Community Blog

In this blog, we’ll dive deeper into the topic: “Scrum Master vs Project Manager”. If you’re having a similar question about the Product Owner vs the Project Manager.

One of the teams I worked with suggested dropping the Sprint Retrospective and the Sprint Review from the Sprint and only do them every other Sprint.  

Earlier this year, I released the complimentary Scrum Poster with the goal to give Scrum Teams around the world a medium to see the Scrum Guide in visual form.

Recently I ran into a beautiful piece of text, written by Rachel Naomi Remin. In this text I read the following phrase:"Perhaps the secret of living well is not in having all the answers, but in pursuing unanswerable questions in good company"

The other day, I picked up my son from soccer and he had a huge smile on his face. I asked him how it was and he answered with an even bigger smile “Awesome!”.

Earlier this year, we had released the complimentary Scrum Poster and the response was way beyond positive. We love that teams around the world use the poster to make Scrum transparent.

Somewhere between the CEO and 1st line management level, "you do Scrum, just get it done, how much money you need, and what kind of people you need."  "It's just another framework." Salespeople were saying, "you're doing Scrum magic and making it faster." Sometimes people don't want to change.

Katas and patterns go hand in hand and so does the Agile Transformation Kata (ATK) harmonize very well with the organizational change patterns published for example by Mary Lynn Manns and Linda Rising in their book  More Fearless Change.

I often wonder about the Trustpilot reviews straight after a workshop. Did I entertain? Did I perform? Were attendees satisfied? Are attendees inspired? It matters. I just think it matters more if the workshop made a difference to the work lives of attendees. I can't take credit. The client does the hard yards.

In my Professional Scrum classes, I always get asked about best practices.  It may be about facilitating events, Product Backlog refinement, defining value, forming Scrum Teams, or creating good Sprint Goals.

The legendary Steve Trapps has been talking to me for months about featuring in an interview. So here we are, I finally agreed and we spent 25 minutes talking about me; obviously mainly avoiding being narcissistic.

Many Scrum Teams are not very familiar with the Scrum Values as described in the Scrum Guide, and if, they have their own interpretation of it. We have also met many teams that were able to name the values, but not many live by them.

As part of the Scrum.org webinar “Ask a Professional Scrum Trainer - Martin Hinshelwood - Answering Your Most Pressing Scrum Questions” I was asked a number of questions. Since not only was I on the spot and live, I thought that I should answer each question that was asked again here, as well as those questions I did not get to.

Software developers are mostly guys, happy to work by themselves at night in dark rooms. And they turn coffee, cola and pizza into code. Right?

The Scrummer'19 quiz is slowly coming to an end. Today we are kicking off the 5th and last iteration of the Scrum Summer Quiz. There are still two copies of the book Software in 30 Days, authored and autographed by Ken Schwaber, to be raffled off. 

Hard to believe but we have only two weeks left in our Scrummer quiz. But still two more chances to win a copy of Software in 30 Days, authored and autographed by Ken Schwaber himself.

We have already reached the halfway point in our Scrummer Quiz. Today is the start of round 3 of 5. Summer + Scrum = Scrummer.

Last Monday I started the 5-week long Scrummer Quiz, a Summer Quiz that is all about Scrum. We give you 3 quiz questions every Monday morning and raffle off 2 Software in 30 Days books autographed by Ken Schwaber on Friday.

This video is a presentation from Agile Week Riga titled, Iterating Toward Professional Scrum.

For the next 5 weeks we are trying to have a little bit of fun during the summer month of July. I will be asking you three questions every Monday in the Scrummer Quiz and raffle off two books written by Ken Schwaber Software in 30 Days.

Over the last year Steve Trapps and I have been chatting to people in the Agile community, in case you haven't seen it yet here is the output from our opportunity to grab Dave West the CEO and Product Owner for Scrum.org.

For executives and for change agents who deal with executives in large contexts ...

As many Professional Scrum Trainers have experienced, there is always a good discussion around the Sprint Goal. A similar discussion recently led me to address this not so well understood aspect.

A common phrase that I use in my classes is that Scrum is like the poker game Texas Hold’em; it only takes a few minutes to learn but a lifetime to master.  The “few minutes” may be a bit of a stretch but my students get the point. 

