Community Blog

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.

In this blog, Professional Scrum Trainer Peter Koning talks about his book, Agile Leadership Toolkit - Learning to Thrive with Self Managing Teams.

“A good review from the critics is just another stay of execution” -- Dustin Hoffman

Learn more on how to tackle impediments as a team by running experiments, iterating and visualizing on the solution.

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 post covers four team building mental models — or concepts — that have proven useful in understanding the context of creating agile teams: from Taylorism to Tuckman to Lencioni to Dan Pink.

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.

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

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

Scrum is a goal driven framework. And that is what I really like about Scrum. If I can summarize Scrum Guide into one sentence, it is about delivering an increment that meets the Sprint Goal.

Scrum.org is stating it: "The PSM III credential is very difficult to earn, as it is used to demonstrate the certificate holder’s ability solve advanced, complex problems in real-world applications of Scrum.

How a Scrum Master can use the “Strategy Knotworking” to help the Scrum Team turn their ideas and ambitions into reality.

El aspecto principal del desarrollo de un producto no debe ser el trabajo de UX, es importante como otros tipos de trabajo como arquitectura, pruebas, etc.

Popularized by Elon Musk, utilizing first principles thinking to solve problems in an innovative, creative, and less biased way has proven popular in the tech community.

Many years ago, I questioned myself about what makes a software product successful and what makes it fail.

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. 

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

In my role as an Agile coach and Scrum trainer, I get the chance to talk to a lot of Scrum Masters and teams.

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.

I recently performed an organizational agile assessment and learned a great deal about how they served their customer’s technology needs. We investigated their technical practices, processes to develop and release, but also dug deep into how the people worked together from the people side of things.

The Scrum Guide Reordered is based on about 90 percent of the text of the 2017 Scrum Guide, extending its original structure by adding additional categories.

In this blog post, Dave West, CEO and Product Owner at Scrum.org, will explore the benefits of using Scrum for Marketing, dealing with pressures from every side of the business and using Scrum to address complexity.

Scrum provides numerous opportunities for teams to inspect and adapt their progress, including on a daily basis.

When working with teams new to Scrum, one of the questions I usually ask is, "What are your plans to describe non functional requirements (NFRs)?". Typically the Product Owner already has a good handle on functional requirements (i.e.

Conflicts are fascinating. Now, this may be the organisational psychologist in me talking, or the facilitator who senses them in the groups I work with.

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

What do you need to get a job done? You need the right tools and the right skills (and you might need some form of process – more about that later). But the wrong tools in the right hands is a recipe for disaster.

The Daily Scrum is an important Inspect and Adapt event for a Scrum team. Yet the purpose is often ignored and swept under the carpet by a multitude of teams.

By using an expert-less, community-driven approach, organizations are put in a position to thrive on complexity rather than being defeated by it.

The traditional approach of RFI – RFP – Review – LOI is neither lean or agile. The Lean Agile Procurement approach reduces the sourcing cycle time to days, with collaborative clarification of the product with prospective partners while reducing the risk of a poor partner and company evaluation.

Why run a Liberating Structures immersive workshop? Since the beginning of 2019, the Hands-on Agile meetup in Berlin has been exploring how to apply Liberating Structures to Scrum.

A while ago I was brushing the teeth of my 3 year old son when I thought of something.

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.

I agree that forcing self-organizing teams to do something seems counterproductive.  However, even in that scenario, there are only a few hard and fast Scrum rules.

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

High performing teams are the cornerstone for good Scrum. Reaching a high performant state requires time. In many cases, this time is not given to a team because the team composition changes frequently.

Who wouldn't want to achieve awesomeness at work? Great Scrum Masters help make this a reality. The world is changing more rapidly than ever, bringing with it more unknowns than known.

"You are not doing Scrum." How many times have you heard that? Scrum Police are a legion.

This is a blog about leadership: leadership in Scrum Teams, communities, and businesses. It is also a blog about personal growth and offers a complimentary “action approach” to Scrum Masters, inspired by the book The Serving Leader.

Scrum es un framework fácil de entender y difícil de dominar. Scrum no intenta ser una herramienta para solucionar todos los problemas, no es tampoco una receta completa que prescribe paso a paso lo que se debe hacer.

I recently started aggregating my notes, links, and references related to agile leadership to understand better what it — in the context of an agile transition — may look like.

La velocidad es uno de los temas de Scrum más discutidos online y offline. Sólo hace falta acercarse a la comunidad de Scrum Masters en Facebook para comprobar como muchas de las cuestiones planteadas están en la linea de la velocidad de entrega de los equipos de desarrollo de Software.

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.

In this article we will investigate how an effective Product Backlog refinement can be conducted in Scrum.

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

A few years ago I went to a training course given by Ralph Kimball, the “inventor” of the Data Warehouse. It was a great experience but one of the main learnings for me was something he said that applied to all teams not just Data Warehouse teams.

If you can create a vision for your Scrum Team, and you find them all aligned in the right direction, your work has a reasonably good chance at success.

Esta mañana estaba preparando una megamaleta para viajar durante las próximas semanas a Japón, México, Portugal y Alemania cuando me he encontrado el tuit que puedes leer más arriba.

Have you ever wondered - what is the value of Success? This question is not easy to answer, and everyone will have a different answer.

In many organisations I see Scrum not producing its anticipated value. The concept of value varies across organisations.