In this episode of the Scrum.org Community Podcast, Professional Scrum Trainer Dave Dame joins Eric Naiburg and Lindsay Velecina to discuss accessibility and its importance when it come to training and work in general. They discuss the importance of diversity on Scrum Teams and how it helps teams th...

​​​​​​​In my experience, it’s the Sprint Retrospective that teams are most likely to skip, berate, or otherwise bash.  When I hear teams talking about dropping it to “save time,” I want to pull a Darth Vader, shake my fist in the air, and say, “You don’t know the power of the Sprint Retrospective!” ...

A critical, evidence-based reflection on a hunch that Scrum Masters may often be more concerned with the quality of the process than the value of its outcomes.

In this Scrum Pulse Webinar, Professional Scrum Trainer Mary Iqbal outlines each Scrum Value and provide examples of how these can help your team practice Professional Scrum. In doing so she explores Professional Scrum and how it differs from mechanical Scrum.

TL; DR: Sprint Retrospective Anti-Patterns What event could better embody Scrum’s principle of empiricism than the Sprint Retrospective? I assume all peers agree that even the simplest form of a Retrospective—if only held regularly—is far more helpful than having a fancy one once in a while, not ...

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. 

TL; DR: How to Pass the Product Owner Certification — Scrum.org’s PSPO I to III The first article of this mini-series established that you do not need a certificate to become good at what you do, for example, working as a Scrum Master or Product Owner. However, getting certified may be a piece of...

Once the team has selected a point system, they need to decide which types of items to classify as a 1, 2, and so on. In this article, we will provide an exercise that can help your team create a point system organically no matter what’s in the Product Backlog.

Practical ideas on how to improve Scrum, personally.

TL; DR: Scrum Master Anti-Patterns No other role in Scrum can contribute to mediocre outcomes like the Product Owner—garbage in, garbage out. Therefore, the following list of some of the most common Product Owner anti-patterns might be a starting point to reflect on the role; maybe, there is room...

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

TL; DR: Scrum Master Anti-Patterns The Sprint Planning is a core event that defines how your customers’ lives will improve with the following Product Increment. Learn more on how to improve its effectiveness by avoiding 20 common Sprint Planning anti-patterns. 🇩🇪 Zur deutschsprachigen Versio...

In this article you will learn: - Why enabling Scrum Teams with UX Design capabilities is important. - Why introducing UX capabilities to Scrum team is frequently hard. - What is the job of an UX Leader in a product development organization. - How to use a UX Design maturity level to coach tea...

The reasons Scrum Masters violate the spirit of the Scrum Guide are multi-faceted. Typical Scrum Master anti-patterns run from ill-suited personal traits to complacency to pursuing individual agendas to frustration with the team itself.

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

When will we get there?  It’s not just something you might hear from the back seat of a car on a long road trip.  It’s something that a Scrum Team’s stakeholders, customers, managers and many others want to know.  When will that thing you are working on be done?  How long do I have to wait for you t...

Scrum is a tactical framework to build products, provided you identify what is worth making in advance. But even after a successful product discovery phase, you may struggle to create the right thing in the right way if your Product Backlog is not up to the job—garbage in, garbage out.

Imagine the stress of getting to work and observing your heart rate rising. It feels as if everyone is out for blood, anything you say can be used against you no matter how genuine it may seem-and managers don't really know what's going on either; they've got favourites among their team members who ...

This blog talks about Integrating UX with Scrum.

When I coach, consult and teach classes, I often get questions about creating an agile maturity tool or defining agile maturity metrics. Agile Maturity metrics are used by many businesses to better understand their present agile practices and monitor to improve them. I understand the need for this k...

An investigation of three schools of thought on team development and high-performing teams

If you are a Star Wars fan like me, then you know that Star Wars is more than a story; it’s an Epic which holds many important life lessons.  Below are the top five things I learned about Scrum from Star Wars.

Agile implementations shift culture, yet many organizations limit themselves to the bare minimal execution of a framework and call that Agile.

TL; DR: 28+2 Sprint Anti-Patterns from Sprint Stuffing to Gold-Plating Welcome to the Sprint anti-patterns article from my series on Scrum anti-patterns, covering the three Scrum roles—pardon me: accountabilities—and addressing the contributions of stakeholders and the IT/line management. Moreove...

Teams that change the framework are not using Scrum and are missing out on some of its benefits.  The Scrum framework consists of 5 events, 3 accountabilities, 3 artifacts and five values.  Today, we will talk about the order of the events in Scrum. 

