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Blog Post

Trust but Verify at the Sprint Review

June 23, 2025
There’s a reason we often say, “Trust but verify.” It's because trust is important — but to build and maintain trust we need transparency. In Scrum, the Sprint Review gives us a way to practice that idea consistently.
Blog Post

Dig for Insights with Persona GPTs

June 20, 2025
Personas help us understand who we’re building for, but access to real users isn’t always easy. The Airport Persona Interviewer GPT lets you simulate live interviews with realistic personas based on your input, like age, role, goals, and pain points. Instead of filling out static templates, you have a conversation, uncovering motivations, frustrations, and behavior. It’s great for early-stage ideas, UX prep, or improving your questioning skills. While it’s not a replacement for real research, it helps teams explore and align quickly. Use it to generate, refine, and stress-test personas, then validate what matters with actual users.
Blog Post

APOM State of Play - Part 3: 6 Guiding Principles for Product Portfolio Management

June 18, 2025
This blog discusses managing a product portfolio within the Agile Product Operating Model(APOM). It emphasizes shifting from funding work to funding products/teams, empowering them with ownership and decision-making. It also covers minimizing cross-product initiatives to maintain focus, enabling product teams to handle discovery and validation, defining work in terms of outcomes and measures, and aligning incentives and governance with business strategy. It highlights the importance of transparency, cadence, and clear ownership in building a sustainable product organization. The blog also suggests that organizations evolve incrementally toward a product-oriented approach.
Blog Post

Rethinking the Empirical Approach

June 15, 2025
Agile isn’t one-size-fits-all. **Plan–Do–Inspect–Adapt** (PDIA) is powerful for delivery work, but when the goal is to explore strategy, test hypotheses, or navigate ambiguity, you need a different mindset—**Frame–Learn–Assess–Improve** (FLAI). Here’s why a small shift in language can reshape the way we lead.
Blog Post

Product Owner vs. Product Manager

June 13, 2025
Organizations define Product Manager and Product Owner roles differently. Company size, industry, and structure all play a role. Scrum makes the Product Owner accountable for maximizing value, but many companies add a Product Manager alongside—or instead of—a Product Owner. This creates variations in how the roles function.
Blog Post

Wenn systemische Anreize die Produktstrategie sabotieren 🇩🇪

June 12, 2025
Erfahren Sie, warum viele Product Owner und Manager sich um das Falsche sorgen: Nein zu sagen, anstatt zu allem Ja zu sagen. Dieser Artikel zeigt drei systematische Ablehnungstechniken auf, die die Beziehungen zu den Stakeholdern stärken und gleichzeitig die Produktstrategie schützen, um zu vermeiden, dass organisatorische Anreize die Produktstrategie sabotieren.
Blog Post

Product Owner - Know the Customer

June 12, 2025
As a Product Owner, one has to dive deep into Product Management in order to create Valuable and Useful products. One of the key aspects in Product Management is to “know thy customer”. Knowing, understanding the behaviours, attributes and traits of the customer can help the Product Owner greatly to know how a customer would respond to a product within a specific market segment.
Blog Post

Can You Move Cards Backwards on a Kanban Board? Insights from Toyota for Knowledge Work

June 11, 2025
In knowledge work, backwards movement on the Kanban board often signals confusion or rework. Please don't confuse yourself anymore and find out whether moving cards backwards on a Kanban board aligns with practical knowledge work. Learn what Toyota can teach us about doing it right in Kanban. This article will be relevant for anyone working with a Kanban board and a Kanban System.
Blog Post

From Tense and Tight to Feeling Right: First Aid for Teams Under Pressure

June 10, 2025
Two topics that keep crossing my path these days are trust and resilience. Trust as the foundation for collaboration, and resilience as the ability to deal with challenges, stress, and setbacks—and to emerge stronger. In this blog post, I want to share some first-aid interventions that can help build more trust and resilience in teams—especially when emotions run high and things get heated.
Blog Post

Still Using Velocity? Make It Useful Again

June 10, 2025
Many Scrum Teams still use velocity, but often in ways that create false certainty. This post explores how combining velocity with uncertainty can lead to better forecasting, greater transparency, and more meaningful conversations about value and risk.
Blog Post

