Community Blog

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.

Scrum es un framework fácil de entender y difícil de dominar. Scrum no intenta ser una herramienta para solucionar todos los problemas, no es tampoco una receta completa que prescribe paso a paso lo que se debe hacer.

I recently started aggregating my notes, links, and references related to agile leadership to understand better what it — in the context of an agile transition — may look like.

La velocidad es uno de los temas de Scrum más discutidos online y offline. Sólo hace falta acercarse a la comunidad de Scrum Masters en Facebook para comprobar como muchas de las cuestiones planteadas están en la linea de la velocidad de entrega de los equipos de desarrollo de Software.

For the next 5 weeks we are trying to have a little bit of fun during the summer month of July. I will be asking you three questions every Monday in the Scrummer Quiz and raffle off two books written by Ken Schwaber Software in 30 Days.

In this article we will investigate how an effective Product Backlog refinement can be conducted in Scrum.

This is a common question in my Professional Scrum classes. The topic of combining Scrum roles often comes up early when we are still learning the basics of the Scrum framework.  It comes up because people are already wearing two hats or are being told that they will be.

A few years ago I went to a training course given by Ralph Kimball, the “inventor” of the Data Warehouse. It was a great experience but one of the main learnings for me was something he said that applied to all teams not just Data Warehouse teams.

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.

Esta mañana estaba preparando una megamaleta para viajar durante las próximas semanas a Japón, México, Portugal y Alemania cuando me he encontrado el tuit que puedes leer más arriba.

Have you ever wondered - what is the value of Success? This question is not easy to answer, and everyone will have a different answer.

In many organisations I see Scrum not producing its anticipated value. The concept of value varies across organisations.

Many Scrum teams have a regular meeting scheduled on everyone’s calendar, even though it is not an official Scrum event.

Over the last year Steve Trapps and I have been chatting to people in the Agile community, in case you haven't seen it yet here is the output from our opportunity to grab Dave West the CEO and Product Owner for Scrum.org.

Las organizaciones se enfrentan a clientes que piensan que pueden demandar lo que quieran, hay que darles lo que piden y todo se puede hacer con el nivel de presión adecuado.

For executives and for change agents who deal with executives in large contexts ...

Why not spend a part of your upcoming Sprint Retrospective to re-clarify the purpose of Scrum?

DevOps es un área de mi interés desde hace varios años. En Diciembre de 2014, en la CAS de Barcelona, di una charla en Inglés sobre la experiencia haciendo que DevOps fuera uno de los pilares de la agilidad en la DVLA -Una suerte de DGT británica-.

El Sprint Backlog suele generar bastantes dudas en cuanto a su gestión. En ocasiones se convierte en un arma arromadiza que los stakeholders, el Product Owner o incluso el Scrum Master utilizan para controlar el equipo. ¿Es esta su función?

TL; DR: Ideas on How to Improve Your Product Backlog Management Techniques Scrum is a simple, yet sufficient framework to build emerging products, provided you identify in advance what is worth building.

In this blog post, I’ll share examples of how I experienced a Developer Culture, being a Scrum Master working with Development Teams.

As CEO and Product Owner for Scrum.org I get the amazing opportunity to visit lots of different companies. Recently I spent a week in Brazil visiting some amazing companies and talking about agility.

En Nexus no se requiere una reunión “Scrum of Scrums” ya que se usa el Nexus Daily Scrum. El Nexus Integration Team tiene la responsabilidad de gestionar las dependencias de un Nexus y es un equipo dedicado a esta labor entre otras responsabilidades.

La aceptación de los PBIs en Scrum es algo que suscita dudas en los equipos. En realidad es muy fácil.

Scrum Masters, ask yourself - Are you a natural servant leader, or do you struggle to be the inspiring coach that creates high-performing teams? If you have a real desire to change and are ready for some tough self-reflection, this article may inspire you, and give you hope that you can influence major changes, by starting with things that are within your control.

Velocity, as a metric used by some Scrum teams, is rife with trouble. David's concise article highlights a common pitfall.

If technical debt is the plague of our industry, why isn’t the Scrum Guide addressing the question of who is responsibly dealing with it?

Writing code is like finding your path through a dark forest. Behind each tree can lurk a monster, a treasure or a pit. Or there is no path at all.

Scrum cumplió 21 años en 2016. Ya tiene edad legal para comprar alcohol en la mayoría de estados americanos. Y durante este tiempo ha crecido mucho. Con muchos cambios.

A few months ago we looked at how teams can optimize flow across the Sprint boundary, a technique which is founded on their ability to make limited and sustainable commitments.

Critical Uncertainties is a powerful Liberating Structure helping groups develop strategies for dealing with plausible yet unpredictable futures. Strategy-making is an essential part of successful software-/product delivery with Scrum. With Critical Uncertainties, teams have an interaction pattern at hand that can support them create resilient strategies.

We've all seen it. The Scrum Team that goes through the motions, implements all the mechanics of Scrum, and still when we look at what's going on it doesn't feel right.

During a recent meetup of The Liberators Network, we got together with 30 enthusiastic Scrum Masters.

"I am a project manager.  What is my role now that we are moving to Scrum?”

A personal story of what encouraged a Developer Culture at NowOnline. And why Scrum really doesn't work without it.

I keep hearing leaders say they’re struggling to manage their organizations through change. They’ve had trouble getting their organization to adopt agile. They’re finding it challenging to find the right talent. They’re struggling to establish the right level of transparency.

If you’re new to Scrum and want to get the most out of a team of under-performers, you should try Scrum!!

An organization’s ability to rapidly and deliberately respond to changing demand, while controlling risk helps ascertain its Agility.

The following 5 tips to increase the Emotional Intelligence of a Product Owner as inspired from Scott Watson’s work, an emotional intelligence speaker and trainer.

In the previous videos, I introduced the Creative reframing technique and discussed 2 Strategies for its practical use. In this final video, I will discuss several activities that agile coaches can use with their teams or clients to make use of the Creative reframing technique.

Your organization has been disturbed by late launches in its last few new products, and now management has charged you with “getting to the bottom of the problem.”

As a Scrum Master, I know that serving Development Team, Product Owner and Organization to adopt Scrum is not easy.

When a lot of organizations are transitioning from the way they used to work to a more cross-functional, agile squad way of working, they usually look for scaling frameworks to help them do it.

In the previous video, I spoke about the creative reframing technique, that coaches could use as a facilitation or professional coaching tool.

In this post I'd like to discuss "Empathy - why it is important in teams and what you can do if you struggle with it". First, we all know what the role of the Scrum Master is, right?

Sanjay Saini, owner of Agile WOW("Agile Ways of Working"), kindly invited me, as an independent Scrum Caretaker, to open and close the event. I hope many Scrum practitioners register at scrumdayindia.org and join the event. In the end, only eager attendants can turn events into insightful experiences!

Creative reframing is an excellent facilitation and professional coaching technique that allows you to explore problems from various, sometimes unusual and unexpected angles.

Saying no is an integral part of any Product Owner's job. In this short video, I explore the reasons why we might be saying yes when no is a more appropriate answer (these reasons are from a great book by Dominica DeGrandis Make Work Visible) and how to say No when you need to.

My mother was the first person who showed me unconditional love. My mother gave me direction and supported me along whatever journey or passion I was chasing. She picked me up when I fell. Celebrated with me in all my accomplishments.

Changing the way we work is extremely difficult — we all know this. It requires us to find novel solutions to wicked challenges, to deal with cultural baggage (‘the way we do things here’) and to bring along the people needed to make a change successful.