We talk about coaching a lot in the agile world. However, what we are actually expected to do is not usually about coaching. We do other things. We teach. We facilitate. We advise. We solution. We manage. None of those things are bad. But those things are not coaching. In this post, I want to clarify what coaching is and why I think it is so powerful.

We find this a common thread amongst our customer teams, which can be attributed to a lack of backlog refinement.

"It's not our fault! The Product Owner is responsible for backlog management, the PBIs aren't well defined."

The previous weeks I've taken some time to re-write the white paper "The 8 Stances of a Scrum Master". Given my sessions at Scrum Day London, Scrum Day Warsaw and Scrum Day Europe I wanted to offer the participants a paper with my latest insights and lessons learned. In this blog post I'll share the changes in this 2nd edition.

Recently I had the opportunity to give a guest lecture about "Agile Essentials" at a University of Applied Science. These students, the lecturer told me beforehand, would only be partly interested and engaged.

Does this headline make you cringe or cheer? Scrum.org’s Steve Porter and ActionableAgile’s Daniel Vacanti weigh in on whether we should blend these two approaches.

In one of my previous blog articles, I wrote about the Scrum Master journey through the different levels of influence to achieve greatness. In this blog, we will explore the number one skill I believe is needed for a Scrum Master (servant leader) to be effective in order to create change and impact a Scrum team and organization.

Agility is important to an organization and the path to agility becomes more clear by understanding the purpose of pursuing agility. The product owner role is key in increasing the benefits an organization can gain in their path to agility.

Do you ever wonder what determines our actions? Most people think that what we do is the outcome of our personality, however, the truth is more straightforward. It’s our mindset that controls our behavior. 

“Do not accustom yourself to consider debt only as an inconvenience; you will find it a calamity” - Samuel Johnson

"As remote teams become more and more common, Scrum Masters must find a way to effectively do Scrum while working with far flung team members."

Most of the organizational change initiatives focus on the "hard" aspects such as organizational design, process or tools. Although those are critical, often other "soft" aspects such as values, principles or culture are overlooked. As the iceberg metaphor: consider them or they may sink yout Scrum adoption!

How Much Software Inventory Do You Have? When I ask this question of people in IT departments, even among senior managers and finance people, I get a variety of responses.

Leadership is developed, not discovered (I have found inspiration in John C. Maxwell's various books).  John defines leadership as influence, and a good Scrum Master has to climb the different levels of influence to achieve a good to great mindset.

Respect is essential in solving complex problems and growing high performing teams.  This likely seems obvious, so I am going to share some of the more subtle examples of the value of respect in Scrum.

I am sharing the learnings from my recently read books which helped me improve my listening skills. Inspired by one of the tools from the Book "People Tools" by Alan C Fox  here is the first Tool/Tactic for Scrum Masters.

Many times, clients ask Agile Coaches like me to come in and share our "expertise" with them. But sometimes they really don't want our "Expertise". What they really want is someone with lots of TLA's to come and tell them that there pre-existing opinions are correct.

Sometime back I read a short SciFi story in a book named People Tools, Story was about a spaceship conducting man’s third ten year ex

"Few ideas work on the first try. Iteration is key to innovation.” - Sebastian Thrun

Commitment is essential in solving complex problems and growing high performing teams.  Commitment in Scrum is often misunderstood as a promise to deliver a set scope by a set date.  That was never the intention of the word commitment in the Scrum Guide.  I hope this post helps illuminate the value of commitment.

It was only about 30 minutes into the meeting when the senior developer uttered the dreaded words: “Rewrite”.

"There are no shortcuts when it comes to getting out of debt" - Dave Ramsey

Today Scrum.org announced a partnership with the DevOps Institute to provide a foundation to building stronger working relationships between the Scrum and DevOps communities

When is a Scrum Team successful? Which criteria do you use to determine if a Scrum Team is doing a great job?

