Resources

As per Scrum Guide – The Sprint Goal is an objective that will be met within the sprint by implementing the Product Backlog, and it guides the Development Team on why it is building the Increment.

Help your remote team discover what happens without clear Sprint Goals. And bring back focus together!

Facing a large number of risks while delivering products seems to be normal. And, it is. It is common and natural. What we need to do, is manage the risk.

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.

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.

“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?”

Habits first and then progress follows! There is a huge power in the little things.

At many customers I visit, I see a lot of effort being put into classification and managing bugs.

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. The tactics explained stem from my personal experience as a Scrum Master which I accumulated over the years in working with many different teams and contexts.

The fact is, Scrum and DevOps works well together.

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.

A physical build monitor - like a light that turns red when a build fails - is a great way to get fast feedback. Its also a fun & educational activity for Development Teams, as it gives them a product of their own they can apply their craft to. And it encourages a Developer Culture.

“Our problem is that we can’t plan Sprints accurately with velocity,” he said. “Some Sprints, our velocity is really high, in others, we barely achieve anything.”

As a Scrum practitioner you may have read the famous paper The New New Product Development Game.

In our work of building Agile capability in organisations and training, mentoring and coaching hundreds of teams, we saw that Scrum Teams that embraced and lived Scrums core values, exhibited the same characteristics that Google found in its quest for the secret of high performing teams.

"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.

*Covid is a fictional character based on my imagination that represents the strain of CoronaVirus that is causing the disease Covid-19. This is just a very simple and sincere attempt to put my knowledge and understanding about Covid-19 to test in this article and I tried making the connection with Scrum. I hope you enjoy it.

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 Sprint Backlog be related to the Sprint Goal? In this post I work from examples of a real product, and the Sprint Goals we used there, to answer those questions.

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.

Are scrum and personal effectiveness compatible? In recent weeks I have experienced using Scrum for my personal organization.

This sixth article now dives into organizing a remote Sprint Planning with a distributed team: practices, virtual Liberating Structures, and lessons learned.

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 this blog post I explain why the Sprint Goal is key for an effective implementation of Scrum and how it is widely present in the Scrum framework by exploring its “lifecycle”. 

Scrum is intended as a simple, yet sufficient framework for complex product delivery.

Having a Sprint Goal in some cases is not easy. Having a good Sprint Goal is even more difficult.

In this post we show you an alternative Scrum Framework poster and explain why we chose to present some of the Scrum elements differently.

The Sprint Goal is mentioned numerous times in the Scrum Guide, however it can be over looked by many teams or seen as an "oh yeah" moment when teams are finishing Sprint Planning.

Scrum is a simple framework that can quickly come apart if even one part of the framework is not being properly implemented. As a Professional Scrum Trainer for almost ten years and founder of Responsive Advisors...

This Vlog looks at the topic of Emergence from its definition as a word and application in the natural environment. Emergence in Scrum is a key principle to delivery.

Other than the Definition of Done, the Sprint Goal is the other most important aspect of Scrum.

Let's look at the bigger picture, leaving out the details. What we all mostly want is better health, better fitness and better movement quality.

For those of you who are big fans of Marvel Cinematic Universe comics or who have watched the latest Avengers: End Game movie might know that Thanos (supervillain) wanted to possess all 6 infinity stones so that he would be unstoppable and could gain control over the entire universe.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, the World War II leader and U.S. President, wrote: “[...] plans are of no particular value, but [...] planning is indispensable”.

Whilst in a meeting I heard a colleague explaining to another colleague...

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.

The Scrum Guide is quite clear on one important thing: for one product there is only one Product Owner and only one Product Backlog...

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!

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.

Hi Duncan, I took your Scrum Training class a couple of months back. You mentioned if we had any questions, we could email you and I have an interesting situation I found myself in regarding QA’s in our Scrum teams.

Hello awesome people. Back at it again with new learning from the trenches. Over the years working with Product Owners who mainly work in large corporations, I see common challenges.

Sprint Goals are one of the more elusive parts of the Scrum Framework. Most teams know they are important, but few use them - for a variety of reasons. In this post, Barry Overeem and I bust the myth that Sprint Goals are optional in Scrum. And we make an effort to show what makes them so vital in the face of complex work. And more importantly, what you can do to start working with Sprint Goals from now on.

Scrum is a goal driven framework. And that is what I really like about Scrum. If I can summarize Scrum Guide into one sentence, it is about delivering an increment that meets the Sprint Goal.

In this episode of Ask a Professional Scrum Trainer, PST Mark Noneman answered Scrum questions from the audience.

A Sprint Goal is an objective set for the Sprint that can be met through the implementation of Product Backlog (cit. Scrum Guide). Have you clearly defined a Sprint Goal at the end of your Sprint Planning? Is this Sprint Goal understandable and transparent to everyone? Is it defined in a way that provides guidance and flexibility to the Development Team? The aim of this article is to raise awareness on the importance of having a Sprint Goal defined and to provide some suggestions on how to create one.

As many Professional Scrum Trainers have experienced, there is always a good discussion around the Sprint Goal. A similar discussion recently led me to address this not so well understood aspect.

Why would Product Owners prevent value delivery, you ask? They shouldn’t, and don’t want to, but yet I see them do it every day. And usually, it’s without them even knowing they’re doing it. Here’s four observations of how Product Owners prevent value delivery, and suggestions to improve.

In this Scrum Tapas video, Professional Scrum Trainer Steve Porter looks at the impact that undone work has on technical debt and discusses some techniques to use when dealing with such issues.  Steve discusses value creation and what needs to be done to ensure value is a consideration in the process. (6:08 Minutes)

By Chris Lukassen & Sjoerd Kranendonk By now, most organisations are using Scrum, however, many of them feel like the agility of their organisation has degraded, and they might be right! Often, using Scrum starts out as a way to improve development efforts coordinated within an IT division or department, but that is not the most effective organization structure to potentially get maximum benefit from Scrum. Inclusive Scrum is about looking at the full value chain and organizing your Product development effort around that. Whereas low agility Scrum might actually hurt your agility.