your demand (where the work comes from) and your delivery (the people doing the work) to inform your decisions on how to organize your teams and backlogs.

Once you have started to create a strong foundation, the second action of an effective servant-leader is to empower and enable others.

A real-estate software company went through an Evidence-Based Management (EBM) workshop with Professional Scrum Trainer Ravi Verma. Upon implementing EBM they learned how to measure the value of their work and drove its largest revenue growth in 10 years.

The Development Team is both self-organizing and cross-functional and by the end of each Sprint provides an increment that is ‘done’ and releasable. The team defines how to organize work in a Sprint.

In this Scrum Tapas video, Professional Scrum Trainers Hiren and Punit Doshi provide some examples of impediments that they have run into while working on Scrum Teams and ways that they went about handling them. They also investigate how a Scrum Master can help the Development Team deal with potent...

In this presentation at TEDx Toronto, Professional Scrum Trainer, Dave Dame gave an inspirational talk reminding us that that when you see the world differently, you have a different world available to you. (15:41 Minutes)

In this Scrum Tapas video, Professional Scrum Trainer Piyush Rahate briefly talks about some of the rules in Scrum, why they are important and how they can be applied. (2:23 Minutes)

In this Scrum Tapas video, Professional Scrum Trainer Jeff Bubolz provides some tips from his experience working to deliver a product with multiple Scrum Teams. Jeff discusses Product Ownership, Backlogs, Daily Scrums and more. (5:41 Minutes)

In this Scrum Tapas video, Professional Scrum Trainer Krystian Kaczor discusses the purpose that the Nexus Integration Team plays when scaling Scrum beyond 2 Scrum Teams to deliver an integrated product. (4:43 Minutes)

This is the truth. If we turn things upside down organizations can't truly embrace Agility. I would be lying if I said that we can improve our product delivery process even more. A small poem about Agility & Scrum

This case study follows the journey of Akbank, one of Turkey's largest banking organizations. They started their journey in 2010 and now have grown to have 950 people and 143 Scrum Teams.

Most organizations are using Scrum, however, many of them feel like the agility of their organization has degraded, and they might be right! Often, using Scrum starts out as a way to improve development efforts coordinated within an IT division or department, but that is not the most effective organ...

Does a Scrum Master really need technical business knowledge? If you’re trying to break in the world of Scrum, you might be asking yourself: Does a Scrum Master really need technical knowledge? Do they need business knowledge? I’m here to set the record straight.

Servant-leaders must create a strong foundation that helps people feel empowered to take action, enables them to move forward in a common direction despite uncertainty, and to feel inspired and resourceful during challenging times.  The 4 V’s can help you establish this strong foundation:  Vision, V...

William Davis shares his experiences about becoming an advanced Professional Scrum Master (PSM II). William took a course with me (Joe Krebs) in the Miami/Fort Lauderdale area in November 2018 and shortly after passed the PSM II exam.

Many Agile coaches and Scrum Masters believe they know best. They believe teams must follow a certain set of steps and do things a certain way, and if they do, those teams will be more productive, happy, and successful than ever.

Hello great people of the world. It’s been a while since I wrote a blog post here. This time I want to share my experience working with Development Teams and a Product Owner at iPrice group who upgraded the way they ran their Sprint Planning.

When I work with my clients on Scrum in a Marketing context the discussion about the Marketing Backlog and how to move from a big bang marketing campaign to a more iterative approach via smaller slices of stories is naturally a key area we focus on. 

A short story illustrating how fear cripples estimating and how empathy can come to the rescue.

Scrum is based on self-managed teams. Self-managed teams are able to evolve and adapt quicker in today’s highly complex working environments than traditional command-and-control management structures.

In this episode of Ask a Professional Scrum Trainer, PST Simon Bourk was live and answered the audience's questions about Scrum.

