Today I changed my Twitter and LinkedIn profile. I removed Agile Coach and replaced it with Scrum Master. 100% Scrum Master. Although it seems a small change, it raised quite some concern when I suggested the idea a couple of weeks ago... "You should stick with Agile Coach. As a freelancer, th...

In my last post, I explained the pattern of the evolution of the Product Owner. This blog is about the evolution pattern of a Scrum Master. Do you want to know more about what it takes to be a good Scrum Master? Would you like to know how to grow in your role? Then you should probably keep read...

The Nexus framework was created by Ken Schwaber, co-creator of the Scrum framework, and was released by his organization, Scrum.org, along with a body of knowledge, the Nexus Guide, in 2015. This paper written by Professional Scrum Trainer Simon Bourk and Scrum.org Product Owner for Enterprise Solu...

Scrum is a simple framework for effective team collaboration on complex software projects. The Scrum Framework poster provides a graphical view of how Scrum is implemented at a team level within an organization. The Framework is based off of The Scrum Guide which Scrum co-creators Ken Schwaber and...

In this MSDN Channel 9 interview, Scrum.org Professional Scrum Trainer Gunther Verheyen talks about the history of Scrum and how to successfully apply Scrum in an organization.

The role of a Scrum Master is one of many stances and diversity. A great Scrum Master is aware of them and knows when and how to apply them, depending on situation and context. Everything with the purpose of helping people understand the spirit of Scrum and hereby apply the Scrum framework better.

Over the past 10 years I have worked with many organisations and helped them to use Scrum to create innovative and sometimes market leading Products. I have seen a lot of Scrum during this time, much of it done well, but some of it done badly. Here are the 5 common anti patterns that I see with team...

The most common question I am asked at my courses is - what makes a good Scrum Master? I always answer this question with a story from my own experience working with Scrum Masters (good and bad) over the years. The 2 best Scrum Masters I ever had the pleasure of working with had a lot in common. ...

The role of a Scrum Master is one of many stances and diversity. A great Scrum Master is aware of them and knows when and how to apply them, depending on situation and context. Everything with the purpose of helping people understand and apply the Scrum framework better.

The most common question I am asked at my courses is - what makes a good Scrum Master? I always answer this question with a story from my own experience working with Scrum Masters (good and bad) over the years. The 2 best Scrum Masters I ever had the pleasure of working with had a lot in common. ...

Question from a budding Scrum Master, who is transitioning from a background as a traditional project manager: “In order to promote team bonding and self-organization, from now on I am going to try something new with the team. In the sprint planning meeting, instead of me breaking down the tasks ...

Scrum is a framework within which people can address complex problems, and productively and creatively develop products of the highest possible value. It's tool organizations can use to increase their agility. Within Scrum, self-organizing, cross-functional, and highly productive teams do the wor...

The Scrum Master is responsible for ensuring Scrum is understood and enacted. Scrum Masters do this by ensuring that the Scrum Team adheres to Scrum theory, practices, and rules. 
The Scrum Master is a servant-leader for the Scrum Team. The Scrum Master helps those outside the Scrum Team understand ...

Last week I attended a workshop provided by Patrick Verheij, who is a board member of the Agile Consortium. Patrick explained the foundation of Agile and shared a characteristic of "Agile DNA" within organizations

Recently I read the book 'The People's Scrum' by Tobias Mayer. In this book he spends a chapter on describing the differences between project culture and team culture. To me, the given examples of both types of culture are highly recognizable and I can easily extend and complement the list of exampl...

Where do you spend your days in the workplace? Are you living in the Scrum-oriented trenches of your organization, like the vast majority of us? If so, then I celebrate *you* -- as a real Scrum Team Member -- the person who does the actual work that delivers value for the business. Allow me the h...

When Scrum is introduced in a company, most of the time, the development team embraces it with lots of enthusiasm. Scrum embodies self-organizing, autonomous, multidisciplinary teams that acknowledge individual qualities and reinforces the strengths of the team as a whole. Who doesn't want to be par...

The role of a Scrum Master is one of many stances and diversity. A great Scrum Master is aware of them and knows when and how to apply them, depending on situation and context. Everything with the purpose of helping people understand and apply the Scrum framework better. In a series of blog posts...

The subject of this blog post might seem unusual. But having worked with multiple development teams, I've gained some experience with team members having (symptoms) of Asperger's. I mostly contributed to the team as a Scrum Master or Agile Coach. The combination of Scrum and Asperger's hereby always...

The story of the Wygat Weed Whacker goes back many years – to the time we bought our first home in the beautiful town of Allen, TX.

The role of a Scrum Master is one of many stances and diversity. A great Scrum Master is aware of them and knows when and how to apply them, depending on situation and context. Everything with the purpose of helping people understand and apply the Scrum framework better.

The role of a Scrum Master is one of many stances and diversity. A great Scrum Master is aware of them and knows when and how to apply them, depending on situation and context. Everything with the purpose of helping people understand and apply the Scrum framework better.

The role of a Scrum Master is one of many stances and diversity. A great Scrum Master is aware of them and knows when and how to apply them, depending on situation and context. Everything with the purpose of helping people understand and apply the Scrum framework better.

The role of a Scrum Master is one of many stances and diversity. A great Scrum Master is aware of them and knows when and how to apply them, depending on situation and context. Everything with the purpose of helping people understand and apply the Scrum framework better.

The role of a Scrum Master is one of many stances and diversity. A great Scrum Master is aware of them and knows when and how to apply them, depending on situation and context. Everything with the purpose of helping people understand and apply the Scrum framework better. In a series of blog posts...

The Scrum Master is an amazing and at the same time very challenging role. He needs to have different skills, and depending on the situation put on a teaching, training, facilitating or a coaching hat. Furthermore, each of those skills is very difficult to master. People may spend their entire p...

In Jeff Haden's recent post entitled "The One Attitude Every Successful Person Has", I was struck at how aligned this attitude is with the Agile Mindset. What do you think? An Agile Mindset... essential for healthy Scrum...is not reserved for specific people - rather, this is the attitude that anyon...

The Scrum Master role can easily be misunderstood as it is harder to grasp by reading the theory; hence people often compare the Scrum Master role to Project Manager or Technical Leader. Scrum Master's primary job is to place himself in service consciously, with self-awareness, and for the benefit o...

I was recently contacted by a senior executive of a mid-sized company that is evolving their product development to Scrum. He explained a situation he had been in and wanted my opinion. He accepted me to share his story here (with some abstractions, and calling him Jim) in an open-ended way, invitin...

Do you want to pass a small test? It is very simple - please reproduce in the exact sequence literally four values of ​​Agile Manifesto. Well, how did it go? If you succeeded, then you get my congratulations. 3 years ago I failed the test, though I knew the Scrum Guide almost literally and was...

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.