Do you hold the job title of Scrum Master in your organization? In most big companies today, this role is still misrepresented as a Project Manager, which is hindering the pursuit of organizational Agility and hurting the professionals who are genuinely attempting to make this challenging job change...

When reading the role of the Scrum Master in the Scrum guide, one of the core competencies is to facilitate meetings. While in a meeting, a Scrum Master might want to visualize what the team is thinking or expressing. Or he might want to enhance the collaboration through an activity. Colored Post-It...

Dear Scrum Master! Being a Professional Scrum Trainer, agile coach & consultant for a while I had a chance to work with around a thousand Scrum Masters across different organizations. I see recurring patterns of misunderstanding and misapplication of Scrum usually visible in how Scrum Masters...

"Agile" (the label) is all over the place. Who would have guessed in early 2001? When the Manifesto for Agile Software Development was created and the English adjective ‘agile’ obtained its specific meaning in the context of software development. What is this manifesto, commonly known as the Agile M...

This blog is part of my series on “Agile Trojan Horses – Covert Appetizers for Agile Discovery”. This series helps spark conversations that restore focus on Agile Fundamentals, whet the appetite to discover more about Agile and help apply Agile in day-to-day decision-making. I am writing this b...

The ability to create high-quality and attractive flip charts is one of the basic skills of any facilitator. If you are the Scrum Master, Agile Coach, business coach or just a person who used to capturing thoughts using paper and markers and prefers the old timeless classics - these simple rules wil...

In this webcast, Ravi Verma, Scrum expert, and founder of SmoothApps discusses self-managing teams, a fundamental element core to agile software delivery and any Scrum Team.

Starting a team new to agility on their first sprint is one of my favorite and most rewarding things to do. The enthusiasm, newness, sense of accomplishment, teamwork, and the communication displayed in just the first sprint is usually enough to leave most folks happily surprised. “Wow, I nev...

[Author’s note: I will be a Scrum Day Dallas on 27 March 2015; a great opportunity to meet me and other master Scrum Masters. Find me there and let’s talk about your Scrum Master journey. Exciting travels –Mark Noneman] So you’re a Scrum Master now. Maybe you’ve volunteered to fulfill the role or...

My name is Peter Götz. I am an experienced software engineer. I started in 2001 and have worked in several projects and with several teams since then. Besides actually developing software I have also prepared and conducted several technical trainings (Java, JBoss, OOAD) for developers. For more than...

Traditionally an individual is declared a ‘manager’ when having hierarchical control over other individuals. There are many sorts of power that come with it. A traditional manager assigns work, follows up on the execution of the work, is responsible for the results, judges and assesses the people...

“A Scrum Master’s practical toolbox” offers options, options from which Scrum Masters can select, and increase their understanding of their role as well as how the role was designed (Gunther Verheyen Directing the Professional Scrum Series, Scrum.org). It so happened that I carefully filled out t...

When I first started doing Scrum I was focused on project delivery. As a software professional I wanted to find better ways of delivering customer value and Scrum made total sense to me. But as I applied Scrum, I started to realise that Scrum isn't actually about delivery; it is about change. Now...

Software is created by people; for better or for worse. That is very different from looking at software development as a robotizeable activity. The agile worldview builds on software development being a creative activity (not: industrial) undertaken by and for people (not: replaceable pieces of mach...

Dan Sloan introduces the pillar of transparency in Scrum and will navigate you through a journey of successes and challenges he’s encountered in his years of coaching and training Scrum teams around the globe.

I am a Scrum Trainer with Scrum.org. I work with lots of organizations to help them become more agile. I see a lot of bad Scrum. More than my fair share. Sometimes I see so much bad Scrum that it makes me question why I do this. This post is my attempt to remind myself why. What is bad Scrum...

I was talking to a friend the other day. She was looking for a job as a Scrum Master. Her background is technical and the last year or so she has been working as a professional coach. Not in IT that is. Just helping people to think and grow. We came to talk about if she should include her c...

A month has passed since the FIFA World Cup finals! With that, a number of less successful football coaches are probably looking for new jobs... But as the disappointed countries ditch their old coaches, they will most probably hire a new one right away. It seems that for elite...

I have encountered many in the Agile community who love Scrum but seem to hate on the practice of Scrum of Scrums. Others describe their Scrum of Scrums as an overarching meeting of Scrum Masters, or as a meeting for a Product Owner team. In my experience, however, a Scrum of Scrums is a great wa...

Learn more from Professional Scrum Trainer Gunther Verheyen about the distinct views and similiarities between Lean and Agile. Included is the Scrum perspective to Agile to demonstrate how the tangible, yet open framework of Scrum aligns and blends the underlying thinking of Agile and Lean.