At one point or another in our lives we have all experienced a long queue, stuck in a car on the motorway, sat on a train waiting for an open platform. My favorite memories stretch back to that line for the lunch at primary school where it was cake and custard day!

In Scrum, “Done” doesn’t support adjectives like “nearly”, “pretty much” or “almost”. Work is “Done” or it isn’t . And there is a very powerful, compelling reason behind this: the Scrum Framework only helps to reduce the risk of wasting money and effort when you deliver “Done” software every Sprint;...

Photography may sound simple but is actually a problem of complex domain. There are many variables - light, subject, motion, distance, composition, framing - that come into play while capturing an image. Although, with current range of cameras equipped with highly adaptable sensors (empiricism) man...

I’ve been in a situation a few times where I’ve interviewed a candidate for a role. I’ve matched their CV to a well-prepared job specification...

Autonomy is a critically important concept in agile culture, however ignore its counterbalance -accountability - at your peril.

Everyone has a story to tell. Some write their stories in books, some in blogs, and some confine them in their hearts. I feel I have a beautiful story that is meant to be shared with the world.

Recently, I connected with Evan Cook, the founder of Head Down Heart Up (HDHU), a fitness and nutrition organization that has “The Perfect Fitness Framework,” which is a program based on Scrum, designed to simplify food and fitness.

In this video, Scrum.org Professional Scrum Trainer and Professional Scrum with Kanban (PSK) course steward Yuval Yeret talks about the PSK course, helping viewers to understand more about the structure of the class and what they will learn when attending. 

Why do I think team coaching is a bad idea? Don't get me wrong, I believe team coaching can have a great amount of added value. It’s just that I often find that teams receive coaching while they should not even be a team.

This short video provides an overview of the Professional Agile Leadership Essentials (PAL-E) course, course stewards and Scrum.org Professional Scrum Trainers (PSTs) Ryan Ripley and Ron Eringa give you insight into the structure of the class and what you will learn over the 2 days. (3:05 Minutes)

In this Scrum Tapas video, Professional Scrum Trainer Andreas Ebbert-Karroum talks about Scrum Retrospective events and a tool that he has used to help improve their success rate and communication across the team.

Woohoo! Last week marked the official announcement from Scrum.org that I’m finally a Professional Scrum Trainer. I’m excited, amazed and incredibly humbled to join this community of professionals. In this post, I would like to share this journey. Perhaps it will inspire you towards a similar journey...

In this Scrum Tapas video, Professional Scrum Trainer Ralph Jocham explores the difference between the definition of "Done" and acceptance criteria. Ralph compares and contrasts the two, discussing the importance "Done" and how to best leverage them. (4:14 Minutes)

In this Scrum Tapas video, Professional Scrum Trainer Dominik Maximini looks at how Scrum Masters start in their role and evolve over time based on new knowledge and experience. Dominik discusses impediments that Scrum Masters run into with their Scrum Teams and how to overcome them as they learn. ...

Ahhh... the never-ending debate. What's the value of (Scrum) certifications? Is there any value? Why should you get certified? Is it even necessary? In this blog, Chee Hong gives his opinion about the value of certifications and the reasoning behind getting certified.

In the webinar, Kacper Mazek - Principal Consultant at Radically, Edwin Dando - Director at Radically and Professional Scrum Trainer, and Leona Cheffins - HR Business Partner at Vodafone, discuss how they used different tools, models and frameworks that helped Vodafone's business teams with Agile de...

This article on Product Backlog refinement shows that Refinement is more than just a meeting where the whole Scrum Team is having a discussion. It requires and involves everyone with shared and special responsibilities.

DevOps is all over the place nowadays. The toolset is exploding. Companies are offering a large variety of products to suit the needs of customers. Looking at Google Trends, the keyword devops has doubled in popularity in the last two years. Acting as an Agile coach, I’ve been steadily working w...

In this webcast, Professional Scrum Trainer Venkatesh Rajamani fields Scrum questions from the participants.