Community Blog

The days are getting shorter and colder. Summer is over and winter is coming. Some people are already thinking about the holidays and the preparations for it. Soon children will have their Christmas wish list ready. The wish lists my children created were always a combination of text and pictures; every item on the list contained a name, a picture, information where to buy it and how much it costs. They did everything to increase the chance of getting these presents and especially getting the right presents.

In this blog series I would like to address topics that relate to professional team coaching as well as Professional Scrum. In the course of becoming a Professional Team Coach, I noticed a lot of interesting topics for Scrum Masters who want to improve their coaching stance.

An attendee of a course I delivered recently reached out to me post course to ask a question. [This is something that I always encourage, with new knowledge often comes new questions]

In today's video I will explain the Scrum Master career path.

What’s up awesome people. I hope you had a great week and ready for the weekend. In this [2 Minutes FAQ] video, I will answer the frequently asked questions: How can the Scrum Master make the Scrum team more self-organised?

A few years ago, I became acquainted with a lady running a charity for a child who was having medical bills pile up. She was holding a charity bazaar to raise money for the child's family.

First of all, I'd like to note that models and terms I am using and discuss are not mine. They come from training and coaching sessions belonging to Vroemen from Teamchange. The connection I make to Scrum is my interpretation. 

The simplicity and power of Open Space is stunning for most first-time participants.

How much have you scored this year? My parents asked this question twice a year throughout my schooling. I was well prepared to ask the same questions to my son, but school cheated me. Have you had a similar past? If yes, then you will understand why I call it a generation gap issue.

Scrum is a straightforward framework to develop complex software products in a complex environment but hard to practice.

Scrum Master's role is unique, and comparing with any traditional roles will limit our thinking and exploring a beautiful journey of servant leadership.

This blog post uses a metaphor to illustrate the potential impact of having more than one product owner per product.

The Agile Transformation Kata is for example such a practice that reinforces an agile mindset during an agile transformation, and through many reflection cycles allows to adapt to new emerging needs, like COVID-19.

In today's vlog, I discuss about the differences between the Scrum Master and the Product Owner role.

The premise of Lean Coffee is relatively straight forwarded. Like-minded people that want to create or discuss something they care about use this tool to organize their conversations.

You must have heard about the Radical Candor book and its quadrant model. Today I want to talk about how you can apply this model to a Scrum Master role.

Let's explore how the "soft" Scrum Values directly translate into "hard" business value. Cha-Ching!

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.  

Collaboration is key to solve complex problems. I’ve always suffered from the evident lack of collaboration between people. It’s professionally frustrating when you’ve experienced effective teamwork.

Bob and Carl Ferro are the proud owners of Nick’s Bar and Grill in Hollywood Beach since 1980 and this place is an institution in this South Florida beach town to say the least.

Fighting organizational impediments as a Product Owner? Combine powers and utilize the Product Owner and Scrum Master symbiosis. And create more focus at the same time.

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.

Software and online-services companies are undergoing quick implementation of the Scrum framework in their Products. Scrum is a process framework that enables deliver complex products iteratively and incrementally while controlling the risk.

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!”.

Hello awesome people. Today I want to share with you my personal guidelines that I have been using to recruit/hire Scrum Masters from the job market.

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.

Liberating Structures are a very popular toolkit for Scrum Masters these days. Conferences, trainings and meetings make heavy use of them. Of course Liberating Structures also find their way into the Scrum events, for very good reasons.

I will make a case why the Sprint Goal should take center stage in any Sprint. If it seems difficult, it is an opportunity to improve.

Hey everyone. How has your week been going? We are entering summer here in Perth. And in today's vlog, I'd like to share with you how to evaluate the Scrum Master's performance.

Hello awesome people. It's me again with new learnings from the trenches. In our Professional Scrum Master and Professional Scrum Master II classes, we talk about several stances that the Scrum Master uses to improve organisation agility to deliver valuable products. 

The role of Scrum Master is often completely new for many organizations, and often misunderstood. So what are the responsibilities of the Scrum Master? And what is a Scrum Master supposed to do the whole day?

How common misunderstandings about the Scrum Roles prevent Scrum Teams to become effective

Icebreakers: are they a complete waste of time or do they add value? Some people absolutely love them, other absolute dislike them because they didn’t add any value. I believe a well-designed icebreaker can kickstart your session, can be fun and get people warmed-up for the rest of the session. Learn about how you can design icebreakers that add value and that grow connection between the participants and the purpose of a session.

Have you ever been curious about what really motivates the people you work with? What are they looking for in their role and in their work? If you can find an hour with your team, I recommend you to try the Moving Motivators practice (Management 3.0). Let's unpack how to prepare and run the exercise and end with some learnings.

This is a common question in my Professional Scrum classes. It often comes up early when we are still learning the basics of the Scrum framework. And it comes up because people are already wearing two hats or are being told by their organizations that they will be.

In this article, I’ve described my personal journey in becoming a Scrum Master and included recommendations for new Scrum Masters.

How effectively are you maximizing value when dependencies tell you what to do first? Dependencies impact the core of the role of Product Owner.

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

"I am a project manager.  What is my role now that we are moving to Scrum?”

In this post I'd like to discuss "Empathy - why it is important in teams and what you can do if you struggle with it". First, we all know what the role of the Scrum Master is, right?

It was 8:59 am on Monday. It was another week which I thought was going to be amazing. Last week our company just closed another round of investment. The company is currently strategizing to scale agility throughout the company.

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.

One of the most important things we can do to help individuals and teams improve is coach them to embrace the agile mindset. The Manifesto for Agile Software Development provides values and principles to help guide teams in navigating the complexities of product delivery.

The Scrum Team consists of three roles. The only three roles needed in Scrum. But all needed! And all equally important to be successful. This first sentence is all there is to it. And if we would practice Scrum within our companies the way described in this first sentence we can all be successful in delivering incremental value to our customers each Sprint.

This is the third post in a series on tools for Scrum Masters and their teams.

A couple of months ago I blogged about some of the tools and toys that live in the trunk of my car. I take these along everywhere I teach and coach. Since posting, people have suggested additional items that just must be in my toolbox.

About 40 people gathered at the nlScrum meetup dedicated to physical and digital tools for the agile workspace. Tools that help developers, coaches and trainers to survive in the toughest environments.

Why do I think team coaching is a bad idea? Don't get me wrong, I believe team coaching can have a great amount of added value. It’s just that I often find that teams receive coaching while they should not even be a team.

Hello, great people of the world. In my previous article, we have discussed how Scrum Masters need to master many things. In this article, we are going to discuss one of the stances that the Scrum Master need to master, that is the facilitation stance.