Transparency, inspection, adaptation: the trio or the trap

When time zones kill the Daily Scrum, great teams don’t lose control; they redesign how alignment works. In this blog by PST Robb Pieper, learn what replaces the Daily Scrum in high-performing async teams.

The first in a 6 part series of organizational discovery. By considering the "punctuating events" most commonly experienced in agile practice, we will follow an employee's journey from a chaotic project environment to a new culture of measured and managed innovation. We will see how empiricism can be established under conditions of high uncertainty, and gain an appreciation of the new common sense upon which empirical practices are founded.

Organizations want clarity. They want alignment across teams, better decisions, and the ability to adapt to change without constantly burning people out. But what often happens inside organizations looks very different. In this article, we explore what it means to grow leadership capacity so people can shift from reactive patterns to aligned action.

Das A3-Framework unterstützt Sie bei der Entscheidung, ob KI eine Aufgabe übernehmen sollte (Assist, Automate, Avoid). Der A3-Handoff-Canvas hilft Ihnen, dies ohne Qualitäts- oder Verantwortlichkeitsverlust durchzuführen.

Over the last 18 months, AI has moved from a tech trend to a core capability, and Scrum Masters need to be enablers for this change. That means Scrum Masters need to not only embrace it but also serve as catalysts for it. And that is why Scrum.org released a new course, Professional Scrum Master - AI Essentials. Learn about why we created this course and its outcomes in this blog post.

AI is rapidly transforming the role of Scrum Masters. Those who fail to adapt to this new productivity engine risk becoming obsolete. The PSM-AI Essentials course helps you mitigate this risk.

A good Scrum Master retains something AI is trained to remove - agency.

Teams who have done Scrum training together perform better than those who haven't. It creates a shared language and shared expectations. When everyone understands not just what Scrum is, but why it works, they understand how to work together more effectively.

In software development with fully automated build and test technologies, it is state of the art that a fully tested and documented software product can be built at least once in a Sprint. In the development of mechatronics systems, we encounter longer build and test times and traditionally much longer development cycle times. How does all this fit into a Sprint? In the last blog post we (Jean-Pierre Berchez and Joachim Pfeffer) discussed the definition of an increment. Today it’s all about cycle time: How can we get faster?

A practical guide to effectively evaluate the performance of Scrum Teams + Case Study.

In diesem Artikel teilt PST Simon Flossmann seinen Weg, wie er Scrum Trainer geworden ist

Six Questions That Turn AI Delegation Into a Repeatable Workflow

AI ROI disappoints - we overestimate short-term impact. As with the internet's 1995–2010 trough, winners are now building infrastructure. Punctuated equilibrium: stability, then explosive transformation.

In diesem Artikel beschreibt Mark Rehberg warum Teams so oft am experimentellen Vorgehen scheitern. Die Antwort ist eigentlich gar nicht so weit weg.

AI is rapidly transforming the role of Scrum Masters. Those who fail to adapt to this new productivity engine risk becoming obsolete. The PSM-AI Essentials course helps you mitigate this risk.

Transparency isn’t a Jira board. It’s when everyone reads the same reality from your artifacts. This post shows why low transparency quietly drives bad decisions and risk—and gives you simple checks to spot “multiple meanings”

83 % der agilen Praktiker nutzen KI, jedoch setzen die meisten nur 10 % oder weniger ihrer Zeit dafür ein, da sie nicht einschätzen können, wo der Einsatz von KI sinnvoll ist.

A product roadmap is a high-level visual summary that shows what a product team intends to build to increase transparency. Let's see how AI can enhance the process of building roadmaps.

A first-time Scrum Master experience often begins with resistance. Learn why teams push back, what actually builds trust, and how Scrum works when it solves real problems in PST Robb Pieper’s latest post.

I find that when people start to actually use Scrum, they often forget that they are supposed to be a team. They assign each individual a task or Product Backlog Item, and then that individual goes off and works on it alone.

Scrum Masters (at least in my part of the world) are often people seeking the transition to the role of a ‘Manager’ or a management position. However, when they land into this role amongst a highly technical team, they become clueless. This is because the one thing that they were moving away from became one of the most important aspects of their work - Technology. They have to deal with technology on a daily basis.

The APOM Guiding Principles are introduced as a set of principles to help organizations evaluate their operating models and avoid the trap of "mechanical Scrum" (focusing on mechanics over intent). This blog also addresses the impact of AI, which Dave believes will push organizations toward becoming faster, smaller, and flatter, provided they have a strong, evidence-based product operating model that adheres to the fundamentals: aligning teams to outcomes, enabling frequent delivery and learning, empowering ownership, and removing impediments.

What will you get if you invest your time and money in learning AI?! Let's dissect it.

If AI changes how you build, your Definition of Done should represent it. Let's check how.

When moving Scrum from software to hardware the first question will be: What can be achieved within a Sprint? or in other words: What will be an increment, when dealing with long build and test times? We, Jean-Pierre Berchez and Joachim Pfeffer, would like to share our industry practice in this blog post.

Scrum Mastery is a craft that requires the right environment and a clear focus on the value chain to truly take off. Drawing from a decade of experience, PST Simon Flossmann shares five essential steps I wish I had known sooner to help you master the role and deliver real impact.

