In a recent ProdPad webinar, I sat down with Janna Bastow for a fireside chat. This was an opportunity to explore how the principles of surfing can revolutionize product leadership and business agility. In this article, I share highlights of our conversation in order to offer a unique perspective offers product managers, owners, and leaders a fresh framework for navigating uncertainty and complexity in today's fast-paced market.

We are taught to chase certainty, but that leads to poor leadership. What we really need is to reorient ourselves towards clarity.

Discover why "fail fast" falls short and learn a more effective framework—fail smarter, sooner, and forward—to transform failure into strategic innovation.

Surfing holds surprising lessons that correlate to leadership in business and all aspects of life. Today's lesson is about measuring success in complex, unpredictable, and rapidly changing environments.

Surfing holds surprising lessons that correlate to leadership in business and all aspects of life. Today's lesson is about learning through intentional practice.

Surfing holds surprising lessons that correlate to leadership in business and all aspects of life. Today's lesson is about using our full body intelligence.

2024 ended with my vision becoming reality: A small group of people gathered in Costa Rica to experience a unique approach to leadership development - learning to ride the waves instead of trying to control the ocean - at the Agile Leadership Surf Camp. Learn 5 key insights that emerged from this experience.

The usual advice to improve goals is to ask "why." In this article, I give you 6 different questions to unlock more creativity and create better goals.

We often measure success just by looking at achieving our goals. However, this is a limiting perspective that no longer serves adaptive business and leadership.

Surfing can teach us a lot about enabling business agility. Learn 4 key strategies for continuous improvement and adaptability in unpredictable environments.

A common question we see people struggle with is, how do I measure success as a Scrum Master. In this article, we tackle this challenging topic.

Productivity culture kills business agility. But productivity itself is not the problem. It is possible to have a creative relationship to creative rather than a reactive one. Let's look at examples of both.

An unhealthy relationship to productivity is working against enabling the benefits of business agility and makes us less powerful leaders.

Resilience is the ability to turn hardship to experience. That is exactly what agility is about. We learn from our failures. We rise to the occasion. We swarm problems.

We all want to help. Unfortunately, acting on the desire to help is usually where many Scrum Masters, Coaches, and Managers can make a mistake. In this article, we explore 3 ways this desire to "help" goes wrong and offer tips on how to shift to an approach that is actually going to be more helpful in the long run.

Those newly introduced to the Scrum framework often have the same first question: What’s the difference between Scrum and traditional project management? Most people are familiar with the basics of traditional project management, so the question is a great place to start for understanding Scrum and its benefits.

The three Scrum artifacts represent work or value. They help us maximize transparency, making it easier to inspect and adapt our way toward better outcomes. Let’s look at the commitment for each artifact to uncover their critical role in enabling the business benefits of agility.

Embracing self-management can be challenging for teams transitioning to Scrum. It involves new skills and a different approach to getting work done. Scrum Masters play a critical role in helping their teams embrace greater autonomy. Let’s look at how.

The Scrum Guide gives us a maximum one-month timebox for the Sprint. That means while it can’t be longer than a month, it can — and likely needs to be — shorter. So, how do we choose the right Sprint length for our product? In this article, I share three questions to determine the right Sprint length and offer some additional tips.

The Scrum values help create a culture of collaboration and continuous improvement, guiding the team toward better results and a more satisfying work experience. I’ve written and talked a lot about the Scrum values over my consulting and coaching career because I’ve seen how they can galvanize teams to achieve their best work. I’ve also seen how they are often misunderstood. I hope this article will provide an easy way for readers to learn about the importance of the Scrum values and find helpful links to other Agile Socks posts for those who want to dive deeper.

With the widespread adoption of Scrum, variation in how teams practice Scrum has inevitably evolved. At the same time, some organizations that have turned to Scrum wonder if they are getting its full benefits. So, how do you know if Scrum is working? In this article, I outline 3 questions that can help determine if you're getting value from Scrum. Your answers might point to adjustments you can make to your practice to improve outcomes. 

Successful Scrum Masters continuously find ways to improve their practice to have greater influence and impact on their teams and organizations. Scrum’s foundational concept, empiricism, which advances learning through experience and observation, can support this kind of growth. In this blog post, we’ll explore five ways that a Scrum Master can use empiricism to improve their own practice and become a more effective leader. 

Many of us find it difficult to ask for help at work, which is a problem if you are part of a Scrum Team. Interdependence and collaboration are central to Scrum, but these practices don’t always come naturally to those new to the framework. In this post, we explore the incorrect assumptions tied up in asking for help and actions a Scrum Master can take to create the best conditions for a strong interdependent and collaborative team.

Goal setting is an essential tool supporting agility in complex environments. Various A-B-C formulas lead us to believe it’s a straightforward process, but setting and using goals effectively is challenging. Common pitfalls include not going deep enough with what we aim to achieve and bringing a success-or-failure perspective to the process rather than an empirical mindset. If it feels like your team is missing the mark, consider my top seven tips for setting more effective goals.

