Many Scrum Masters fall into the trap of quoting the Scrum Guide verbatim, mistaking recitation for servant leadership. Quoting the rules isn't the same as understanding them. This post explores why simply reading from the Guide can frustrate teammates and stakeholders, lack context, and hinder team growth. Here's what you can do instead. Try taking on a coaching stance to foster understanding through relevance, reflection, and powerful questions. To help teams truly embrace Scrum, the focus must shift from quoting the rules of the game to connecting with the “why.”

The Mid Sprint Check-in, Demo, or Review: these meetings make Scrum much less effective while giving the illusion of control and predictability and may be masking other problems. Does your Scrum Team need another meeting?

The Scrum Team consists of three accountabilities: Developers, Product Owner, and Scrum Master. Yet Scrum Team accountabilities and responsibilities can be confusing, misunderstood, and lack shared understanding between its members and the organization. This exercise makes transparent the accountabilities of each team member by driving conversations about what team members agree on and where there are gaps. Use this exercise when new teams are formed, or when you see misunderstandings and knowledge gaps around Scrum Team accountabilities and expectations.

Great facilitation makes it easier for everyone to participate, collaborate, and find shared understanding to reach the desired objective. Facilitate effective Scrum events and other meetings by starting with a well-thought-out facilitator guide.

The Scrum Guide provides no reference or guidance on how to get started with Scrum. That's because Scrum is a lightweight, minimal framework to encourage self-organization. I have heard it stated that Scrum is intentionally incomplete.

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

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.