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.

As a Product Owner and the CEO of Scrum.org, Dave West was invited to speak at ProductTank NYC earlier this year about the conflict between the roles Product Owner and Product Manager.

In the Professional Scrum Product Owner course, we teach that high performing Product Owners are entrepreneurial. They not only act with the business in mind, they have the authority to make important decisions. What should we do now versus later? What choices give us the best return on investment? ...

Download this datasheet to learn more about the Professional Scrum Product Owner training.

This document provides an overview of the different Scrum.org training classes that are offered by our Professional Scrum Trainers around the world.

This document provides and overview of the different Scrum.org certification assessments that are available. These Professional Scrum assessments come with the industry recognized Professional Scrum certification for those who pass.  

An overview of documents and books to help understand the role of the Product Owner organized by assessment categories.

An overview of documents and books to help understand the role of the Product Owner organized by assessment categories.

An overview of documents and books to help understand Scrum, organized by assessment categories.

Listen to five of the most respected Scrum.org PSPO Trainers – Ralph Jocham, Mark Noneman, Erik Weber, Hiren Doshi, and Simon Reindl in our Scrum Pulse Lean Café on Product Ownership as they guide an enquiry through the mysteries of product ownership.

In this paper, Professional Scrum Trainer Barry Overeem takes a look at how Business Intelligence (BI) projects can be seen as complex, where the amount of unknown requirements and technologies exceeds the known. Implementing Scrum with a BI-environment, with a focus on creating actionable insights,...

In Scrum, Product Backlog refinement is an ongoing activity for a single team; however, it is not a mandatory event. As explained in the Nexus Guide, due to the added complexity of many teams working together on a single product, Refinement is an official and required event in the Nexus Framework. ...

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...

Martin Hinshelwood discusses why tools don't solve problems, but they can help reduce the friction of Scaling Professional Scrum.

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...

What is a good Product Owner and am I the right person to fill in this role? If you have ever struggled with this question, you should probably keep reading. The advantage of being a trainer and a consultant at the same time is that you get the chance to meet a lot of Product Owners. I hear the ...

Scrum.org, the home of scrum, and Pragmatic Marketing, the leader in product management and marketing, discuss how to resolve the tension and avoid getting into a cage fight between the two roles.

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.