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How to Sabotage A Product Owner — 53 Anti-Patterns from the Trenches

February 22, 2022
One of my favorite exercises from my Professional Scrum Product Owner classes is how to best sabotage a Product Owner as a member of the middle management. The exercise rules are simple: You’re not allowed to use any form of illegal activity. So, outsourcing the task to a bunch of outlaws is out of the question. Instead, you are only allowed to use practices that are culturally acceptable within your organization.
Blog Post

Scrum Master Interview Questions: How to Make Your Scrum Master Fail

January 10, 2022
Scrum has proven time and again to be the most popular framework for software development. Given that software is eating the world, a seasoned Scrum Master is nowadays in high demand. And that demand causes the market entry of new professionals from other project management branches, probably believing that reading one or two Scrum books will be sufficient. Which makes any Scrum Master interview a challenging task. A good starting point, though, is to ask a candidate to walk in the shoes of an imaginary opponent trying to make the Scrum Master fail by culturally accepted means.
Blog Post

28 Produkt-Backlog Anti-Patterns 🇩🇪

January 6, 2022
Scrum ist ein einfaches, aber hinreichendes Framework für die Entwicklung neuer Produkte, vorausgesetzt, man identifiziert im Voraus, was es sich lohnt zu bauen. Aber auch nach einer erfolgreichen Discovery-Phase kann es einem Scrum Team schwer fallen, das Richtige zu erreichen, wenn das Product Backlog nicht den Anforderungen entspricht: “Garbage in, Garbage out” — wie man so schön sagt. Der folgende Artikel zeigt 28 Product Backlog Anti-Patterns — einschließlich des Product Backlog Verfeinerungsprozesses — auf, die den Erfolg Ihres Scrum Teams limitieren.
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📈 Would you recommend SAFe®? — Join the Survey

December 15, 2021
SAFe® has always been a controversial topic within the agile community. Therefore, back in 2017, I ran a survey on the Net Promoter Score® of the Scaled Agile Framework SAFe®. The result back then was -52. Four and a half years later, I believe it is time to rerun the poll: SAFe® has been through several iterations, and many more agile practitioners have experienced working with it. Moreover, the question still is: Would you recommend SAFe ®?
Blog Post

The Agile Metrics Survey 2021

November 8, 2021
TL; DR: The Agile Metrics Survey 2021 If you value agile practices, it is crucial to know if a job offering or a prospective business partner that claims to be “agile” really keeps its promises.