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Blog Post

Trust but Verify at the Sprint Review

June 23, 2025
There’s a reason we often say, “Trust but verify.” It's because trust is important — but to build and maintain trust we need transparency. In Scrum, the Sprint Review gives us a way to practice that idea consistently.
Blog Post

Product Owner vs. Product Manager

June 13, 2025
Organizations define Product Manager and Product Owner roles differently. Company size, industry, and structure all play a role. Scrum makes the Product Owner accountable for maximizing value, but many companies add a Product Manager alongside—or instead of—a Product Owner. This creates variations in how the roles function.
Blog Post

Signs of a High Performing Team

June 9, 2025
The purpose of the Scrum Master is to improve the adoption of Scrum. So, it makes sense that the Scrum Master should ask the question What does a high-performing Scrum Team look like
Blog Post

Keep Scrum Simple

June 2, 2025
Scrum actually has very few rules. It’s a simple framework with just enough—but not too much—structure to help teams work together. It’s flexible. It’s lightweight. And it gives teams the space to learn, adapt, and improve continuously.
Blog Post

When to Cancel the Sprint

May 28, 2025
According to the Scrum Guide, a Sprint can be cancelled—but only by the Product Owner, and only if the Sprint Goal becomes obsolete. But what does that even mean?
Blog Post

Undone Work is a Monkey on the Scrum Team's Back

May 19, 2025
In Scrum, “Done” means done. Not halfway done, not “almost there,” and certainly not “we’ll get to it next Sprint.” Yet, many teams find themselves with a growing burden of unfinished work. Over time, that burden starts to feel like a monkey on the team’s back—heavy, distracting, and hard to shake off.
Blog Post

Burnout on the Scrum Team

May 6, 2025
It isn't just individuals who can suffer from burnout. Sometimes, it's the whole Scrum Team. PST Mary Iqbal explores this serious problem in her latest blog post.
Blog Post

You've Gotta Start Somewhere

April 23, 2025
New Scrum Teams aren't perfect, but when you use Scrum to get better, you get better at Scrum. So often, when you first start using Scrum, it can feel like you're just going through the motions. And while that can be frustrating, it's also a part of learning.
Blog Post

Don't Overload the Sprint

April 14, 2025
It may be tempting to push the team to deliver more by overloading the Sprint with extra work. But don’t do it! One of Scrum’s core values is focus, and that value exists for a reason. A team that focuses on delivering a reasonable amount of work will accomplish more than one that tries to take on everything at once.
Blog Post

That's Not the Point of Points

April 14, 2025
Points are not for measuring individual performance. Points are for forecasting future delivery. We don't need to fake the data to make developers look better, because that's not what points are for.
Blog Post

Do You Need That Ticket?

March 31, 2025
Some teams are obsessed with documenting everything. They create tickets for tracking time, logging meetings, or even planning how to plan. They think they’re being transparent. In reality, they’re just adding layers of clerical work that don’t actually help deliver value.
Blog Post

Coaching Over Clerical

March 28, 2025
Scrum Masters can sometimes fall into the trap of managing the process rather than coaching the team. While it might seem helpful to update tickets, close backlog items, or move tasks around, this kind of administrative work actually disempowers the team and takes the Scrum Master away from their real job: helping people grow, removing obstacles, and improving the adoption of Scrum.
Blog Post

You'll Hate the Daily Scrum Until You Love It

March 17, 2025
At the end of our first Sprint, during the Retrospective, someone pointed out that the Daily Scrum alone would add over 250 meetings a year. It felt excessive. We were already frustrated with too many meetings, so why would we willingly add more? But as we kept going, something changed. We started seeing the benefits—not just in theory, but in practice.
Blog Post

Scrum in a Machine Shop

February 26, 2025
At Argus, the maintenance team in Edmonton faced a challenge: ensuring consistent, high-quality repairs while dealing with an unpredictable workload.
Blog Post

A Little Too Supportive

February 24, 2025
How can you focus on continuous improvement if you think everything is already perfect? Scrum Masters who become too emotionally attached to their teams can lose the ability to assess improvement opportunities objectively.
Blog Post

Scrum By Any Other Name

February 17, 2025
In some of my classes, people tell me they are using Scrum—but they can't call it Scrum. Why? Because someone in their organization had a bad experience with it.
Blog Post

Don't Put Your Team in a Bubble

February 11, 2025
Many Scrum Masters see their role as protecting the Scrum Team. But when protection becomes isolation, something is wrong. Shielding a team too much from stakeholders isn't helpful - it hinders collaboration, stifles feedback and erodes trust.
Blog Post

Scrum is Not the Wild, Wild West

February 3, 2025
Scrum - when done well - actually promotes even greater accountability than waterfall, because the Scrum team is accountable for value delivery. And great Scrum teams measure - and reflect upon - customer outcomes so that they can adjust course and improve their ability to deliver value.
Blog Post

Management by Exception at the Daily Scrum

January 27, 2025
Management by exception is the idea that we should manage the things that are off track, rather than giving focus to things that are going well. In the context of the Daily Scrum, this could be done by asking open ended questions intended to find out if there are any issues that need to be discussed.
Blog Post

Work Smarter, Not Harder

January 21, 2025
The Scrum framework is simple, with just enough - but not too much - structure to enable teams to collaborate around value delivery in complex environments. The problem is that a lot of teams add unnecessary complexity to the Scrum framework itself, which results in a lot of wasted effort. Here are four strategies to help Scrum teams work smarter, not harder.
Blog Post

When Scrum Masters Overstep

January 10, 2025
Scrum Masters are human. And sometimes - even when they are trying to help - they can unintentionally overstep their authority. In this article, we will discuss the most common ways that Scrum Masters overstep themselves, and why.
Blog Post

What is the Definition of Done?

January 7, 2025
In Scrum, the Definition of Done (DoD) is a shared understanding of what it means for a Product Backlog item to be considered complete. For example, for a Scrum team that is developing software, a Definition of Done might include things such as 'Complete code review' or 'all standard Regression scripts have passed' or even 'performance testing complete' or 'page loads in under .1 seconds'.
Blog Post

What a Waste!

December 23, 2024
In this article, we will discuss 3 concepts that work better in simple business problems and not so well in an Agile environment.
Blog Post

Why Product Owners Should Not Assign Work

December 16, 2024
A common mistake Product Owners (POs) often make is assigning Product Backlog items to specific Scrum Teams or individuals. While this approach may seem efficient - and even helpful - it undermines team dynamics, disempowers Developers, and distracts the PO from their true purpose: maximizing value.
Blog Post

Keep it Simple

December 9, 2024
Scrum was designed to be simple—deliberately so. Adding too much too soon can actually slow you down, making it harder to reach the value Scrum is built to deliver.
Blog Post

The Refinement Funnel

December 4, 2024
There is no such thing as pre-refinement. Instead, all work associated with adding order, size and detail to items in the Product Backlog is refinement, whether it takes place in a meeting or whether it's work done by an individual outside of a meeting.
Blog Post

Stepping Into Scrum

November 27, 2024
Starting with Scrum can feel overwhelming. It’s a framework with defined events, accountabilities, and artifacts that might seem rigid or even intimidating at first glance. But here’s the truth: it’s okay not to get everything perfect on day one. The real magic of Scrum unfolds as you practice and improve over time.
Blog Post

Stop Fighting for People and Start Delivering Products

November 25, 2024
Have you ever felt like your team spends more time battling over "resources" (a.k.a. people) than strategizing over what is the highest value work? You're not alone. Many organizations struggle with this chaos. Many Product Owners are fighting a constant battle over which work is "actually" the highest priority for the organization, juggling dependencies and scrambling for people to do the work.
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Myth: Limiting Product Owners to One Scrum Team

November 18, 2024
There’s a persistent myth out there that a Product Owner should only support one Scrum Team. The idea behind this is that having more than one team will stretch the Product Owner too thin, leading to burnout and unnecessary stress. But that’s actually a huge misconception!
Blog Post

There's more to Organizational Agility than the Scrum Guide

November 13, 2024
Let me start by saying that I am not demeaning the Scrum Guide in any way. Teams are empowered - with Scrum - to respond and adapt to complex environments in ways that would have been impossible before. That being said, the Scrum framework "just" guides the interactions of the Scrum team itself.
Blog Post

The Case for Flow Metrics

October 31, 2024
Agile teams often struggle with how to size and forecast upcoming work. Flow metrics offer a simple, effective way to solve that problem without the headaches that come from traditional estimation methods. In fact, flow metrics can provide more accurate planning and forecasting than using points or hours—and they keep things agile, not bogged down in endless debates about estimates.
Blog Post

Organize For Products - Not False Efficiency

October 31, 2024
Efficiency seems like an important word. Other words like productivity, specialization, capacity, utilization and standardization also sound pretty impressive. These words are important words for optimizing (another word!) repetitive processes. The problem is that these words are not as important when it comes to creative work or problem-solving. Read more in this blog post from PST Mary Iqbal.
Blog Post

The 5 Worst Agile Mistakes I’ve Made

October 21, 2024
This article was tough to write, not because I don’t have enough mistakes to share, but because there are so many! Mistakes are where we learn, and that’s exactly what I’ve done. I hope sharing mine will help you avoid making the same ones.
Blog Post

The Wisdom of Incremental Delivery

September 23, 2024
Incremental delivery is the superpower behind the Scrum framework. Scrum is based on Empiricism, which requires Transparency, Inspection, and Adaptation. But none of that works without delivering value in increments.
Blog Post

It’s Okay for the Roadmap to Change

September 19, 2024
A roadmap is a visualization of the Product Owner’s plan to deliver the Product Goal and fulfill the product vision. But in the real world, especially in complex environments, plans change—and that’s okay.
Blog Post

Why “I Don’t Know” is a Game-Changer

September 3, 2024
When you admit that you don’t have all the answers as a Scrum Master, you’re not losing credibility—you’re gaining trust. You’re telling your team, “It’s okay not to know everything. What matters is how we tackle the unknown together.”
Blog Post

Why Goals Matter in Scrum

August 28, 2024
The iterative nature of Scrum, with its focus on delivering a Done Increment each Sprint, allows teams to make steady progress toward their goals, even in the face of uncertainty. This process of setting and achieving goals enables teams to adapt to changing conditions, learn from their experiences, and continuously improve.
Blog Post

That's the Power of Scrum

July 30, 2024
When we say that Scrum is purposely or deliberately incomplete, it's not that they didn't finish writing the Scrum guide or that they have a little more research to do before the Scrum Guide is perfect. What we mean is that Scrum is a framework within which teams work together to deliver value. It's not a rulebook. It's not a set of work instructions. It's not a set of meeting agendas or recommended practices.