"He puts everything in place to get the ball up to the final third of the pitch and then trusts his team to finish the job in the only area of the field that can’t be planned for."

For those of you who are big fans of Marvel Cinematic Universe comics or who have watched the latest Avengers: End Game movie might know that Thanos (supervillain) wanted to possess all 6 infinity stones so that he would be unstoppable and could gain control over the entire universe.

Hello awesome people. How was your week? In today's vlog I would like to talk about one of the most important aspects of Scrum, that is the Definition of "Done".

Have you ever wondered if there is a better way to fund and monitor agile delivery? Traditional methods of annual budgeting often miss the mark. Wonder no more.

In this Scrum Tapas video, Professional Scrum Trainer Daria Bagina discusses why transparency is so important in Scrum and how to foster transparency across the Scrum Team and beyond. (5:25 Minutes)

In this podcast recorded at Agile 2019, Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Dave West, CEO of Scrum.org about agile beyond software, the need for organisational alignment and how product ownership is a major inhibitor for many organisations when it is not done well. (24:38 minu...

Why output-oriented metrics are mostly a waste of time in software- and product development.

Many Product Owners, especially in large organizations, are facing challenges to take full ownership of the product. Their decisions are oftentimes overridden and not respected. In this webinar, Professional Scrum Trainer Joshua Partogi shares techniques and practices he has learned as a Scrum Maste...

Technical debt seems like a topic that resides completely in the domain of a Development Team. They are responsible for delivering a potentially releasable Increment after all. But might there be more to it for a Product Owner? More to know, more to deal with, more to take care of it? In my opini...

Hello awesome people. I hope you had a great week. After my vlog on Project Manager versus Scrum Master, one of the viewers asked me to do a comparison between Project Manager and Product Owner also.

A topic at the World Economic Forum (WEF) at Davos this year was the question "How do we upskill a billion people by 2030?"

In this episode of Ask a Professional Scrum Trainer, PST Punit Doshi will be available to answer any Scrum related questions you may have live on this webinar. He is also happy to answer your questions regarding engineering practices and working with distributed Scrum Teams. Please bring your most p...

On November 22nd, 2019, I gave the closing keynote at Scrum Deutschland, a talk called ‘The Four Things You Do To Prevent Value Delivery.’ In this keynote, I discussed the trends I found during my research at multiple organizations. 

If you are working as a Product Owner, there is—very likely—room for improvement. This list of some of the most common Product Owner anti-patterns might be a starting point.

This post is an excerpt from the book that we’re writing, the ‘Zombie Scrum Survival Guide’. It’s our way of delivering small increments and involving our stakeholders: you, the reader. So we’d love to hear your feedback, encouragements and wild ideas.

A while ago, I received an interesting scientific article from Gunther Verheyen titled “Getting Things Done: The Science Behind Stress-Free Productivity” (Heylighen & Vidal, 2007). The article discusses possible scientific explanations for the success of a personal productivity approach called “Gett...

Product Backlog Refinement (PBR) is an ongoing process in Scrum. But in a scaled Scrum, complexity vastly increases, and Refinement becomes mandatory. In this article, I will explain how you can use Refinement to your advantage and enhance organizational agility.

In my previous 2 episodes of this series on Systems Thinking, I elaborated on what Systems Thinking is and on the Wicked Problems Systems Thinking is trying to solve. In this episode, I want to explore Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS).

Tuesday morning. 5AM. Alarm clock goes off. Some clouds in the sky. Driving my son to the swimming pool so he can start his training at 5:45 sharp. Continuing the drive towards a client to facilitate a training. 6:45 Traffic jam. Drizzle. 7:45 arrived. 9:00 Training to be started. Not all participan...

I've learned and experienced that most symptoms can be traced back to not adhering to the Scrum Roles. Let's start with the Product Owner role.

Scrum uses the concept of a Sprint to mitigate the risks of complex product development and help deliver value faster to stakeholders. Scrum Teams often choose two weeks as the Sprint starting point, but is that always the right length for you and your team? Is it even possible to have a Sprint that...

Sprint Planning is a core event, defining how your customers’ lives will improve with the next Product Increment. Learn more on how to improve its effectiveness by avoiding 20 common Sprint Planning anti-patterns.

Hey awesome people. Over the past few years I have seen many misunderstandings about the Product Owner role and how many organisations mapped the Product Owner role using their cognitive bias.

Scrum, in its more general definition, is a simple framework to help us address complex challenges. Product development is the subset of complex problem domains where Scrum took root first...

I call myself a Scrum Caretaker. I aspire inspiring people using Scrum. I prefer sharing positive experiences and cases that demonstrate how amazing working with Scrum can be, what problems can be tackled and how, the level of excellence we can build into our products, how Scrum can engage people.

When it comes to Product Ownership, there are a couple of things that are essential to get the job done right.

Often we work harder in Scrum teams, but not necessarily smarter. Therefore the way we work has to change. Five tips for more effective agile work.

Download this datasheet to learn more about the 3-day Professional Scrum Master and Product Owner training.

Often, when I facilitate a Professional Scrum Training, I'm asked about how a Scrum Team can work without someone telling them what to do.

Should the PO really balance the level of technical debt? I just had this conversation yesterday at Sweden's "big" agile conference, Agila Sverige.

The topic of my blog today is another one that is common on client’s sites. The use of the terms Showcase, Show & Tell or Sprint Review. In this situation, there is likely to be a broad mix of people fulfilling the Scrum Master roles.

A Sprint Goal is not often something people think about when using Scrum. Turns out it’s really important for teams to act as teams. Find out why in Robb Pieper's latest video blog from Responsive Advisors.

In this 3rd article, I build on the previous two articles and give an example of how to use the two Pattern Languages to develop your pattern sequence.

An introduction of the 6 symptoms, with the symptom ‘No validation with stakeholders’ explained in detail.

The most important question to stakeholders is often “When can it be done?” There is a lot that goes into answering that seemingly simple question. What is involved in the work?

In this episode of Ask a Professional Scrum Trainer, PST Naveen Kumar Singh answered questions from a live audience.

Collaboration is key to solve complex problems. I’ve always suffered from the evident lack of collaboration between people. It’s professionally frustrating when you’ve experienced effective teamwork.

There is one product, one Product Owner, one Product Backlog — a simple rule. How is that supposed to scale, you might ask, isn’t that approach turning...

In a series of blog posts, I want to share how you can use Systems Thinking to resolve complex problems.

Although I am going to use the term technical debt in this discussion. I am actively forming the opinion that this is the wrong term to be used both in how various assessments assess understanding and by practitioners in the agile community.

This is a series on how to create more engaging and interactive Scrum Events with Liberating Structures and recover from Zombie Scrum.

In my earlier article, I explained what Scrum Patterns are and why they could be useful for you in your transformation. In this blog, I discuss how to select and use the Scrum Patterns from the Pattern Languages.

How to start an Agile transformation? What are the initial steps? In this article I explain how transformations could be planned using Scrum Patterns and systems thinking.

Within the Scrum process, there are eleven basic elements that make up the framework. 3 roles, 3 artifacts, and 5 events. Practitioners need to learn to apply and understand the principles behind these in order to obtain the full benefits of the Scrum process.

Fighting organizational impediments as a Product Owner? Combine powers and utilize the Product Owner and Scrum Master symbiosis. And create more focus at the same time.

In a series of blog posts, I want to share how you can use Systems Thinking to resolve complex problems such as software teams not delivering the right software fast enough.

In this Scrum Tapas video, Professional Scrum Trainer Ravi Vajaria discusses some of his experiences when a Product Owner or Scrum Master either also plays another role on the Scrum Team or when Development Team members perceive that they do. He talks about how it can change the dynamic of the team...

In 2017, I was talking to the head of the Agile Coach Group of a large bank. She asked me to come over to work with her and help to roll out their standard way of working across all branches in Europe.

While Diana Larsen continues her coaching, mentoring, and consulting practice in a limited way, she has shifted more toward involvement as a co-founder of the Agile Fluency Project, a startup...

The Professional Scrum Master (PSM) workshop has a module that talks about the Definition of "Done" (DoD) and Technical Debt.