The Art of the Sound Decision: Jonathan Gowens’ Framework

June 10, 2025
The blog post, titled "The Art of the Sound Decision: Jonathan Gowens' Framework," outlines six key components for making high-quality decisions, drawing parallels with samurai philosophy. The core idea is that effective decisions are not just intellectual exercises but commitments to action. The six components are: Well-Framed: Clearly defining the decision, its context, and constraints. Clearly Understand the Problem: Thoroughly analyzing the root cause before seeking solutions. Explore Options: Generating a diverse range of potential solutions beyond the obvious. Gather Relevant Information (Evidence-Informed): Utilizing intuition, data, and feedback to inform the choice. Consider All Trade-offs: Evaluating the pros and cons of each option and transparently communicating the rationale. Take Action: Implementing the decision with clarity and alignment, as a decision without action is meaningless, and action without decision leads to chaos. The post emphasizes that following this structured process increases the likelihood of favorable outcomes and builds trust within an organization.
Blog Post

How to Create a Quality Sprint Report with AI

June 10, 2025
To increase transparency (first pillar of Empiricism), Scrum Teams, as self-managing teams, can make a decision to broadcast all the information that middle managers and stakeholders need to be aware of. Leverage AI to create eye-catching Sprint Reports.
Blog Post

Signs of a High Performing Team

June 9, 2025
The purpose of the Scrum Master is to improve the adoption of Scrum. So, it makes sense that the Scrum Master should ask the question What does a high-performing Scrum Team look like
Blog Post

The Daily Scrum Bingo

June 7, 2025
Scrum Bingo is a fun way to reflect and sometimes laugh at our routines. But it also reminds us to be intentional with our words, honest with our blockers, and respectful of the team's time.
Blog Post

Q&A on Forecasting and Release Planning

June 6, 2025
This week we had a great Q&A on Forecasting and Release Planning. During the "Ask a PST" session, we answered many questions. We got so many questions, that we could not answer all of them. This blog post tries to remedy that and answers most of these from my (Dominik Maximini) perspective.
Blog Post

Scrum’s Game Rules: Few, Clear, and Powerful

June 5, 2025
Scrum isn’t a detailed manual—it’s a simple game with a few clear rules. These rules don’t tell you how to win, but they create the boundaries for meaningful collaboration. This post explores what the rules are, why they matter, and what happens when we ignore them.
Blog Post

Aligning the Product, Platform, and Solution Group

June 5, 2025
Most large organizations already have product teams, platform services, and customer-facing solutions, but they often work in isolation, creating delays, duplicated work, and poor customer outcomes. The real problem isn’t in the technology but how the organization is structured. This article breaks down a clear pattern for aligning these three layers: Platform provides shared, enabling services without becoming a bottleneck. Product groups own strategy, delivery, and performance of their products end-to-end. Customer solution teams take full responsibility for delivering integrated offerings that solve real customer problems. By separating concerns and assigning clear ownership, organizations can move faster, reduce friction, and deliver value without falling into silo traps.
Blog Post

Agile Product Operating Model State of Play - Part 2: Product Definition

June 3, 2025
This blog explores how product definitions evolve in large companies, the debate around "sub-products," and the importance of empowering teams with a clear problem and the ability to release value. It suggests that "product-ness" might be a scale rather than binary, and that the key question is whether a product structure improves or reduces the team's ability to deliver value. The blog also acknowledges the impact of politics and the need for continuous product definition and adaptation.
Blog Post

Keep Scrum Simple

June 2, 2025
Scrum actually has very few rules. It’s a simple framework with just enough—but not too much—structure to help teams work together. It’s flexible. It’s lightweight. And it gives teams the space to learn, adapt, and improve continuously.

Entender las necesidades del cliente para mejorar el uso de Scrum

May 30, 2025
Maximizar la entrega de valor con Scrum sigue siendo una tarea difícil y compleja cuando no se considera el valor a entregar. Para mejorar este objetivo se necesita partir desde el entendimiento de las necesidades del cliente. Se pueden usar muchas herramientas o técnicas para este propósito. Algunas de las que mencionamos pueden ser: El Lienzo de propuesta de valor, El viaje del cliente que ayuda a identificar sus dolores, mapa de empatía, Persona o Protopersona, etc. En el siguiente post se describe algunos beneficios que mejoran el uso de Scrum.