TL; DR: 24+2 Daily Scrum Anti-Patterns In my experience, the Daily Scrum is the Scrum event with the highest anti-pattern density among all events. Learn more about Daily Scrum anti-patterns that threaten your Scrum team’s success, from becoming a reporting session to assignments to answering the...

A detailed description of how the Scrum Master role embodies 6 stances, and why I don’t consider “servant leader” and “manager” valid stances anymore

Professional Teaching is a complex skill that requires practitioners to probe, sense and respond to a changing learning environment. As Scrum Masters, we are naturally at home within complexity, and therefore the ability to apply empiricism to learning should be simple.

Scrum is simple, but that simplicity means that each of its elements is essential.  The values, accountabilities, artifacts and events are all part of the framework for a reason.  Teams that mess with the framework are messing with Scrum.  Teams that make changes to the elements limit Scrum's effect...

TL; DR: Scrum Master Success — My Top-Nine Indicators How would you know that your Scrum Master is competent? What are indicators for Scrum Master success? Is the regular use of the Confluence retrospective template one of the desired signals? Or is the quest to understand contributing factors fu...

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

The Product Owner is responsible for the ROI or return on investment. They represent the customer and the Product on which the scrum team is working.

A well-refined Product Backlog is essential for high-performing Scrum Teams.  Without it, teams will likely struggle to deliver a Done increment each Sprint.  But like all things in Scrum, we must have a balance.  So, how far out should the Product Backlog go?  

Scrum Values were added to Scrum Guide in 2016. Values are what makes Scrum fully uncover it's potential. These values include Courage, Focus, Commitment, Respect, and Openness.

One of my favorite exercises from my Professional Scrum Product Owner classes is how to best sabotage a Product Owner as a member of the middle management. The exercise rules are simple: You’re not allowed to use any form of illegal activity. So, outsourcing the task to a bunch of outlaws is out of ...

A collection of powerful questions & opportunities to help your team reflect, learn, and improve, continuously.

SAFe® war schon immer ein kontroverses Thema innerhalb der agilen Gemeinschaft. Deshalb habe ich bereits 2017 eine erste Umfrage zum Net Promoter Score® des Scaled Agile Framework SAFe ® durchgeführt. Das Ergebnis war damals -52.

The Scrum framework comes with its own guardrails and values, but it is worth taking a moment to consider the base upon which Scrum is founded by examining the principles and values of the Agile Manifesto.  The Agile Manifesto includes four values and 12 principles that describe a better way to appr...

TL; DR: The SAFe ® NPS ® Score as a Scaling Framework Is -56 SAFe® has always been a controversial topic within the agile community. Therefore, back in 2017, I ran a first survey on the Net Promoter Score® of the Scaled Agile Framework SAFe®. The result back then was -52. Four and a half years la...

The 2020 Scrum Guide includes five values that are important to every successful implementation of Scrum.  These values are courage, commitment, focus, openness and respect. These values don’t get much attention, but the longer I practice Scrum and coach teams, the more important I find them.  This ...

In tis blog post, Dave West shares tips on being a good Stakeholder based on his experiences.

Scrum uses an iterative, incremental approach to deliver value to the business through the medium of the Sprint. The purpose of each Sprint is to deliver a Done, usable increment. It sounds straightforward, but it can be tricky to achieve. Here are the three steps to Done in Scrum.

How to Fail as an Agile Coach in Scrum by Scrum.org trainer Chee-Hong Hsia.  ​​​​​​​Helping organisations in their Agile journey sustainably while respecting the three Scrum accountabilities. A must-read if you're a dedicated Agile Coach or working with Agile Coaches in your organisation where Scru...

TL; DR: Product Owner Interview Questions: The Product Mindset If you are looking to fill a position for a Product Owner in your organization, you may find the following 82 interview questions useful to identify the right candidate. This 8th set of Product Owner interview questions addresses the ...

Scrum has proven time and again to be the most popular framework for software development. Given that software is eating the world, a seasoned Scrum Master is nowadays in high demand. And that demand causes the market entry of new professionals from other project management branches, probably believ...

Spark small and incremental change in your Scrum team, with our community-driven actionable quick tips.

Familiarize yourself with the principles of Liberating Structures and learn how they can strengthen your Scrum Team.

Read on and learn more on how to best sabotage a Scrum Master from the exercise results of more than ten PSM I and PSM II classes. (I slightly edited the suggestions for better readability.)

Last week, we talked about common misconceptions related to the Daily Scrum.  This week we’ll focus more broadly on misconceptions impacting everything from the Product Backlog to the composition of the Scrum Team itself.