Being an effective Scrum Master or team member inevitably involves difficult conversations. How we approach challenging discussions can mean the difference between a transformative moment and one that goes sideways. Fortunately, there is a lot we can do to prepare for those times when we need to wade through a thorny issue. Let’s look at some strategies for facilitating difficult Scrum Team conversations.

What is one of the most important aspects of holding the Scrum Master accountability? If you immediately thought about something like removing impediments and helping the team get to Done, I want you to think of the bigger picture. How you show up as a leader has the biggest impact. Not sure what that means? Read on to see why your mindset and what you bring of yourself to your Scrum practice are critical to success.

Let’s unpack what defines trust and how, although it does not sit among them, the Scrum values help build trust among team members.

Scrum Masters are accountable for effectiveness of Scrum and yet many things are beyond their control. Let's unpack how to navigate this.

The values set out in the Scrum framework are essential because they help us to navigate complex work environments as a team. At first glance, they appear straightforward but living the Scrum Values each day is challenging whether this is your first or fiftieth Sprint together. If you’re a Scrum Master struggling with this issue, you are definitely not alone. In this discussion, I’ll outline why the Scrum values matter, how to determine if they are at risk on your team, why this happens, and how to get things back on track.

I hear the word “commitment” used in problematic and misleading ways all the time. This is true when I am teaching Professional Scrum classes and even when I am coaching good Scrum Masters. It often sounds like one of these statements: How do we know how much work to commit to? How do we make sure we will finish all of the scope we committed to for this release? What happens if we don’t meet our commitment date? The problem is that the word commitment has been MISUNDERSTOOD in organizations to mean a guarantee or promise related to delivery. And that is NEVER what the word meant in the context of Scrum.

In my last article, I explained why we need to stop talking about "carryover" and how it's not actually a thing in Scrum. "Carryover" is really just partially done work at the end of a Sprint. Now I will take you deeper and share the 4 common misunderstandings often associated with this concept, and how we can make the shift to creating better conversations about what really matters.

“Carryover” is not a thing in Scrum, and I think we need to stop using that terminology. Because by giving it a special name, it gets normalized. Plus the term itself is misleading. In this post, I will talk about “carryover” really means and how to handle it.

Measurement is important, but it's not just about what we measure. It's about understanding why we measure and how we use those measures. In this post, I will share some common patterns I have noticed that lead to using measures poorly.

I am often asked how to create better goals. This comes up at the team level, and it also comes up for the wider organization. When we are dealing with complexity, there is no one right way, no perfect template, and no best practice. And I find it helpful to look at the goals people are using today, explore the benefits those goals are giving them, and identify if there are unintended consequences of how they are using goals. In this post, I will share some common patterns I have noticed that lead to using goals poorly.

In my live training, I often ask students why we estimate. The answer I usually hear is some version of...“So we know how big something is and how long it will take.”  

In my Professional Scrum Training and coaching sessions with teams, I am often asked about Product Backlog management tools. In this post, I'll share my thoughts on tools and 3 tips for using tools effectively in Scrum.

In this post, I will explain the difference between creative and reactive modes of operating, offer some examples of how this shows up in our teams and beyond, as well as some tips for cultivating your ability to stay creative.

Over the years of working in both traditional and agile environments, I have noticed a pattern. It is something I now call a culture of escalation.  In this post, I will share the common causes of a culture of escalation and some tips for breaking out of the pattern.

When I made the transition from traditional project management to agility and Scrum, I was excited to step out of the chaos and feel more purpose in my daily work.

On November 18, 2020, Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland released an updated version of the Scrum Guide. In this blog post, I will share what you need to know about the 2020 Scrum Guide.

In the 2020 Scrum Guide, the Definition of Done is created by the Scrum Team. In previous versions of the Scrum Guide, this responsibility was explicitly owned by the Development Team. I will explain the intention of the change and what it means for Scrum Teams.

When I ask this rhetorical question in a training class or a coaching call, I often get knowing smiles and uncomfortable laughs. This problem shows up in Scrum Teams, and it shows up well beyond Scrum Teams.  In this post, we will explore the 3 common challenges that lead us to end a meeting with the action item to schedule another meeting.

When I first became a Scrum Master, I heard the phrase assume positive intent over and over again. And it really resonated with me.

Scrum Teams are always dealing with complex problems, unpredictability, and change.

As a coach, I’ve gotten many inquiries from colleagues and students asking for advice. How do I support my team during a time when we have and are still experiencing so much change and high levels of uncertainty?

Emotions are part of the human experience. Emotions are essentially energy in motion (e-motion).  When our emotions are flowing freely, they can bring us energy and provide the fuel for us to transform and grow.

A question that frequently comes up in my Scrum Training courses is how to define a product.

I recently read the book The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom. And I noticed strong correlations with what it takes to be an effective Scrum Master.

You have a big heart and a lot of determination, and you want to create a better world. That may mean empowering and supporting your team.

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 splitting their time between multiple Scrum Teams or are being told by their organizations that they will be.