In this post, I share a few questions you, as a manager - or any other stakeholder, can ask Product Owners and the rest of the Scrum Team to support them in doing the right thing.

Why is the Scrum Master Role So Uncomfortable? Ryan and Todd discuss the hectic life of a Professional Scrum Master and their challenges when confronting complexity in an organization.

In this podcast Professional Scrum Trainer Joshua Partogi shared how Scrum Masters can propel agility in the company by demonstrating behaviours that reflect the Scrum Values.

In this panel discussion moderated by Leslie Morse, Product Owner, Scrum.org, you will learn from Professional Scrum Trainers Olivier Ledru and Bogdan Doroslovac as well as ICF Master Certified Coach Cherie Silas as they discuss their personal journeys with professional coaching. They will reveal ho...

In this episode, Dave interviews PST Ryan Brook based in the UK about his experiences. (17:06 Minutes)

The reasons Scrum Masters violate the spirit of the Scrum Guide are multi-faceted. Typical Scrum Master anti-patterns run from ill-suited personal traits to complacency to pursuing individual agendas to frustration with the team itself.

Three simple retrospective formats based on the Liberating Structures "Conversation Cafe", "Troika Consulting", and "Discovery & Action Dialogue"

When you aspire to a Scrum Master role, some form of certification on your resume is a must. Scrum.org offers the acclaimed PSM learning journey to support Scrum Masters to professionalise their skills. I am a Professional Scrum Trainer for scrum.org and I have trained hundreds of Scrum Masters over...

If you are a Star Wars fan like me, then you know that Star Wars is more than a story; it’s an Epic which holds many important life lessons.  Below are the top five things I learned about Scrum from Star Wars.

In this episode, Dave West interviews PST Stefan Wolpers, based in Germany about his experiences. (20:13 Minutes)

In this interactive session, Richard Kasperowski from With Great People, lays out the case for Continuous / Extreme Teaming. Session participants will join in a flight of fun learning activity-sets. These will give you a taste of team awesomeness and how to start when you go back to work.

How to support Scrum Teams to effectively bridge the gap between their current and desired state

Agile implementations shift culture, yet many organizations limit themselves to the bare minimal execution of a framework and call that Agile.

In this episode of Ask a Professional Scrum Trainers Todd Miller and Ryan Ripley answer the audience's burning questions about Scrum and the challenges they are facing including questions around metrics, Scrum Team dynamics, the Scrum Values, Scrum Master tips and more.

Try this experiment and go on a journey to find your real stakeholders!

The Professional Agile Leader is a realistic, practical guide, written by three Scrum pioneers who demonstrate proven ways to foster responsive and adaptive team cultures. They structure powerful lessons around a case study based on decades of experience helping agile leaders achieve and sustain tra...

In this podcast episode, Host Dave West interviews Ferzeen Anis based in Australia about her experiences with Scrum that led her to become a PST. (18:26 Minutes)

In this blog post we will give examples of Increments and why it is important to have Done Increments

What's up awesome people? I hope you are well and keeping safe. I have been asked many times recently about the career paths for Scrum Master. I personally think Scrum Master should not be a job title. But what does that mean to Scrum Master career path if Scrum Master is not a job title ... I think...

A detailed description of how the Scrum Master role embodies 6 stances, and why I don’t consider “servant leader” and “manager” valid stances anymore

Scrum is simple, but that simplicity means that each of its elements is essential.  The values, accountabilities, artifacts and events are all part of the framework for a reason.  Teams that mess with the framework are messing with Scrum.  Teams that make changes to the elements limit Scrum's effect...

Let’s talk about Product Owners and Scrum Masters. Can they both be the same person? A very common question I hear is can a Scrum Master be a Product Owner and well the answer is a little bit nuanced so watch and find out!

We all have strengths and weaknesses with the preferred stances of a Scrum Master. Like many of the teams we work with, being ‘key-shaped’ comes to mind – cross-skilled and competent at many things but having a deeper knowledge of certain stances more so than others.

The 2020 Scrum Guide provides only the necessary guidelines within which teams use Scrum to deliver value. Sometimes, myths about the guidelines of the Scrum framework can result in teams adopting practices which do not add value to the Scrum Team. By exposing these myths, you can help accelerate th...

One of my favorite exercises from my Professional Scrum Product Owner classes is how to best sabotage a Product Owner as a member of the middle management. The exercise rules are simple: You’re not allowed to use any form of illegal activity. So, outsourcing the task to a bunch of outlaws is out of ...

A case study highlighting the use of Scrum in a non-software organization: The Hong Kong medical branch of a large insurance company engaged with Ken Kwan, Professional Scrum Trainer to help them with their agile transformation with a focus on using the Scrum framework to improve their business proc...