In diesem Artikel erklärt PST Simon Flossmann 10 Warnsignale, die Führungskräfte bei der Wahl ihre Scrum Master achten sollten.

83% of Agile practitioners use AI, but most spend 10% or less of their time with it because they do not know where it fits. Learn more.

Strategies fail in translation: without an Operating Model + System aligned across AI, adaptation, and org speeds, metrics/authority/processes conflict and execution dies.

El enfoque de producto es una mentalidad que parte de centrarse en el cliente y sus necesidades para entregar valor de una manera ágil, flexible, adaptativa e innovadora. Es un cambio radical desde el enfoque de proyectos, que muchas veces se basa en hitos y tareas a cumplir dentro de un plan con un enfoque predictivo. Para una empresa que trata de moverse en un mercado complejo y busca la forma de realizar su estrategia de negocio para lograr ventaja competitiva, el enfoque de productos es ideal. Algunas características de este enfoque o mentalidad de producto se presentan en este post.

Struggling in a Scrum Master and Developer dual role? In this post by PST Robb Pieper, learn a 3-step framework to balance expertise with self-management, set technical guardrails, and build team independence.

Empiricism is the use of past facts and evidence for upcoming decision-making. Let's check it with a super simple explanation.

Most teams don’t struggle with Scrum events. They struggle with what the events are supposed to produce: transparency you can trust, inspection that changes minds, and adaptation you can see the next day. A quick reality check: signal → sense-making → action. No signal, no Scrum.

A practical way to leverage AI to increase the Scrum Events effectiveness.

KI-Initiativen scheitern aus denselben Gründen wie agile Transformationen: Die meisten Misserfolge sind auf Menschen, Kultur und Prozesse zurückzuführen, nicht auf Technologie. Nutzen Sie die Antimuster-Checkliste der KI-Transformation, um zu erkennen, wo die Initiativen Ihres Unternehmens vom Kurs abweichen.

An order-taking Product Owner leads to backlog chaos and constant priority shifts. Learn why this behavior is a system issue and how teams can preserve clarity and self-management in this post by PST Robb Pieper.

A Inteligência Artificial pode reforçar a mestria em Scrum ao apoiar o Scrum Master e as Equipas Scrum a lidar com complexidade, melhorar a qualidade da aprendizagem diária e tomar decisões mais informadas. Quando usada de forma ética e alinhada com o empirismo, a IA torna-se uma aliada poderosa na criação contínua de valor, no progresso sustentado em direção aos objetivos e na melhoria da qualidade das soluções entregues.

A practical way to leverage AI to increase the Sprint Retrospective effectiveness.

O que você precisa saber: O APOM, potencializado por IA (Gemini/Rovo) e governado pelo EBM, permite que a estratégia de produto flua sem interrupções até o delivery técnico. O objetivo é reduzir o trabalho manual do "produteiro" e garantir que cada sprint entregue valor de negócio real, e não apenas código.

Most people think of negotiation as a formal process, i.e., contracts, vendors, and high-stakes deals. The thing is that product leaders negotiate every day, for instance, with stakeholders, teams, leadership, sales, and so on. These small decisions shape product outcomes.

In diesem Artikel beschreibt Mark Rehberg, warum echte Veränderung im Team nicht durch wohlklingende Visionen entsteht, sondern durch mutige, kleine Experimente im Alltag. Statt „Wir sollten…“ plädiert er für zeitlich begrenzte, überprüfbare Versuche, die Verhalten sichtbar verändern und Lernen ermöglichen. Der Scrum Master wird dabei nicht zum Visionär, sondern zum Ermöglicher eines sicheren Experimentierraums. So wird die Team-Vision nicht erklärt, sondern erlebt – Schritt für Schritt, ohne Perfektionsdruck, aber mit echter Wirkung.

When you limit work in progress, it makes pretty much everything from waterfall to Scrum better.

A practical way to leverage AI to increase the Sprint Review effectiveness.

In diesem Artikel erklärt PST Simon Flossmann, wie Product Owner das Wunschkonzert in ihren Backlog beenden.

AI initiatives fail for the same reasons Agile transformations did: most failures stem from people, culture, and processes, not technology. Let me show ten prevailing failure patterns.

Org charts show control; influence networks show reality. Map the shadow org, find informal leaders/bottlenecks, and align authority/processes to cut friction and boost speed.

Psychological safety is foundational to Empiricism (Transparency, Inspection, Adaptation). If people are afraid to admit mistakes (like breaking the build), Empiricism dies. You can't have Empiricism without Safety.

Em 2026, o debate em Portugal já não é se as organizações devem adotar Scrum, mas sim como utilizá-lo de forma verdadeiramente profissional. Este artigo analisa o estado da formação Professional Scrum em Portugal, explorando a maturidade do mercado, a procura por competências Scrum, o impacto da formação na empregabilidade e nos salários, bem como os principais desafios e tendências emergentes. Com base em dados de adoção, mercado de trabalho e evolução organizacional, o artigo destaca o papel da formação rigorosa e alinhada com os princípios do Professional Scrum como fator crítico para a criação de valor sustentável em organizações portuguesas.

Learn how to leverage AI to create a step-by-step action plan to resolve the conflicts you see in the Scrum Team.