With one Scrum team, most people agree it’s easy to shape your Scrum in many ways. You can aim for innovation, efficiency, or customer-specific work. Just use different practices and it works. Once you add a scaling framework, that flexibility drops. The real optimisation goal shows up. Many times the focus is on: small batches, smooth flow, overlapping skills, standards, waste elimination, reuse. All very useful, but mainly about efficiency. ( Which is okay, actually in my experience it is what orgs want most of the time... efficiency and predictability! ) Those same ideas do not always help when you explore new products or co-create tailored solutions with customers. There, learning, experiments and customer-specific choices may matter more than waste reduction, avoiding duplication or efficiency. So what? Well, if it’s unclear what you optimise for, you might ask for innovation and customer focus, but design a setup mostly for efficiency. The result: strategy and org design become unaligned, and not so very good things happen. Now what? Be explicit about which one you’re really optimising for. And then look at the frameworks principles/mechanics and ask: What are these really trying to maximise?

Scrum Teams don’t start with every skill—they grow them. By sharing what they know and acquiring what they need, teams expand their collective intelligence and improve continuously. Whether it’s asking, buying, or working for new capabilities, growth is a team sport in Scrum.

Dieser Artikel zeigt Ihnen, wie Sie kulturelle Dysfunktionen diagnostizieren und entscheiden können, welche Auseinandersetzungen zu führen sinnvoll sind.

Despite a decade of digital progress, government still defaults to fixed-scope, output-driven delivery. An Agile Product Operating Model offers a structural fix, replacing fragile project teams with stable, outcome-focused product lines. With smarter funding, lighter governance and real product leadership, departments can boost resilience, value and supplier collaboration at scale.

When innovation goes outside-in, structure becomes strategy — and teams become the multiplier.

How leaders can make organizational design a practical, everyday tool rather than a last-minute fix. With Org Topologies, you learn to see the real patterns shaping performance, involve people in designing meaningful change, and evolve your organization with purpose. It’s a guide for leaders who want clarity, adaptability, and results that last.

Most Scrum problems don’t come from the team at all. They come from a lack of real business engagement. In this blog, PST Robb Pieper explains why active leader involvement is the difference between stalled delivery and meaningful results. Download our guide to learn how to build the level of engagement Scrum depends on.

One of the core aspects of Product Ownership is to create alignment across everyone who is involved with the product in some way. A great way to do this is to establish a compelling Product Vision, a strategic objective that helps everyone to envision the future of the product.  The problem usually starts with the word “compelling”. How would one know if the Product Vision is compelling enough or not?

Nos últimos meses, o debate sobre “Agile is Dead?” voltou a ganhar força — e não por acaso. Em workshops, conferências e discussões estratégicas, sinais consistentes apontam para uma desconexão crescente entre a promessa da agilidade e o que muitas organizações realmente praticam. Ao mesmo tempo, a aceleração trazida pela IA pressiona modelos tradicionais de execução e expõe fragilidades antes toleráveis. Este artigo explora por que essa narrativa emergiu agora, o que está por trás da sensação de “morte” da agilidade e quais forças estruturais estão remodelando a forma como times, produtos e empresas precisam operar. Uma reflexão necessária para quem deseja entender o que está mudando — e o que vem a seguir

I am often asked, how many teams can a Scrum Master support? Like so many things in Scrum, the answer is that it depends. The maturity of the teams, the organizational structure, the priority of the work and even the seniority of the Scrum Master are all factors to consider. There is no single, "right" answer.

In diesem Artikel erklärt PST Simon Flossmann, wie du mit dem Coaching startest.

Leadership resistance to your pre-mortem reveals whether your organization’s operating model prioritizes comfortable narratives over preventing failure. This article shows you how to diagnose cultural dysfunction and decide which battles to fight.

Most teams move slowly not because they lack effort, but because 75–85% of their delivery time is spent waiting in queues, handoffs, and decision delays — flow efficiency exposes this hidden latency.

