Value comes in many different forms, value is context dependent and the definition of value in a certain context may change over time! What? Yes, that's right! What 'value' is, or what it means, is firstly context dependent.

The Product vision describes the purpose of a Product, the intention with which the Product is being created and what it aims to achieve for customers and users. The Product vision describes a future state of the Product and what problems it tries to resolve or what ambitions it tries to fulfill.

I have created a little exercise that I like to use to help focus the on things we can change, or at least situations to seek out or avoid, to help focus change efforts. The essence of it is summarized in a picture. I call this the agile affinity model, and the dimensions the key drivers of empiric...

In this post, we'll bust the myth that the Product Owner is a proxy for stakeholders. The bottom-line is that Scrum Teams become significantly less Agile when only the Product Owner communicates with stakeholders. Instead of framing the Product Owner as a proxy, we instead prefer to explain the Prod...

The Product Owner role is totally different from traditional roles that are know in most organizations. Some people think that the Product Owner is a kind of 'Agile project manager' or that the Product Owner is sort of a 'business analyst'. This is not true!

There is no improvement without learning According to Steven Spear, there is no improvement without learning. There is no learning without surprises. There are no surprises without setting expectations. Specifically challenging expectations that will be missed occasionally. See a quote from ...

In this blog, we'll cover some tips and tools for starting Product Owners, to help you in your new role. The Product Owner role is a brand new role in many organizations and it's a role which can't be compared to traditional roles, such as project managers or business analysts. A Product Owner in...

Here I am sitting in my hotel room while looking at my half-empty wine glass and the stars outside while preparing for my last Professional Scrum Master (PSM) class for the year 2017 and pondering about all of the classes I have facilitated over this year. PSM has been a transformational course for ...

Scrum is a framework that thrives on self-organizing teams. It gives you boundaries (e.g. time-box of a Sprint), clear accountabilities (e.g. Product Owner optimizes value), and goals (e.g. “Done” Increment). But it doesn’t tell you exactly how to do the work. Every Scrum Team needs to figure out...

System optimization: Upgrading Team Competencies When developing complex innovative products, the Development Team will have different a workload for each one of their members. The speed of the entire Development Team is often limited by the speed of the specialist with peak loads. To overcome th...

LEAN is an excellent way for companies to start optimizing their way of working and make sure the production of waste is kept to a minimum. Scrum itself is based on those very principles. Many companies use LEAN to optimize their business processes, but rarely do I see them actively involve the scru...

Looking to hire a Scrum Master? You may go through this job description that talks about the role of a Scrum Master? and what to expect from a Scrum Master. Here is a Sample Job Description that you may use if you find it useful. ROLE OBJECTIVE The Scrum Master is a valued team member ...

At a recent course, one of my students asked me to share what Scrum “looked like” for me at TheScrumMaster.co.uk. This post is my response to that question. This describes my current process which has evolved via inspection and adaptation over 5 years.

In this post, we'll the myth that the Product Backlog is ‘prioritized’. Although a seemingly trivial change of wording, the Product Backlog is ‘an ordered list’ instead.

The latest release of the Scrum Guide is all about addressing common Scrum misunderstandings. In this blog post I will present the top 5 misconceptions that are set straight in this latest release of the Scrum Guide.

Bringing values down to earth Values and principles can often seem lofty and intangible so many agile practitioners prefer to focus on tools and practices. That's understandable but unfortunate. Because values and principles have the potential to provide us with clarity and guidance that transcen...

‘25/10 Crowd Sourcing’ is a structure that allows you to rapidly generate and sift through a group’s boldest actionable ideas in less than 30 minutes. In this article we'll explain how to use this structure to spice up your Scrum Events.

"To ensure continuous improvement, [the Sprint Backlog] includes at least one high priority process improvement identified in the previous Retrospective meeting." - The Scrum Guide, November 2017 That old familiar feeling Have you ever had a sense of déja-vu in a Sprint Retrospective? You know...

I once worked for an organization with many opportunities for improvement. To be honest, it was a mess. It didn’t take long to realize that the organization had implemented many dysfunctional practices and policies that were ingrained into the culture. There were many problems surrounding software d...

In this post, we’ll bust the myth that a Product Backlog has to consist entirely out of User Stories. By describing the purpose and characteristics of the Product Backlog, we'll also busted the related myth; that User Stories are an inherent, necessary part of Scrum.

The Intent of Scrum Scrum allows development organisations to invest a little time at regular intervals to allow teams with autonomy over their work to identify and enact frequent, small improvements to the process and the plan. Over time, like regular payments into a savings account, these impro...

One of the most common critiques about Scrum that I've heard from smart software engineers are "Scrum does not care about technical practices, Scrum is for wimps". I've also heard managers down the hallway say that "Scrum is for wreckless developers because its main concern is only about fast delive...

There are a number of things that you have to think about when selecting a modern source control system. Some of that is purely about code, but modern source control systems are about way more than code. They are about your entire application lifecycle and supporting DevOps practices, they are about...

Scrum is a mindset, an approach to turning complex, chaotic problems into something that can be used. eff Sutherland and I based it on these pillars: Small, self-organizing, self-managing teams; Lean principles; and, Empiricism, using frequent inspection and adaptation to guide the work of the teams...