The Scrum Guide talks about coaching as a part of the Scrum Master role.  First, let's define what coaching is.  You can find many definitions, and here is how I describe coaching.

Over the last weeks I've been working on a paper about the role of a Business Analysts within Large Scale Scrum, and I thought I'd write a little post on it too, here it goes.

The blog post covers 8 preferred stances of a Scrum Master and common misunderstandings.

I've recently been involved with several Scrum Teams that are struggling to have the right level of detail in their Product Backlog items. Some symptoms: difficulty during Sprint Planning sessions, a massive or very small Product Backlog, or a lack of understanding during a Sprint. All of the teams I spoke with had refinement activities in place.

The Scrum Values are easy to remember, but it can be difficult to understand what they mean, how to apply them, and how to recognize them in teams and individuals. These values are essential to maximize the benefits of Scrum. In this article, we look at how courage is essential in solving complex problems and growing high performing teams.

As I get older, I'm turning into one of those annoying nostalgic-types who reminisces too much. Things were better back in the day, son. We had standards see, and there was less of this "dumbing-down". Yip.

Having ‘agile expertise’ is in high demand these days – it seems everywhere I turn there are companies and recruiters looking for agile experts. Agile knowledge is important, but the expertise of being an effective change agent is even more important.

The Scrum Values are easy to remember, but it can be difficult to understand what they mean, how to apply them, and how to recognize them in teams and individuals. These values are essential to maximize the benefits of Scrum.  In this post, we see how openness is crucial when we are dealing with complexity and unpredictability. 

The Scrum Values are easy to remember, but it can be difficult to understand what they mean, how to apply them, and how to recognize them in teams and individuals. These values are essential to maximize the benefits of Scrum.  In this post, we look at how focus is essential in order to get anything meaningful done.

"Gross ignorance is 144 times worse than ordinary ignorance" - Bennett Cerf

In this article I'll describe two topics that I've used as a tailor made Product Owner self-assessment. One is about Roman Pichler's Product Management framework. The other concerns the acronym DRIVEN which is described in Geoff Watts new book "Product Mastery - From Good to Great Product Ownership".

In this blog post I've shared my experiences using the Team Radar as a Retrospective format.

As an agile coach, I find that organizations often have a narrow and constrained view of where agility ought to be practiced.

Do you want to work in an ecstatic state, losing track of time, doing meaningful work? Here’s how using Scrum helps!

If someone asked you “what is the role of the Project Management Office in an agile organization”, what would you say to them?

A review of the Scrum Guide section in the Sprint Backlog to consider and debunk the myth that the Sprint Backlog is a fixed Commitment by the Development Team.

I was talking to a company that is implementing the Spotify model and needed some help.

As part of the on-going Scrum Myths series at Scrum.org, here are three myths related to people skills.  When I say people skills, I mean topics like emotional intelligence, emotional IQ, and person-to-person interactions.

In this introductory-level article we look at the mechanics of a Sprint, and at how team members are expected to collaborate in order to produce a release-quality increment.

A Scrum myth that I have encountered: Not finishing all Sprint Backlog Items in a Sprint is perceived as a failure. I have seen organizations go as far as implementing performance indicators around Sprint Backlog completion percentage (yikes!).

The Scrum roles connect with the three drivers of motivation: Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose. Discover how.

This myth is my favorite. There are three challenges with this myth. First, it misses the point of Scrum. Second, it sets teams up for failure. Third, it's impossible to prove.

Per a January 20th, 2017 article by Daniel Shapero, VP of Talent Solutions and Careers at LinkedIn, the role of Scrum Master is in high demand. It’s ranked number 10 on his list of most promising jobs of 2017.

Let’s start with a question. When is the Sprint Planning over? Usually, the first answer that comes to mind is “when the time-box expires”. It is a good answer. However, Sprint Planning is a maximal time-box.

“What is a good speed to drive?”. The answer depends on a lot of things like: where do you drive (in a residential area, on a highway), are there speed limits, what are the weather conditions, etc.