Organizations who don’t understand why they want to become Agile also often take the wrong path to get there. Agility requires empowering teams and helping them make decisions on their own, learning from their experiences as they go. They must organize themselves, yet they often have Agile practices forced upon them.

I’m currently helping a small software shop within a government organization where multiple Scrum Teams are serving the same cause. They are building one product that has several sub-systems, which sometimes need to be integrated.

According to the Scrum Guide, the Scrum Master is responsible for ensuring Scrum is understood and enacted. Scrum Masters do this by ensuring that the Scrum Team adheres to Scrum theory, practices, and rules.

I’ve spent a lot of time looking at how organizations are using DevOps to improve their software delivery cycle time, their ability to innovate, and their ability to improve quality.

This summer, during the Olympics, the Euro Soccer Championships and the Tour the France, while cheering  in front of the tv, I noticed something in the way teams perform. And it worried me.

Agile approaches, including Scrum, are empirical approaches to delivering software and business value.

On July 7th the Scrum community gathered in Amsterdam (The Netherlands) for the 5th edition of Scrum Day Europe. This year's theme was 'the next iteration'.

Throughout the Agile Alliance 2016 conference, I was struck by a recurring feeling that many people don’t understand what the Sprint Review is.

More and more large companies in traditional industries are singing the Agile song. I have noticed, though, that there seems to be a general misconception that Agile is onlyabout creating happy teams.

Today I changed my Twitter and LinkedIn profile. I removed Agile Coach and replaced it with Scrum Master. 100% Scrum Master.

I’ve been working in software for a long time, and for most of that time I’ve been trying to find better ways of delivering working software.

If this post resonates with you, please consider spreading the message so we can educate and inspire others.

If this post resonates with you, please consider spreading the message so we can educate and inspire the entire professional world together.

What really makes a transformation of your organization successful? Which elements should be in place? Which complicated framework for scaling agile should I choose?

In this little blog I want to share a simple canvas that I use to kick-off agile adoption and answer the following questions:

Today we re-structure our Professional Scrum Master assessment (PSM) and certification products changing the focus of PSM II and introducing PSM III.

During the 5th edition of Scrum Day Europe, Laurens and I facilitated a workshop on how to “Add Visual Flavor to Your Organization Transformation with Videoscribe.”

These days scaling Scrum is a hot topic. How can I use Scrum to deliver a big product with multiple teams? The most common approach I see at my customers is scaling Scrum by adding more Scrum teams with a Product Owner and Scrum Master per team.

If you’ve learned Scrum and tried to implement it in any large organization you’ve likely run into a few issues. Getting dedicated people on your team is hard. Building cross-functional teams is really hard.

This week, co-creators of Scrum, Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland, released a new version of the Scrum Guide

As Agility in Mind launch our new training course designed to help distributed teams work effectively, we share our experiences on the

Recently I came across a post by Mike Cohn “Incentives and Deterrents for Starting Daily Scrum on Time”, on Linkedin

Today Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland, the creators of Scrum delivered a webinar on their latest update to the Scrum Guide.  The update was a simple one, adding the 5 values of Scrum to the Guide.

The purpose of Scrum is to create a potentially shippable Increment by the end of a Sprint.  This is so important that people now use many terms to describe this Scrum artifact.  Working.  Releasable.

In my last post, I explained the pattern of the evolution of the Product Owner. This blog is about the evolution pattern of a Scrum Master.

What is a good Product Owner and am I the right person to fill in this role? If you have ever struggled with this question, you should probably keep reading.

Interview after the 3 day training with 3 students, asking them 3 questions: 1. "Why did you take this class?" 2. "What was your personal highlight of the class?" 3. "What will you do differently on Monday?"

Working with a range of people, it is interesting to observe how many are aiming to “Do Scrum” or “Get Agile”. The issue with this thinking is that people are focusing on the transport, not the destination.

I'm sure you've heard of Waterfall, ever heard of Water-Scrum-Fall? Ever heard someone in a product development group tell you “they use a hybrid-agile approach”? There’s a million ways people continue using a traditional, phase gated, software development lifecycle approach and marry it with an agile framework or methodology.

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail! Huh? I don’t know; it’s something my father always said.

As we approach the mid-year point in our jobs, I often find that knowledge workplaces have a tendency to slow down a bit and lose some steam - even the ones that leverage Scrum.

Fifteen crucial responsibilities of an entrepreneurial Product owner. Maximize value & Optimizer, The Product Vision, Value, and Validation, Return of Investment, Reducing the Total Cost of Ownership, Stakeholder Engagement and Collaboration, Business Agility.

At a recent course, one of my attendees talked about his use of a "to delete" status for items in his Product Backlog. Where items had been in his Product Backlog for more than 3 months he tagged them as "to delete".

The role of a Scrum Master is one of many stances and diversity. A great Scrum Master is aware of them and knows when and how to apply them, depending on situation and context. Everything with the purpose of helping people understand the spirit of Scrum and hereby apply the Scrum framework better.

Over the past 10 years I have worked with many organisations and helped them to use Scrum to create innovative and sometimes market leading Products. I have seen a lot of Scrum during this time, much of it done well, but some of it done badly.

Scaling Scrum. Agile at Scale. Enterprise Everything. Everyone is using the Scaled Agile Framework SAFe.  Scaling, Scaling, Scaling. If you’re working in product development, you’ve probably had a few conversations on this topic.

The most common question I am asked at my courses is - what makes a good Scrum Master? I always answer this question with a story from my own experience working with Scrum Masters (good and bad) over the years.

The role of a Scrum Master is one of many stances and diversity. A great Scrum Master is aware of them and knows when and how to apply them, depending on situation and context. Everything with the purpose of helping people understand and apply the Scrum framework better.

In the past few months I've been working with a company whose products are most hardware, circuit boards, and firmware.

When do you estimate and what do you do when you need more time for discussion? In this third post of this series on Product Backlog refinement you will find some good practices on how to facilitate an effective and efficient refinement meeting.

The most common question I am asked at my courses is - what makes a good Scrum Master? I always answer this question with a story from my own experience working with Scrum Masters (good and bad) over the years.

Last week I participated in a Product Owner course facilitated by Gunther Verheyen. What triggered me was the part where we discussed the difference between having a

In this blog series, you will get some good practices and guidance for having better, more effective and more vivid Product Backlog refinement

Yes, of course it is! Scrum is a framework to help teams and organisations on their path to agility, but it is by no means the only way to be agile.

One of the most challenging activities in Scrum is Product Backlog Refinement. During training courses I get many questions on this activity. What do you do during Product Backlog refinement? How do you prevent discussions going off track or in too much detail? Who should be there? When do you estimate? In this blog series, you will get some good practices and guidelines for having better, more effective and more vivid Product Backlog refinement.

2012

When facilitating a Scrum Master training, the Sprint Goal is a topic that often causes a good discussion. Participants question the background, purpose and advantages of using a Sprint Goal.

Question from a budding Scrum Master, who is transitioning from a background as a traditional project manager: