The Scrum Framework The Scrum Framework is a lightweight framework that defines three Roles, three Artifacts and five Events, which is used to develop and maintain complex Products in complex environments. Scrum doesn't prescribe a lot of things you must do, the Scrum Framework doesn't include exte...

As a Product Owner, you are responsible for stakeholder management. It's important that you know your stakeholders, their interests, what they need from you and your Product and how they may be able to help you out as well!

Value comes in many different forms, value is context dependent and the definition of value in a certain context may change over time! What? Yes, that's right! What 'value' is, or what it means, is firstly context dependent.

The Product vision describes the purpose of a Product, the intention with which the Product is being created and what it aims to achieve for customers and users. The Product vision describes a future state of the Product and what problems it tries to resolve or what ambitions it tries to fulfill.

In this post, we'll bust the myth that the Product Owner is a proxy for stakeholders. The bottom-line is that Scrum Teams become significantly less Agile when only the Product Owner communicates with stakeholders. Instead of framing the Product Owner as a proxy, we instead prefer to explain the Prod...

The Product Owner role is totally different from traditional roles that are know in most organizations. Some people think that the Product Owner is a kind of 'Agile project manager' or that the Product Owner is sort of a 'business analyst'. This is not true!

In this blog, we'll cover some tips and tools for starting Product Owners, to help you in your new role. The Product Owner role is a brand new role in many organizations and it's a role which can't be compared to traditional roles, such as project managers or business analysts. A Product Owner in...

System optimization: Upgrading Team Competencies When developing complex innovative products, the Development Team will have different a workload for each one of their members. The speed of the entire Development Team is often limited by the speed of the specialist with peak loads. To overcome th...

In this post, we'll the myth that the Product Backlog is ‘prioritized’. Although a seemingly trivial change of wording, the Product Backlog is ‘an ordered list’ instead.

The Intent of Scrum Scrum allows development organisations to invest a little time at regular intervals to allow teams with autonomy over their work to identify and enact frequent, small improvements to the process and the plan. Over time, like regular payments into a savings account, these impro...

"Perfection has to do with the end product, but excellence has to do with the process." - Jerry Moran Scrum requires a Product Backlog and a Product Owner to account for the value of product increments. For as long as a product exists, a Product Backlog will exist to describe the work which o...

What is a Product Owner... and how different is it than the role of a Product Manager? Is it different at all? These questions and others are discussed with Dave West, CEO and Product Owner of Scrum.org -- one of the leading organizations helping companies with agile and scrum practices.

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, Professional Scrum Trainer Steve Porter tells a story about his experience as a Product Owner and why his mistrust for the Scrum Team was a mistake and how the Product Owner should use the Sprint Backlog as a way of building that trust.  Steve discusses the r...

This short video provides an overview of the Professional Scrum Product Owner (PSPO). Scrum.org Professional Scrum Trainers (PSTs) Don McGreal and Ralph Jocham give you insight into the structure of the class and what you will learn. 1:46 Minutes

Although people with disabilities do have special needs, their purchase power isn’t special: it’s the same as everyone else’s. No longer can we think of accessibility as a compliance play. It’s simply good business. Let me frame this point with my story.

Cuando se trata de literatura ágil, donde hace años no había prácticamente nada, ahora hay una abundancia que hace realmente difícil elegir.

In Scrum, the Product Owner is an entrepreneur and the mini-CEO of a product, who is able to make fast decisions. The success of the Scrum Team and company as a whole depends on whether the Product Owner is real.

Most of the Agile transformations I have witnessed have started like this: First, a company raises a strategic initiative on so-called Agile implementation. A large budget is allocated and a tender is arranged to purchase Agile coaching services from companies on the market. Then employees are train...

People don't always think of Scrum Teams handling customer needs. But, for a Scrum Team to have success understanding the customer is key.

After experiencing my fair share of frustrating Sprint Review moments, I want to share some tips to improve the feedback you receive.

Agile practices rely on empiricism for the best solution to emerge. But what is ‘empiricism,’ anyway? And how does that affect the development of the optimum product? In this session, Professional Scrum Trainer Mark Noneman looks at what it takes to be a Product Owner who practices empiricism. 

In part 1 of this blog, we looked at what software inventory is and why it's problematic for business. Basically, software inventory is investment we have made (salary, taxes, benefits, servers, overhead, etc.) for which we are not yet realizing return or benefit (which can only be achieved by relea...

The truth is, worrying about velocity is a trap: it says “we don’t care where we end up, so long as we get there fast.” That’s just wrong. Teams who measure their velocity but don’t or can’t measure customer outcomes may, quite simply, be driving in the wrong direction.

Are you ready to get your Scrum effort underway, but your company won't fund it until you have a detailed business plan outlining the exact results and all the people, resources and other needs it will take to get them?  

The role of the Scrum Product Owner is probably the most misunderstood of the three Scrum Roles. As I look back at the different incarnations and interpretations I have seen of Product Ownership, I thought it was time to articulate the different stances I thought an Effective and Professional Scrum ...