Open Space is one of the methods that allows organizations to make inspirational meetings and events. I was lucky enough to use Open Space in various contexts, with Scrum Teams. The concept has always worked.

"Perfection has to do with the end product, but excellence has to do with the process." - Jerry Moran Scrum requires a Product Backlog and a Product Owner to account for the value of product increments. For as long as a product exists, a Product Backlog will exist to describe the work which o...

Today I facilitated the workshop "The Scrum Master as a Manager" at the conference "Agile Spain 2017" in Sevilla. In this blog post I'll share the outline of the workshop "The Scrum Master as a Manager". This gives you the opportunity to facilitate the workshop within your own organisation as well.

Today (November 7th 2017) Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland released an update to the Scrum Guide.The Scrum Guide is the definitive definition of Scrum, authored by Ken and Jeff, the creators of Scrum.

Let the coaching experiment continue! Welcome back to part two of our curiosity filled coaching questions! As mentioned last time in part one, coaching as a management practice has become a major part of my working life. I am lucky to be surrounded by a great bunch of agile minded folks h...

In this post we'll discuss the myth that Scrum Teams at best release working software at the end of a sprint, constraining teams that are capable of releasing faster.

Last time I talked about the Ghana Police Service (GPS) I was talking about Professional Organisational Change and the approach the Inspector General of Police (IGP) is taking; using Scrum to incrementally make changes to the organisation. While Nana Abban and the IGP have been focusing on the big p...

The question remains as to why managers continue to plan projects based on sequential assumptions.

The Ghana Police Service is in trouble. Over the last few last few decades, each new Police organisation and government has tried in various ways to carry out some change but most changes have been ad-hoc, temporary, not robust enough or strategic. The old problems return to haunt new administration...

"That's the thing about zombies. They don't adapt and they don't think." - Max Brooks One of the earliest challenges I ever had to resolve, as a Scrum Master, was the proper disposal of the dead. The typical situation ran as follows. My team would plan user stories into their Sprint Backlog, and ...

As a travelling Scrum and DevOps consultant I’m constantly asked “should our team use Scrum”? Now you might think that being a Professional Scrum Trainer – and serious Scrum fanboy – I would always answer “Yes!”. Well, you would be wrong. I frequently talk people out of Scrum – for the right reasons...

In this blog post, we will describe the myth that the Sprint Backlog is fixed during the Sprint. We'll bust this myth by offering the perspective from the Scrum Guide and describing the difference between forecast and commitment.

Do you have time for an experiment? Then please ask me a coaching question! Welcome to the first of a two part blogpost full of curiosity filled questions on coaching! Coaching, as management practice, interests me greatly in my work life. In order to better understand my own thinking...

In this blog post I'll share my view on the Scrum Master as the Change Leader. I'll briefly describe the common misunderstandings and the preferred stances of the Scrum Master. The services a Scrum Master provides for the Development Team, Product Owner and organisation, and the 3 levels that can be...

We describe the myth that the Scrum Master should always be present during the Daily Scrum. We'll offer the perspective from the Scrum Guide, describe examples of problems in how Scrum is applied and share tips & tricks on how to make the Daily Scrum more effective.

Never an easy answer and always being pulled in multiple directions, a question often asked: How many Scrum Teams should I be on?

The PSD training teaches the whole Scrum Team on how to do real Scrum. They work in Sprints, create Done software and use the appropriate tools and practices for it. It is a unique experience on how really good Scrum feels like.

Courage however is more than just learning what it means and telling your teams to be courageous.

When an organization decides to embark on an Agile Transformation, the first question should be, “Why?” What does leadership hope to achieve? Will the chosen path lead to improved ability to deliver high-quality business value? Once the goals of the Agile Transformation are identified, leadersh...

An estimate is our best guess for what can be achieved and by when. There are some situations when estimates are very important: Coordinate dependencies. It can be very useful to know when the team can proceed working on new design if the key expert is temporarily out of office. Align prior...

Over the past years I have been looking for a metric that could indicate the agility of an organization. After a study of the more common metrics used for products and management reports, I couldn’t really find a metric that indicates the level of agility.

When multiple Scrum Teams are working on one product, shared DoD becomes necessary. DoD helps to ensure that each increment is transparent by the end of every Sprint and creates a shared understanding of what “Done” means.

Although people with disabilities do have special needs, their purchase power isn’t special: it’s the same as everyone else’s. No longer can we think of accessibility as a compliance play. It’s simply good business. Let me frame this point with my story.

La aceptación de los PBIs en Scrum es algo que suscita dudas en los equipos. En realidad es muy fácil.

Our real-time, globalized world thrives increasingly on information and technology. The balance of businesses and society has rapidly shifted from industrial (often physical) labor to digital (often virtual) activities. The world seems to be changing faster and less predictable than ever before. We ...

Hay una secuencia lógica que aquellos alumnos que han asistido al curso de Professional Scrum Master experimentan: Darse cuenta que Scrum no es en muchas ocasiones lo que ellos pensaban. Preguntarse qué hace el Scrum Master todo el día. Y una tercera que revelaré más adelante.