Community Blog

It's been a while since I wrote a blog, here is some good news, this is part 1 of a 3 part blog series, inspired by the writings of John C. Maxwell, “The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth: Live Them and Reach Your Potential.”

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.

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.

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.

People don't always think of dev teams handling customer needs. But, for a Scrum team to have success understanding the customer is key. What is a company without customers?

Are you ready to escape the average and become awesome? Do you want to overcome your fears and follow your dreams? 

"Coming together is a beginning, keeping together is progress, working together is success." - Henry Ford  What do the Ford Motor company (Henry Ford, Clarence Avery, Peter Martin, Charles Sorensen), the Google team (Sergey Br

We always hear athletes talking about being 'in the zone.' But you don't have to be LeBron James to feel this type of hyper-focus. Learn how Scrum teams can harness it.

What makes a great team? Why do some teams achieve greatness, seeing their vision become reality, while others seem to go nowhere?

What makes the software development work great? Obviously, technology, right... Wrong! In an interesting article in "Peopleware", authors Tom and Timothy describe how the most important aspect of software development is not technology, but people.

Have you ever sat on a bus or plane, and rather than offering the vacant seat next to you to others, you hope that no one takes it, so you might have more space.

Coaching conversations typically occur in a “zone of comfortable debate.”. However, to deal with issues at their core, it’s important to enter the ZOUD: the “Zone of Uncomfortable Debate.”

"It's not always easy to be a good Scrum Master. Learn some common pitfalls of Scrum Masters, and to recover from them, or avoid them altogether."

"It's not our fault! The Product Owner is responsible for backlog management, the PBIs aren't well defined."

In one of my previous blog articles, I wrote about the Scrum Master journey through the different levels of influence to achieve greatness. In this blog, we will explore the number one skill I believe is needed for a Scrum Master (servant leader) to be effective in order to create change and impact a Scrum team and organization.

Agility is important to an organization and the path to agility becomes more clear by understanding the purpose of pursuing agility. The product owner role is key in increasing the benefits an organization can gain in their path to agility.

Do you ever wonder what determines our actions? Most people think that what we do is the outcome of our personality, however, the truth is more straightforward. It’s our mindset that controls our behavior. 

"As remote teams become more and more common, Scrum Masters must find a way to effectively do Scrum while working with far flung team members."

Leadership is developed, not discovered (I have found inspiration in John C. Maxwell's various books).  John defines leadership as influence, and a good Scrum Master has to climb the different levels of influence to achieve a good to great mindset.

I am sharing the learnings from my recently read books which helped me improve my listening skills. Inspired by one of the tools from the Book "People Tools" by Alan C Fox  here is the first Tool/Tactic for Scrum Masters.

Sometime back I read a short SciFi story in a book named People Tools, Story was about a spaceship conducting man’s third ten year expedit