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.

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

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.

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.

The other day I had a conversation with a colleague. He was looking for an opener for a talk - something catchy to illustrate to his audience (mostly finance and banking) that there could well be a need to change their current ways of working.

Software and online-services companies are undergoing quick implementation of the Scrum framework in their Products. Scrum is a process framework that enables deliver complex products iteratively and incrementally while controlling the risk.

This blog post gives you an overview of the paper "Liberating Structures - an Antidote to Zombie Scrum". It describes what Zombie Scrum is about and offers tangible examples of how to recognize, treat, and prevent Zombie Scrum by using Liberating Structures.

In this episode of Ask a Professional Scrum Trainer, PST Pawel Mysliwiec answered questions about story points, estimating, the Scrum Roles, the Scrum events, scaling, using Scrum with Kanban and more!

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.

I’ve been teaching the class Professional Scrum with Kanban (PSK) for the last year now and I strongly believe parts of its content will send some of our current practices and books to the Agile museum.

Outcome mapping enhances Product Backlog transparency by making transparent the relationships between goals, stakeholders, outcomes and outputs created by a Scrum Team

Can anyone be a Product Owner (PO)? What’s the best position in the company to fill that role? With Scrum you have one and only one Product Owner for a given product...

This article describes what Zombie Scrum is about and gives you tangible examples of how to recognize, treat, and prevent Zombie Scrum by using Liberating Structures.

Sir Isaac Newton, Louis Pasteur, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, and Nikola Tesla; this woman and these gentlemen are considered to be some of the greatest scientists of all time.

The Clerk is your personal waiter for all your user story serving. Gathering all the wishes, user stories and demands is what The Clerk does.

If Scrum were to be reduced to one purpose and one only, it would be the creation of a "Done" increment. Although the DoD serves as a crucial part of Scrum, it is also often neglected by many Scrum teams. Try out the DoD EvoCycle, a simple technique to effectively manage your Definition of Done.

Some of the most famous and influential leaders of all times include people like Mohandas K. Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr. and Abraham Lincoln.

The Manager is concerned with the wellbeing of the Scrum Team. The Manager loves to see happy, engaged and motivated people. (S)he loves it when people are developing themselves, learning new skills, obtaining new knowledge and making mistakes.

What event could better embody Scrum’s principle of empiricism than the Sprint Retrospective? I assume all peers agree that even the simplest retrospective—if only held regularly—is far more useful than having a fancy one once in a while, not to mention having none at all.

How to use "Visible Status" with the information radiator to help the call to action? How to use explicit indicators to make decisions?

I will make a case why the Sprint Goal should take center stage in any Sprint. If it seems difficult, it is an opportunity to improve.