For many years the agile movement advocated that all teams had to be co-located for success. Scrum also encouraged that approach. But the pandemic taught us that remote does not always mean bad. However, we are seeing more and more executives force an in-person return to the office as the pandemic r...

Liberate your Sprint Review from being just a demo. There is much more to it than that! I'm sharing eight things you should do in the Sprint Review

7 Do-it-yourself workshops and experiments to discover new valuable features through experiments, field testing, and research.

One of the things I struggled with at the start of my Scrum Master journey was building consensus in the team. Wanting to stay objective, give everyone space and time whilst still craving for a decision was a challenge for me. My own indecisiveness with regards to how to handle this ultimately did n...

One of the primary purposes of a retrospective is to create action items, but it’s not uncommon to come up with action items that aren’t actionable.  They’re aspirational.  This blog gives you some ways to ensure your retrospectives have actionable items.

Three simple retrospective formats based on the Liberating Structures "Conversation Cafe", "Troika Consulting", and "Discovery & Action Dialogue"

Some time ago, whilst discussing this topic with my fellow Professional Scrum.org Trainer Todd Miller, he shared his experience with using White Elephant principles to enable a participative facilitation environment (thanks Todd!). It inspired me to use it and write this blog. 

Why many Scrum teams struggle with continuous improvement, and how you can do better

Practical ideas on how to improve Scrum, personally.

Scrum itself is a simple framework for effective team collaboration on complex products. While it is lightweight and simple to understand, it can be difficult to apply effectively. The Scrum.org Ask a Professional Scrum Trainer series, features Professional Scrum Trainers (PSTs) in a live session, a...

Three simple retrospective formats based on the Liberating Structures "Conversation Cafe", "Troika Consulting", and "Discovery & Action Dialogue"

In this post, I share a few questions you, as a manager - or any other stakeholder, can ask Product Owners and the rest of the Scrum Team to support them in doing the right thing.

Three simple retrospective formats based on the Liberating Structures "Conversation Cafe", "Troika Consulting", and "Discovery & Action Dialogue"

TL; DR: Designing Powerful Questions with Daniel Stillman Powerful Conversations are the environment that drives change. Learn from Daniel Stillman how designing powerful questions helps you coach, create, connect, and lead from the 35th Hands-on Agile meetup of October 5, 2021. 📺 Watch the vi...

Ideas on how to use Powerful Questions virtually and help teams find their own solutions to persistent problems.

"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.

I have my own biases,  having seen co-located teams work very well and having struggled with “dislocated” teams, I often recommend my clients to reconsider “dislocated” teams. 

This article aims at helping Scrum Masters to conduct the *MOST AWESOME* Sprint Review they ever witnessed. (This article could have been titled: 41 tips that will make your Sprint Review awesome!)

Ah, the Daily Scrum, so often misused as an instrument of status (see https://youtu.be/i7_RPceEIYE for a discussion). Often the way the Daily Scrum is conducted lends itself to a report of status. The team answers 3 questions in a round robin fashion. It often sounds like this: What did you do...