Coaching plays a pivotal role in guiding teams toward greater efficiency, collaboration, and overall success. It’s important to remember that you can't coach people out of every bad practice all at once. This article explores the wisdom behind focusing on the highest impact opportunities rather than...

🔥 Navigating the Product Backlog just got more exciting! 🚀 Unravel why hierarchy might be your ship's anchor ⚓ in the stormy seas of complexity. 🔍 This article unveils the pitfalls of hierarchy and demystifies the complexities in product development. Learn how streamlining your backlog enhances inno...

Here are some common challenges Scrum Teams face when engaging with stakeholders and ways to overcome these challenges.

Don't write Product Backlog Items, have a conversation about them!

🔍 Discover the underpinnings of a transparent and promising future in Agile Product Management! My latest blog post explores the indispensable role of an ordered Product Backlog that is coherent, refined, and rightly sized.

The order of the Product Backlog is incredibly important. How is a Product Owner supposed to prioritize such a critical artifact well? In this lightning round, PST's Robert Pieper and Jason Malmstadt discuss a few tactical tips to help get you started.

An effective Product Owner ensures valuable items that improve the product and the customer experience are included in the Product Backlog. This means they must make decisions on what should be or should not be included in the Product Backlog. To do this well, they spend time with customers and stak...

For Product Backlog management to be effective, consider these following tips: Review, reorder and refine the Product Backlog frequently The Product Backlog is emergent; it evolves and changes. Feedback, learnings from experiments and changing market conditions are just a few factors that in...

Product Backlog Management is the act of adjusting and ordering items on the Product Backlog so that the Scrum Team can deliver the most valuable product possible. This learning series explores Product Backlog Management.

Product Goals are intermediate goals that help a Scrum Team learn and progress toward their Product Vision. When formulating a Product Goal, it should be: Aligned with and makes progress toward the Product Vision Clear and concise Outcome-driven to reflect a customer want or need Mea...

How does your Sprint Backlog support adaptation in order to minimise deviations from agreed goals? Each of the Scrum Artifacts serve to adapt. So does the Sprint Backlog. Check it out!

Scrum is a Product centric approach to delivering value. But what if your team is not aligned with a Product? In this blog, we discuss what Product means in Scrum and why it can help a team even if they do not feel they are working in a Product organization. In this blog, we talk about why Product i...

How does your Product Backlog support adaptation in order to minimise deviations from agreed goals? Each of the Scrum Artifacts serve to adapt. So does the Product Backlog. Check it out!

In this video, you'll learn four different factors that influence the order of a Product Backlog. You'll also learn more about the topic by walking through a scenario with a Scrum Team who is ordering their Product Backlog as a part of Product Backlog refinement. (5:45 Minutes)

How lead- and cycle time are incredibly helpful metrics to drive change where it matters

What does "ready" actually mean and maybe more importantly what does it not mean?

Learn about an oversized Product Backlog’s negative impact on innovation, your Scrum team’s ability to create value, and your relationship with stakeholders.

Uncover the secrets of outcome-driven roadmaps and learn how aligning product vision with a clear strategy can drive meaningful results for your business.

There are certain misconceptions and patterns that can hinder the effectiveness of the Product Owner and lead to conflicts within the Scrum team. In this article, we will explore three common anti-patterns related to the Product Owner's accountability in Scrum and discuss strategies to overcome them...

How does the Daily Scrum support adaptation in order to minimise deviations from agreed goals? Each of the Scrum Events serves to adapt. So does the Daily Scrum. Check out our tips!

In this episode, Jeff and Mike share some tips on how you can get the most out of your time!

Let’s explore four ways Scrum Teams can manage production support in Scrum effectively.

Each of the Scrum Artifacts is inspected in one or more Scrum Events to detect undesired variances. So is the Sprint Backlog. Go check it out!

Each of the Scrum Artifacts is inspected in one or more Scrum Events to detect undesired variances. So is the Product Backlog. Go check it out!

Some tips on how Product Owners can stay focused on their product goal by effectively saying "No"

Who makes and maintains the Sprint Backlog? Who Creates the Sprint Goal? Do you need a Sprint Goal every Sprint? Can you have more than one? Watch this video to find out

Scrum describes three formal artifacts in the Scrum Guide, but why? What is the point of the artifacts? What are the official artifacts defined by the Scrum Guide? Watch this video to find out!

