Does a Scrum Master really need technical business knowledge? If you’re trying to break in the world of Scrum, you might be asking yourself: Does a Scrum Master really need technical knowledge? Do they need business knowledge? I’m here to set the record straight.

Servant-leaders must create a strong foundation that helps people feel empowered to take action, enables them to move forward in a common direction despite uncertainty, and to feel inspired and resourceful during challenging times.  The 4 V’s can help you establish this strong foundation:  Vision, V...

William Davis shares his experiences about becoming an advanced Professional Scrum Master (PSM II). William took a course with me (Joe Krebs) in the Miami/Fort Lauderdale area in November 2018 and shortly after passed the PSM II exam.

Many Agile coaches and Scrum Masters believe they know best. They believe teams must follow a certain set of steps and do things a certain way, and if they do, those teams will be more productive, happy, and successful than ever.

When I work with my clients on Scrum in a Marketing context the discussion about the Marketing Backlog and how to move from a big bang marketing campaign to a more iterative approach via smaller slices of stories is naturally a key area we focus on. 

Scrum is based on self-managed teams. Self-managed teams are able to evolve and adapt quicker in today’s highly complex working environments than traditional command-and-control management structures.

In this episode of Ask a Professional Scrum Trainer, PST Simon Bourk was live and answered the audience's questions about Scrum.

I’ve been in a situation a few times where I’ve interviewed a candidate for a role. I’ve matched their CV to a well-prepared job specification...

Autonomy is a critically important concept in agile culture, however ignore its counterbalance -accountability - at your peril.

Why do I think team coaching is a bad idea? Don't get me wrong, I believe team coaching can have a great amount of added value. It’s just that I often find that teams receive coaching while they should not even be a team.

In this Scrum Tapas video, Professional Scrum Trainer Andreas Ebbert-Karroum talks about Scrum Retrospective events and a tool that he has used to help improve their success rate and communication across the team.

In this Scrum Tapas video, Professional Scrum Trainer Dominik Maximini looks at how Scrum Masters start in their role and evolve over time based on new knowledge and experience. Dominik discusses impediments that Scrum Masters run into with their Scrum Teams and how to overcome them as they learn. ...

Ahhh... the never-ending debate. What's the value of (Scrum) certifications? Is there any value? Why should you get certified? Is it even necessary? In this blog, Chee Hong gives his opinion about the value of certifications and the reasoning behind getting certified.

In the webinar, Kacper Mazek - Principal Consultant at Radically, Edwin Dando - Director at Radically and Professional Scrum Trainer, and Leona Cheffins - HR Business Partner at Vodafone, discuss how they used different tools, models and frameworks that helped Vodafone's business teams with Agile de...

This article on Product Backlog refinement shows that Refinement is more than just a meeting where the whole Scrum Team is having a discussion. It requires and involves everyone with shared and special responsibilities.

In this webcast, Professional Scrum Trainer Venkatesh Rajamani fields Scrum questions from the participants.

In this Scrum Tapas video, Professional Scrum Trainer Boris Steiner looks at several anti-patterns that he has observed over the years participating in Sprint Reviews and ways he has found to overcome them.  (4:40 Minutes)

This week, we are building our new website with a Scrum Team. Practicing what we preach, we are doing this in the most Agile, iterative way we can. So yes, we're making all the expected mistakes. In this post, we share what we learned about flow and releasing more often - with examples that are as r...

In this Scrum Tapas video, Professional Scrum Trainers Todd Miller and Ryan Ripley discuss what it means to be a Professional Scrum Master. They look at behaviors, qualities and a big focus on the Scrum Values. (9:16 Minutes)

Special Spanish Edition of Scrum Tapas by Professional Scrum Trainer Alex Ballarin.  Los Daily Scrum son eventos muy importantes en Scrum para conseguir la gestión de procesos empírica. Si el equipo Scrum no es capaz de establecer una meta efectiva para el Sprint o los desarrolladores usan este even...

In this live webinar, Eric Naiburg, Director of Marketing and Operations for Scrum.org, describes how organizations can overcome these impediments by growing their Agile practices through empiricism, protecting Agile values, and changing the organization organically, team by team, product by product...

I have an important favor to ask to Scrum practitioners who are asking their team to commit themselves to their sprint backlog at sprint planning.

In deze video geef ik commentaar op de retrospective van Koos Coach. Deze eerste aflevering bevat tips voor het starten van een meeting.