Are you ready to escape the average and become awesome? Do you want to overcome your fears and follow your dreams? We all want to escape the average and the humdrum. The essential step in achieving any great goal is to "START." Inspired by author Jon Acuff's book, Start, I've come up with this ...

One of the most important things to understand in modern business (and quite possibly life in general) is the concept of complexity. While we use the words complicated and complex almost interchangeable in everyday language, they mean very different things. Let’s explore my favourite model on comple...

Exploring the accountabilities in a Scrum Team through a Longship metaphor.

What makes the software development work great? Obviously, technology, right... Wrong! In an interesting article in "Peopleware", authors Tom and Timothy describe how the most important aspect of software development is not technology, but people.

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, Professional Scrum Trainer Krystian Kaczor raises the question, what is the role of a Product Owner?  He answers that question by looking at what set of skills should they have, what they should do vs. delegate and why they have the ultimate accountability.  ...

We find this a common thread amongst our customer teams, which can be attributed to a lack of backlog refinement.

Agility is important to an organization and the path to agility becomes more clear by understanding the purpose of pursuing agility. The product owner role is key in increasing the benefits an organization can gain in their path to agility.

“Do not accustom yourself to consider debt only as an inconvenience; you will find it a calamity” - Samuel Johnson A few weeks ago we looked at the problem of technical debt, and at the challenges a Development Team faces when managing it. Technical debt can be defined as the longer term cons...

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, Professional Scrum Trainer Ralph Jocham discusses what the role of a Product Owner looks like, traits that they should have and those that may get in the way.

As Agile become mainstream increasingly organizations are looking to double down on the role of the Product Owner encouraging them to manage the intersection between technology and the business.

"Few ideas work on the first try. Iteration is key to innovation.” - Sebastian Thrun The Agony and the Ecstasy Have you ever seen the 1965 film The Agony and the Ecstasy, where Charlton Heston plays Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel? Each day the Pope looks up and asks him “When w...

When is a Scrum Team successful? Which criteria do you use to determine if a Scrum Team is doing a great job? From my point of view a Scrum Team is doing a great job if they deliver an increment with the highest valued features, with the best possible quality and they continuously strive for improv...

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, Professional Scrum Trainer, Charles Bradley discusses ways that a Product Owner can spread their knowledge across multiple Scrum Teams. He looks at a few techniques and refinement activities.

Dave West, Product Owner & CEO for scrum.org discusses his road towards becoming a Product Owner (which includes a well known three letter acronym), we go in to the three most important things a Product Owner should master.

In this article I'll describe two topics that I've used as a tailor made Product Owner self-assessment. One is about Roman Pichler's Product Management framework. The other concerns the acronym DRIVEN which is described in Geoff Watts new book "Product Mastery - From Good to Great Product Ownership"...

In this introductory-level article we look at the mechanics of a Sprint, and at how team members are expected to collaborate in order to produce a release-quality increment. The first day: Sprint Planning The whole team, including the Product Owner, meet on the first day of the Sprint and cond...

Your team has been trained and coached to deliver new chunks of software in a short time frame. Those using Scrum will be able to deliver in a Sprint. Those using Kanban will deliver as soon as their small feature is done. You’ve learned alternative ways of estimating which don’t include time as a m...

“I added a Refactoring Story for the next Cleanup Sprint” This is an interesting statement. Let's see how often the alarm bell rang in your head. I mean how many smells you can find in that statement... Before you scroll down to read my answers, please count to 10 and try to find 3 issues. ...

This is a very common myth, frequent on people used to develop software only within the context of a closed scope (traditional project). The Scrum framework is agnostic when it comes to set the context of software development; it just talks about “complex product development”. In general, agile soft...

A recurring Scrum myth I see in my training and coaching is that there is no planning in Scrum. Unfortunately, this myth can lead to two negative consequences. The people in organizations responsible for budgets, product management, sales, and marketing may be unwilling to try Scrum. ...

The Scrum Team consists of 3 distinct Scrum roles that promote self-organization: the Scrum Master, the Product Owner, and the Development Team. The accountability of each role complements the accountability of the other roles. Hence, collaboration between these roles is the key to success: Th...

One of the arguments used against Scrum and a common misconception at the same time is the idea that quality is traded for speed in Scrum. As a PST with years of experience in Quality Assurance I decided to challenge this myth. I believe and I have seen many times that proper way of implementing Scr...

In Scrum, delivery is a usable Increment by the end of a Sprint.  Because we are dealing with complex work, we do not know everything about what is needed and how to deliver it before we start working.  This is where the concept of emergence comes in.

I would like to kick off a series of posts in this blog trying to debunk some common myths about Scrum. Many of them arise sometimes from a poor understanding of the Scrum Guide, and even more often, from not having read it at all. What is velocity? According to the Scrum.org glossary, Velocit...

The Sprint Goal helps provide focus on an objective we want to achieve and allows the flexibility to negotiate the work to achieve that objective. Creating a clear Sprint Goal can be challenging for Scrum Teams.  Here are four common problems with Sprint Goals and a few tips for improving them.