In business, the quest for predictability is universal. We all want to grab hold of the reality we face everyday and, somehow, bend it to our will.

A problem with many teams is that they are not living in an environment where opportunistic discovery is supported or promoted. Teams are there to deliver, which we measure by monitoring their velocity. This is sadly a common practice. 

Somewhere between the 15th and 45th minute of the first pre-sales call, the prospect usually asks me - "Based on what you have heard about our company, by when do you think we will be 100% Agile Transformed and what will it cost...

This experiment is about creating transparency around dependencies and the effect they have on your team’s ability to ship fast.

Is your organization really agile? How do you know? This whitepaper describes the foundation mindset, actions and behaviors of agile in four simple statements supported by 12 principles.

What's up, awesome people? I hope you are having a good weekend. Recently, many people asked me how to write a perfectly detailed user story...

The Scrum Master tactics series are a series of articles in which I write about and explore contemporary techniques that will aid you in your journey as a Scrum Master.

Put your understanding of the Scrum Framework to the test, with these 52 challenging cases for Scrum practitioners.

What are the Scrum Product Owner's Accountabilities & Responsibilities? Are they just Business Analysts who detailed User Stories in JIRA?

Besides the earlier published English version, there's a Russian version of the paper "Scrum: a Framework to Reduce Risk and Deliver Value Sooner" as well!

If Scrum was a body, then the Scrum values would be the blood flowing through the body.

The focus of this article is on one of the most important things giving lifeblood to the Product Backlog and promoting its characteristic of long-living artifact, the Innovation.

Does your team struggle to get items to Done? Do they experience a high amount of spill-over into the next cycle because they are waiting on another team or another person? Do items sit in a blocked state and age out while waiting on other teams or people to complete work?

In this post, we describe one tiny experiment that creates transparency about lack of autonomy, and what happens because of it. It won’t create earth-shattering miracles, but I should start the right conversations.

We all want the ideal cross functional scrum team with all the UX skills and capabilities it needs to consistently produce valuable products. Most commonly UX is a shared service with part time availability. This hour Adam Deardurff, career UX pro, and Summer Lawrence PST, talk about maximizing the ...

Meet Ralph Jocham and Chuck Suscheck who are the stewards for the Professional Scrum Product Owner (PSPO) class. In this video, Ralph and Chuck provide a brief overview of the class to help you better understand the expected outcomes. (2:16 Minutes)

In today's vlog I discuss five indicators to identify whether someone is the Product Owner.

In May 2019, I spoke at the Agile Manchester conference, where I presented my talk "The Product Owner's Toolbox".

Regularly, we find articles from developers detailing why ‘Agile’ in general and Scrum’s nature, in particular, deserve our collective disdain.

“Can an R&D team of chemists, physicists, electrical engineers, mechanical engineers and embedded software developers optimize teamwork and value by using Scrum? And can live virtual Scrum training deliver a practical Scrum learning experience to everyone on such a functionally diverse team?”

What is up awesome people! In this vlog I will be sharing why the Product Backlog in Scrum is not only consists of User Stories and why it is not prioritised.

Do you need an emergency fund as a change agent—whether you are acting as Scrum Master, Product Owner or agile coach—

El objetivo de Scrum es maximizar la entrega de valor a través del aprendizaje de los clientes. Scrum se basa en el empirismo y si queremos potenciar sus beneficios se requiere que exista foco en le entrega de valor de negocio. Scrum es una herramienta para lograr la agilidad empresarial. 

Starting from today, I am going to start a new series on my channel which I will call the 2 minutes FAQ series.

I've been using a visualization that people find useful for understanding the relationship between the various Lean/Agile requirement containers. Some people call the full model a dinosaur. Others are reminded of the snake who ate an elephant from "The Little Prince". (I'm sure there is a good conne...

A Sprint Review is perhaps one of the most difficult elements in the product development with Scrum.

An overview of the Scrum framework, for people new to Scrum and those who’d like to refresh their understanding. The aim of this white paper was to write in a practical, down-to-earth manner from the perspective of what the Scrum framework makes possible. This paper should be easy to read, clear up ...