This is a recording of "Scrum Mastery - The Journey To Growth" by Reshma (Simran) Nagrani at AgilityToday 2022 Unconference. (25:50 Minutes)

The most perceptible activity that can take place in Scrum is the Sprint Review. The feedback-driven working session enables the demonstration of the functionality built during the Sprint to get feedback from the Stakeholders. In the following article, we will discuss the aspects of Sprint Review.

Spark small and incremental change in your Scrum Team, with our community-driven actionable quick tips.

Scrum uses an iterative, incremental approach to deliver value to the business through the medium of the Sprint. The purpose of each Sprint is to deliver a Done, usable increment. It sounds straightforward, but it can be tricky to achieve. Here are the three steps to Done in Scrum.

In this webinar, Professional Scrum Trainer Ravi Verma shares seven concrete steps that purpose-driven Scrum Masters can take to avoid and escape this trap while reclaiming their Scrum Master superpower.

How to Fail as an Agile Coach in Scrum by Scrum.org trainer Chee-Hong Hsia.  ​​​​​​​Helping organisations in their Agile journey sustainably while respecting the three Scrum accountabilities. A must-read if you're a dedicated Agile Coach or working with Agile Coaches in your organisation where Scru...

Every Scrum Team, at some point, will struggle with how to facilitate the Daily Scrum. By using a Kanban Board and Flow Metrics, Scrum Teams can better collaborate on their work, visualize progress towards the Sprint Goal, and form the best plan possible for the day.

In this Scrum Tapas video, Professional Scrum Trainer Richard Hundhausen talks about his experience as a Developer and the difficulties that he and others have faced when moving to becoming a Scrum Master. Richard provides guidance and suggestions of what to look out for and how to overcome challen...

The Canvas plays the role of a guide for the Team Coaches. The coaches can follow the guidelines of the Canvas and partner with their teams and their stakeholders to maximise the required abilities to move forward successfully, achieving the shared goals.

Scrum has proven time and again to be the most popular framework for software development. Given that software is eating the world, a seasoned Scrum Master is nowadays in high demand. And that demand causes the market entry of new professionals from other project management branches, probably believ...

In this blog, I will share my valuable experience in my journey toward becoming a Scrum Master. I would also share stories of various professionals, including women, who successfully got a Scrum Master’s job even after a career break. 

Words matter, especially when working in any team setting. Words that are spoken or written by one person can have different meanings when read or heard by another. Scrum Teams have multiple members, which means the interpretation of words used in the team setting increases with each member. The cha...

Scrum.org PST Chee-Hong Hsia is here to set the record straight. It’s actually a huge compliment when people say "You’re a Scrum purist".

In this blog, Venkatesh Rajamani shares tips on being a good Scrum Master.

Many well-meaning Scrum practitioners have misconceptions about Scrum, which sometimes leads to creating “rules” that do not exist in the framework. In today's article, we will discuss the five of the most common misconceptions about the Sprint.

So there is Scrum and there is 'an implementation of Scrum'. Why is it important to understand the difference? I hope that after reading this blog, you will realise that many Scrum conversations are actually not about Scrum, but "an implementation of Scrum" and you didn't even realise it.

Familiarize yourself with the principles of Liberating Structures and learn how they can strengthen your Scrum Team.

A common question we get asked is how do we get started with creating a Definition of Done? Let's explore how we can obtain transparency of where you are, your destination should be, and what your possible first steps are to get there!

In this special episode of Ask a Professional Scrum Trainer moderated by Patricia Kong, PSTs Magdalena Firlit, Simon Flossmann, Ravi Verma and Yuval Yeret, answer questions related to Scaling Scrum. They provide insights on scaling Scrum with Nexus and also answer questions related to comparing and ...

Read on and learn more on how to best sabotage a Scrum Master from the exercise results of more than ten PSM I and PSM II classes. (I slightly edited the suggestions for better readability.)

Last week, we talked about common misconceptions related to the Daily Scrum.  This week we’ll focus more broadly on misconceptions impacting everything from the Product Backlog to the composition of the Scrum Team itself.  

There’s been plenty of discussion over the years comparing and contrasting Scrum and Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), which has set up a premise that you must choose one or the other. But in actuality, Scrum and SAFe can be friends and work well together. This whitepaper by Avanade and Scrum.org tackl...

In my recent post, I told the story of the time I was fired as a Scrum Master. This time I will tell you about a time I decided to quit (probably shortly before I would have been fired!).

TL; DR: Ignoring the Capacity Check during Sprint Planning There are plenty of failure possibilities with Scrum. Since Scrum is an intentionally incomplete framework with a reasonable yet short “manual,” this effect should not surprise anyone. For example, the Developers are ignoring a capacity c...