When Scrum Teams experience a work quality issue, they sometimes shift the responsibility for quality control to the Product Owner as a solution. Not only is this impractical, but it's also anti-Scrum. Here's why.

The Sprint Backlog is a plan by and for the Developers. It is a highly visible, real-time picture of the work that the Developers plan to accomplish during the Sprint in order to achieve the Sprint Goal.

The Product Backlog is an emergent, ordered list of what is needed to improve the product. It is the single source of work undertaken by the Scrum Team.

How does the Sprint Backlog supports Transparency? Transparency being one of the core underlying concepts of the Scrum framework. How can you use the Sprint Backlog to raise transparency?

How does the Product Backlog supports Transparency? Transparency being one of the core underlying concepts of the Scrum framework. How can you use the Product Backlog to raise transparency?

The idea of self-managing teams who have flexible scope and timelines can be perceived as daunting to some executives and senior leaders. In this session, Professional Scrum Trainer, Mary Iqbal talks about some of the common misconceptions about Scrum and Agile in general from a leader’s perspective...

Add a constraint to the length of the Product Backlog and see what happens next.

A scenario showing how the scrum framework and metrics can help a team self manage for improvement.

Der Scrum Guide enthält viele Regeln und Empfehlungen, aber kannst du sie unterscheiden? User Storys zu schätzen ist nicht verpflichtend. In Scrum gibt es keine verpflichtenden Best Practices! Scrum ist ein Rahmenwerk und keine Methode. Der Scrum Guide beschreibt deshalb nur das „Was“ und nicht d...

During refinement, the team discusses what we will deliver with each Product Backlog item. Although it's easy to drift into sorting out how we will deliver each PBI during these discussions, planning at this stage is a mistake. 

No matter how much a Scrum Team plans, there are times when someone asks them to undertake unplanned work mid-Sprint. In this article, we will discuss how to handle unplanned work in Scrum.

I gotta say, refining work items is usually, by far, the Scrum Team’s least popular activity.  No one gets up in the morning saying, “I can’t wait to refine the Product Backlog!” In this article, we will discuss five reasons why refining your Product Backlog is worth the time.

The backlog was a great idea until it wasn’t. Many successful teams deliver backlog items daily, but their backlogs aren’t getting smaller. Learn more about Allan’s remedy for oversized product backlogs in less than an hour.

In this Scrum Pulse webcast, PST Mary Iqbal will explore the accountability of the Product Owner and walk the audience through characteristics of an effective Product Owner.

Scrum’s strength is that it makes difficulties visible faster so the team can address them. While the framework helps to resolve many things that might not be working optimally, it doesn’t eliminate every issue. Let’s look at three problems Scrum doesn’t solve. 

Learn more about good Product Backlog practices, from ‘Do We Need One’ to the Product Owner as a Dictator to its Growth Rate and Size

I think of the three accountabilities in the Scrum framework as creating a balance of power.  But what happens when an individual fulfilling one (or more!) of the accountabilities in Scrum gets a bit — um — power hungry?  In this article, we will discuss a few examples of how people fulfilling each ...

Epics and features are complementary Scrum practices that some Product Owners use to organize their Product Backlog. Like a folder structure, they are a convenient way to group PBIs into meaningful groups.

How often have you been exposed to the conflict or different objectives between departments? If never, congratulations! You have probably seen and experienced healthy environments, meaningful shared goals, and true leaders. Keep on!

According to the Scrum Guide, Scrum teams are typically 10 or fewer, with a preference to the smaller size.  When Scrum Teams become too large, they should consider re-organizing into multiple Scrum teams supporting a single product.  When this happens, the Scrum Teams should share a single Product ...

But when you have scrum, for example, you need to deliver an increment every single sprint and that increment needs to be done. So the team needs to have a thing called a Definition of Done and done does not mean met the acceptance criteria. Doesn’t just mean that, there should be other consideratio...

​​​​​​​According to the 2020 Scrum Guide, a Scrum Team should contain members with all the skills necessary to create an Increment of usable product each Sprint. Teams that approach their work from a product perspective find this cross-functionality easier to achieve than teams that organize around ...

Learn how individual incentives and outdated organizational structures — fostering personal agendas and local optimization efforts — manifest themselves in Scrum stakeholder anti-patterns that easily impede any agile transformation to a product-led organization.