Scrum Masters often fall into the trap of facilitating every Scrum event, turning themselves into meeting hosts instead of enabling self-management. The Scrum Guide doesn't require the Scrum Master to run any event. Their accountability is to create the conditions where the team can facilitate their own work. Each Scrum event already has a natural owner, and that over-facilitation slows transparency and adaptation. The highest expression of Scrum Mastery is when the team handles its events independently, proving that self-management has taken hold.

Organizational performance isn’t driven by strategy alone but by the structure that supports it. Different goals—speed, adaptability, efficiency, innovation—require different org designs. Change fails when people don’t own it or when structures don’t fit the real work. Org Topologies offers a practical way to visualize, design, and evolve your organization with purpose.

I am a big fan of the annual State of Agile report from Digital.ai. Each year, the report looks at things like why organizations adopt Agile, what frameworks they use and what challenges they’re facing. But this year was different.

Scrum Teams don’t just need skills—they need expertise: deep understanding built through experience and curiosity. Expertise isn’t about knowing everything; it’s about learning fast, connecting dots, and turning insight into smarter action. Because in complex work, speed of learning beats depth of knowledge every time.

Reflecting on 10 years at Scrum.org, in this post, Dave West explores the core of the agile movement: empowering people and teams. Contrary to popular agile sentiment, middle management is not the problem but the key to success, as they create the environment for change. The persistent challenge of achieving true empowerment requires understanding and shifting organizational power structures and incentives. Finally, Dave considers AI as a potential catalyst—a "missing piece"—that, when combined with frameworks like Scrum, could finally unlock the door to fully empowered teams.

The UK’s new SME Office signals progress, but real change needs adaptable delivery, smarter contracts and risk-based governance. SMEs bring speed and focus, yet face barriers baked into procurement and policy. Success will hinge on measurable shifts in participation, payment speed, modular contracting and genuine discovery-led delivery.

Self-management is crucial for any Scrum Team’s success, yet many teams and organizations struggle to truly embrace it. So what can you do about it? In this blog, PST Robb Pieper shares practical ways to enable and support real self-management.

The AI Fluency framework helps us build a mindset of how to think about working with AI. But how?!

A 40+ team retail division transformed delivery through a fundamental culture shift: from starting work to focusing on finishing it, creating trusted predictability.

Self-organization is not something that needs to be earned. And besides that - to be honest - deciding what teams' people will work on is not rocket science either. By trusting the team to own how they work together to deliver the product, the organization is empowering them to figure out the best way to deliver the product.

Okay, let’s talk numbers. Real ones. Actual data shows how Asia, and especially Singapore, is diving headfirst into Agile and Scrum at a remarkable pace. Adoption is rising, investment is soaring and the region is transforming faster than ever. But the real story is what these numbers reveal about the future of work in Singapore and why deep, real Agile understanding matters now more than ever.

In diesem Artikel beschreibt PST Simon Flossmann die Auswirkungen von „Wir machen Scrum, aber...“

La innovación y el aprendizaje son recursos claves para la ventaja competitiva de las organizaciones en los entornos de cambio. Pero lograr esto requiere de un ambiente donde los equipos tengan un ambiente de seguridad emocional apropiada. Tener equipos motivados, preparados, con hambre para lograr objetivos y mejorar es crítico para que aparezca la creatividad y la innovación de productos. Difícilmente las personas en forma individual pueden lograr los cambios necesarios para producir productos innovadores; es un trabajo de equipo con un liderazgo que promueva esta cultura y la sostenga a través de sus acciones y se comprometa con ese cambio. En esta entrega exploramos algunas consideraciones para los líderes sobre cómo lograr un ambiente creativo, con equipos motivados, autogestionados para aprender, mejorar y lograr los objetivos son las siguientes:

Most transformations fail not because organizations lack frameworks, but because they lack the measurement systems to prove value delivery and guide continuous improvement.

Compare your context with functional, product, customer, and multidimensional structures. Identify what fits your strategy — the right structure enables it, the wrong one slows it down.

What do to about the Sprint schedule during the holidays?

If your Sprint Review is starting to feel a little pointless, ask yourself: Do we have a clear direction? And are we collaborating together to adjust course and find the best path to get there?