A few days ago, I was observing a Sprint Retrospective. The Scrum Team decided to work on the Definition of Done (DoD), identified as the most important topic to adapt for the next Sprint. The discussions were open and animated, when an unexpected discussion emerged during the session.

There has been so much written about Velocity and its impact on teams yet it is one metric that eludes everyone and keeps cropping up whenever there is discussion around productivity.

The purpose of Scrum is to create a potentially releasable Done Product Increment, in order to realize business value. Many teams struggle in improving their Definition of Done. The technique described here allows for greater transparency on what the Definition of Done is, and what the next steps are.

Questions about agile certifications (especially those from Scrum.org) are an integral part of my routine. People always come to me saying that they are going to act as a Scrum Master / Product Owner / Developer on an agile project and they want to know what to study and what's the best first certification.

A few days back I did a Scrum Tapas Video explaining a few of the rules within Scrum. Besides these rules, there are also certain guidelines which help Scrum Teams to make the best possible use of Scrum framework to create maximum Business Impact.

Most organizations are using Scrum, however, many of them feel like the agility of their organization has degraded, and they might be right! Often, using Scrum starts out as a way to improve development efforts coordinated within an IT division or department, but that is not the most effective organization structure to potentially get maximum benefit from Scrum.

As of November 2018, there are 181,000 certified Professional Scrum Masters (PSM I) around the globe, but only 2,400 individuals that went for the next level Scrum Master certificate, often referred to it as an advanced Professional Scrum Master or PSM II.

As a trainer, I often get asked for real world examples of Scrum implementations. You can't get any more real world than how Francis and Sally live their lives through Scrum, as they look for a way to help with ADHD.

This article discusses the growth of agility for customer-facing products with 3+ teams, probably tens of teams with Nexus and/or LeSS.

Это первая из серии статей, в которых мы вместе будем исследовать вопрос узких специалистов в Скрам-командах, теорию очередей, системную/локальную оптимизации и обучение в командах.

Working with the Professional Scrum Trainer community, and particularly with Ken Schwaber as one of the Professional Scrum Master Stewards has been a very rewarding learning journey.

This is the third in a series of posts exploring Scrum Mastery. In our first post, we introduced the 4 dimensions of Scrum Mastery. In the second post, we explored how to grow a strong team identity. Now we will explore the team process dimension.

Often I hear people say that Scrum does not take care of risk: there is no risk log, risk is not on the agenda of the Sprint Review or Retrospective as a standard agenda-item. The Development Teams need to be accountable for the quality of the product and how it's made. That's a risk right there! If there is not one person accountable for quality, being on time, within budget, building the right thing... How is risk managed in Scrum?

Bottom line - Toyota Improvement and Coaching Kata is the perfect partner for flow-based retrospectives.

One of the most common questions I am asked in my Professional Scrum Master (PSM) courses and in coaching engagements is: How do we build trust?

Today we announced a new class Professional Scrum With Kanban. This class helps teams practicing Scrum to apply the practices of Kanban without breaking Scrum. It shows how visualization and flow are great partners in delivering Done software and how Scrum with Kanban helps teams become more professional.

Recently I worked with a new customer in Denver to help them move towards a greater degree of Scrum in their software development. The idea that Scrum is for everyone in your organisation is kind of new, but it reflects the modern understanding of the way people work, and the rejection of Taylorism and command and control.

There is nothing in the Scrum Guide that says that you can't have workflow across the Sprint boundary. I'm going to suggest that not only can you, but you should as long as you don't endanger the Sprint Goal.

There is a frustrating misunderstanding of reality when one thinks that the Product Owner can reject a single story at the Sprint Review.

Many teams are struggling with delivering modern software because they are not building with Test First Principals.

Today (November 7th 2017) Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland released an update to the Scrum Guide.The Scrum Guide is the definitive definition of Scrum, authored by Ken and Jeff, the creators of Scrum.

I hear it all the time. Whether it is a consulting engagement or in a Professional Scrum Course, the desire to modify Scrum comes up frequently.

El Scrum Diario es una reunión clave para la adopción del empirismo, es una oportunidad de inspección y adaptación. La guía de Scrum nos dice los siguiente sobre esta reunión:

Scrum is often called the art of the possible. This means we do the best we can with what we

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. Therefore I prepared for the worst...