Product Ownership is hard enough when your dedicated development team is around the corner from you. So how can you be as effective when your whole team is distributed? This practical session will cover a bunch of tools and techniques you can use as a remote Product Owner to continue communicating v...

Would like a tool that delivers better product and customer outcomes and actually pays for itself? Read on.

One of the most asked question in my PSPO class is "What is the difference between Product Manager and Product Owner?", "Who has higher authority than the other?". There are many blogs, articles and youtube videos on the internet that compares Product Manager and Product Owner.

Improving the way teams work and what is being delivered requires conversations with management and stakeholders. Driving these conversations requires data based on measurements in order to put a plan for change in place and garner ways to know if your plan is working. This includes strong visualiz...

Un gran Product Owner tiene que estar enfocado en producir experiencias e impactos sorprendentes en los clientes a la vez que soporta el cambio de la organización hacia la agilidad con un enfoque de producto brindando el soporte necesario para que el equipo de desarrollo pueda optimizar el trabajo q...

A few years ago, I became a Product Owner. But not in the traditional ways most do.

In this Scrum Tapas video, Professional Scrum Trainer Piyush Rahate provides examples of why a Sprint may be canceled, ways to avoid canceling a Sprint and what might happen if the decision to cancel is made. (4:05 Minutes)

Shu-Ha-Ri has been a frequent topic within Agile communities for years to capture the essence, the progress of the journey we embark on as we grow and learn better ways of working.

In this Scrum Tapas video, Professional Scrum Trainer Stephanie Ockerman looks at many aspects that define a product and its goals. She addresses some of the questions around what value means and how value is critical to deciding on what to deliver for the product and when. (8:04 Minutes)

I struggled in the past when people were asking me to explain Scrum quickly and without putting metaphor and success stories.

"What is worry about our product is keeping you up at night? What can we build or test this Sprint to make you sleep a bit better?". In this post we share this and 9 other Powerful Questions to help your team find better Sprint Goals. And what to do when these questions don't help you at all.

Treacherous bottlenecks can nullify all your hard work, no matter how industrious you are.

As organizations adopt a more product-oriented mindset, the product owner is becoming more important. In Scrum, product owners work to maximize the value of a product by working with the development team. But, in order to do this there must be trust between the development team and the product owner...

This eighth article now looks into supporting a distributed Development Team organizing a remote Daily Scrum.

This case study takes a look at how Penta Technologies, a construction software company realized that they needed to make a change in order to help their customers be successful.  Moving from a siloed environment to one with greater agility.

In the seventh episode of Mik + One, the official Project to Product podcast, Mik Kersten, CEO of Tasktop is joined by guest is Dave West, CEO and Product Owner of Scrum.org.

This seventh article now looks into organizing a remote Sprint Review with a distributed team: How to practice the review with virtual Liberating Structures, including and giving a voice to team members, stakeholders, and customers.

Although most people see the value of Sprint Goals, how to create them is a huge source of confusion and frustration. Is the Spring Goal there before the Sprint Backlog? How do you create a Sprint Goal out of the unrelated set of items at the top of your Product Backlog? And should everything on the...

Working overtime in stressful situations is not a viable long-term remedy and should not be seen as a professional solution, but as a warning signal to be heard courageously.

Scrum es un marco flexible que ofrece muchas ventajas para el desarrollo de productos complejos, pero puede ser fácilmente mal interpretado. Justamente esa libertad puede llevar a distorsiones en su uso. Una distorsión muy frecuente es no entender el propósito de los eventos de Scrum y su impacto...

In my daily life as a Scrum Master, I witness many crazy situations. I want to share my discoveries via this comic series featuring Koos Coach, the silly Scrum Master struggling to understand and master Scrum.

Nobody really saw COVID-19 coming. Most people thought it would be similar to previous virus outbreaks and peter out without any meaningful impact on our daily lives. As the situation unfolded, we struggled to fully grasp the exponential nature of it. In the business world, we continually face s...

Large numbers of Product Owners begin their work by creating requirements. In some situations, these scopes are dictated by others. Their work mainly consists of describing demands, thus apparently appearing as a scribe in their role.