In last week's Professional Agile Leadership class, I asked leaders to share what interview questions that they would use to find a great Scrum Master. With their permission, I’m sharing the questions that the group came up with.

Scrum Teams don’t need all skills from day one—they need the courage and discipline to practice. Skills are muscles, built by doing, reflecting, and improving together. The real question isn’t which skills you have today, but which skills you’ll practice tomorrow.

Most organizations confuse product thinking with structural or linguistic changes — renaming roles and reorganizing teams — without building the systemic capabilities that make it real. True product thinking requires developing discovery, decision-making, collaboration, and learning systems that enable continuous adaptation and value creation.

Dieser Artikel identifiziert die Erfolgsfaktoren für Agilität, die in Ihrem Unternehmen fehlen. Er bietet Ihnen konkrete Maßnahmen, die Sie am Montagmorgen umsetzen können, um zu prüfen, was Sie in Ihrem Einflussbereich an Veränderungen vorantreiben können.

When you’re kayaking in fast whitewater, the boat tends to go wherever you look. That's because when you look at something, your whole body tends to lean that way without you even realizing it.

Scrum balances three forces—strategy, tactics, and risk—through the Vision, Product Goal, and Sprint Goal. The Product Goal bridges the gap between long-term vision and short-term execution, ensuring focus, alignment, and manageable risk in complex environments.

The Truth Curve isn't a one-time linear process; it's an ongoing loop. The process of "earning" truth through small, repeatable cycles of learning is called Continuous Discovery.

En este artículo, el PST Alex Ballarín explica como alinear a los equipos Scrum con la ejecución estratégica y los OKR es una opción que potencia su efectividad, autonomía y resultados.

When Scrum Teams blend Kanban with Scrum, they benefit from more predictable delivery, early detection of spikes in demand, sustainable pace, and data-driven decisions.

What manufacturing taught us about knowledge work — and why Ackoff knew we were asking the wrong questions

In diesem Artikel beschreibt PST Simon Flossmann, wie Produktrisiken eliminieren werden können.

Experienced Scrum practitioners often reach a plateau where the mechanics are mastered, but the outcomes still feel constrained and inefficient. If you are comfortable with Scrum and ready to evolve your practice, consider an approach that reframes the Product Backlog and Sprint Planning around value and outcomes rather than stories and estimates.

This article identifies the success factors for agility that are absent in your organization. It gives you concrete Monday-morning actions to test what’s actually possible within your sphere of influence to drive change, because agility matters.

Many organizations misinterpret success as making the Scrum Master obsolete. It sounds efficient, but it removes the very accountability that sustains empiricism. The Scrum Master’s role doesn’t vanish when a team becomes self-managing. Their focus shifts from facilitation to coaching, from team habits to organizational change, from removing blockers to transforming systems. They serve the Scrum Team, the Product Owner, and the organization. When they evolve their focus, agility scales. When they disappear, complacency takes their place.

A guideline to help leaders grow trust and accountability

Kanban Boards make visible the flow of value – items of value. In a Scrum context, those items are Product Backlog Items. (Not the decomposed tasks of the Sprint Backlog.)

In Scrum, *collectively* doesn’t mean everyone must master every skill. It means the team as a whole has the skills to deliver value. Discover why this matters, how to avoid the “Lego block” myth, and how to grow resilience by sharing and acquiring skills.

In this article, PST Alex Ballarin explores how Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) complement the Agile Product Operating Model (APOM) from Scrum.org. He explains how OKRs bring measurable alignment to APOM’s four domains — Strategy, People, Structure, and Value Cycle — turning strategic intent into evidence-based results and enabling true organizational agility.

Scrum events serve a purpose, but are they all necessary for every team? In this post, PST Jason Malmstadt discusses why each Scrum event exists and whether all of them are truly needed.

Dieser Artikel und sein zugehöriges Video über die KI-Risiken in der Produktentwicklung zeigen drei konsolidierte Risikokategorien und praktische Grenzen auf, um ein kundenorientiertes Urteilsvermögen zu bewahren und gleichzeitig KI effektiv zu nutzen.