In deze video geef ik commentaar op de retrospective van Koos Coach. Deze tweede episode gaat over veiligheid en respect.

In deze video geef ik commentaar op de retrospective van Koos Coach. Deze derde episode gaat over eigenaarschap.

This is a great exercise to learn more about your team; to find out more about each other’s concerns and dreams and, importantly, what you can do to support them. I attended a get together / workshop style event in which we discussed how we could support each other in our day to day lives. I'd l...

In deze video geef ik commentaar op de retrospective van Koos Coach. Deze derde episode gaat over eigenaarschap.

In deze video geef ik commentaar op de retrospective van Koos Coach. Deze tweede episode gaat over veiligheid en respect.

in deze video geef ik commentaar op de retrospective van Koos Coach. Deze eerste aflevering bevat tips voor het starten van een meeting.

A couple of weeks ago we looked at Monte Carlo analysis. We saw how this technique can be used to forecast Sprint capacity, and to anticipate the likely completion schedule for a given backlog of work.

I woke up Friday morning at 3 am for the second consecutive day and yet again I couldn't fall back asleep. The day before was the second and final day of my first experience co-training the new Scrum.org Professional Scrum Master II course.

You want to know IF and HOW you can "UP your Scrum" as a Scrum Master? Read this post by Professional Scrum Trainer Jasper Alblas.

This article is directed to all who think that being a Scrum Master is inferior, and therefore think (ab)using the term “Agile Coach” is justified.

A description of experimenting with twisting the Liberating Structure 'Shift & Share' during our recent Scrum.org PSM II class.

Most of the concepts in Scrum are easy to understand but extremely difficult to master. This is due to the fact that Scrum is designed for perfect, and reality never is. The same principle applies to the Definition of Done.

Over the years, I've seen countless Scrum adaptions, and I thought perhaps it would be interesting to sum up some of the common misinterpretations. I would love to hear about the misinterpretations that you have faced, so feel free to participate in the comment section.

In this Scrum Tapas video, Professional Scrum Trainer Russell Miller provides some tips for how to make the Daily Scrum more effective. Russell gives some suggestions on questions to ask to get the team more active within the Daily Scrum and ways to keep them engaged. (3:20 minutes)

In this Scrum Tapas video, Professional Scrum Trainer Wilbert Seele discusses why working with the Scrum Team to decide which method for capturing requirements is the right way to decide. No one method is a must and since it is all about communication, the team should be involved to pick what will ...

In this Scrum Tapas video, Professional Scrum Trainer Ryan Ripley looks a short exercise that he runs with his Scrum Teams and when working with other Scrum Masters to help eliminate extra meetings. Ryan evaluates how a requested meeting may fit into one of the 5 Scrum Events, getting greater invol...

This article aims at helping Scrum Masters to conduct the *MOST AWESOME* Sprint Review they ever witnessed. (This article could have been titled: 41 tips that will make your Sprint Review awesome!)

This is the last in a series of 3 blogs presenting the result of an interesting research study from Sam Walker.  Walker discovered that the most successful sports teams that ever existed all shared one single element: They all had a team captain with 7 overlapping traits that made them extremely suc...

In this webinar, Course Stewards and Professional Scrum Trainers Stephanie Ockerman and Barry Overeem cover some tips on how you can improve your skills as a Scrum Master.

I remember being told, many years ago when I started university, that Information Technology is a numerate discipline.

In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Dave West, Chief Product Owner of Scrum.org about the state of Scrum, the latest revision to the Scrum Guide, the rise of Digital and the way Scrum.org maintains its courseware.

I recently attend the Professional Scrum Master II (PSM II) course and I'd like to share my thoughts with you about it. 

What can a Scrum team learn from the World’s Greatest Sports Teams? This is the first in 3 blogs that will share a number of Leadership lessons that can be used to build high performing Scrum teams.

In 2015, Cathay Pacific had a major project on their hands which concerned the development of a new Internet Booking Engine (IBE). They needed a framework that would help them deliver within a specific time line.

The Scrum Master profession spans wide variety of skills, knowledge and experience. Scrum Masters try to create high performing teams and drive organisational change. Although our primary responsibility is the process, it’s people we work with all the time.

How we used Liberating Structures, Learning 3.0 and Training from the Back of the Room to create a new learning experience with the PSM II class.

Leveraging the power of the crowd, Professional Scrum Trainer Ryan Ripley addresses the questions of the webinar and provides guidance and advice to the most pressing questions and situations.