During my interactions with my students/ colleagues who play the role of Scrum Master, they tell me that they see gaps in how things are implemented compared to the rules of the Scrum Guide.

TL; DR: 70 Scrum Master Theses The following 70 Scrum Master theses describe the role of from a holistic product creation perspective.

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.

20 ideas for using the new Scrum Mythbusters card deck in your organization

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

In this post, we explore how continuous improvement is the lifeblood of Scrum Teams.

TL; DR: 20 Questions to Ask the Product Owner to Get up to Speed as a New Scrum Master From Scrum Master to Product Owner, this set of questions addresses the future collaboration between the two individuals and the rest of the Scrum Team. The questions have been modeled after some basic principl...

I was hired by a bank to help them to get started with agile and Scrum...

Brief about me before you read this post so you can understand my perspective better. I am a software developer and Scrum Teacher...

TL; DR: 11 Proven Stakeholder Communication Tactics - Stakeholder communication: It is simply not enough for an agile product development organization to create great code and ship the resulting product like a clockwork...

The Daily Scrum is the heartbeat of Scrum. It's a key inspect and adapt opportunity for the Development Team, encouraging them check their progress towards the Sprint Goal and adjust their plan accordingly.

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.

The Scrum Values are like a compass guiding us on our journey of using Scrum, while exploring Scrum is a journey in itself....

Learn more about agile management anti-patterns the aspiring servant leader should avoid during the organization’s transition: From applying the Stage-Gate® approach...

Twenty questions for you — the new Scrum Master — that fit into a 60 minutes time-box.

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.

Suitable agile metrics reflect either a team’s progress in becoming agile or your organization’s progress in becoming a learning organization.

This blog is inspired by two books I read recently "The Power of Full Engagement" & "A-Team of Leaders".

I am continuing my exploration of the value of the Scrum Values for different people and roles involved in Scrum. Having explored the Scrum Values from a Product Owner perspective , I want to now consider the Scrum Values from the Stakeholder’s perspective.

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.

What looked like a good idea back in the 1990ies—outsourcing software development as a non-essential business area—has meanwhile massively backfired for a lot of legacy organizations.

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.

Regularly, we find articles from developers detailing why ‘Agile’ in general and Scrum’s nature, in particular, deserve our collective disdain.

There is no such thing as an Agile Transformation, Digital Transformation, DevOps Transformation, or any of the Whatever Transformation that you can think of or have been sold. You can’t buy agility, and you certainly can’t install it. There is no end state, no optimal outcome, No best practices. We...

In my daily life as a Scrum Master, I witness many crazy situations. I want to share my discoveries via this comic series featuring Koos Coach, the silly Scrum Master struggling to understand and master Scrum.

Many organizations I have seen in my life does not care for their Development Team. Join me in a short analysis of why that happens and what - in fact - is a Development Team.

A Sprint Review is perhaps one of the most difficult elements in the product development with Scrum.

Commitment is key. Commitment is somethins every team, every manager, every organization wants and needs. Commitment promises better results, engaged people, good relationship with work and many other benefits. The problem is that it can be misunderstood. 

Usually conversation between developers and Product Owner goes around acceptance criteria just to negotiate scope of requirements for one user story, but knowledge and context are not conveyed in the same structured way. User Story Canvas can help Scrum Team to fix these problems by focusing team to...

For many years, many of us have had strong opinions about the importance of having teams that are co-located.

Would like a tool that delivers better product and customer outcomes and actually pays for itself? Read on.

TL; DR: Remote Agile Transitions We are used to saying the Scrum is a perfect probe for organizations, as it will reliably discover all dysfunctionalities. Since the pandemic has forced many of us to work remotely, this unique capability has been kicked into overdrive regarding remote agile trans...

First of all, I'd like to note that models and terms I am using and discuss are not mine. They come from training and coaching sessions belonging to Vroemen from Teamchange. The connection I make to Scrum is my interpretation. 

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 di...

Even though the global Scrum adoption is now at 75% (source: 14th State of Agile report 2020), the Scrum Master profession is still difficult to grasp for many. I have encountered and still encounter many organizations struggling with understanding the role of the Scrum Master. These misunderstan...

In this Scrum Tapas video, Professional Scrum Trainer Ravi Verma discusses several ways that Scrum Team members can transition to trusted advisors of the organization. Ravi describes places to get more information about the business, suggestion on how to communicate with stakeholders and how to lev...

Scrum Teams are always dealing with complex problems, unpredictability, and change.

TL; DR: The Agile Movers & Shakers Interview w/ Christiaan Verwijs & Barry Overeem Today we welcome Christiaan Verwijs & Barry Overeem. Christiaan and Barry are both Professional Scrum Trainers (PST) with Scrum.org, dedicated early adopters of Liberating Structures, and co-authors of ...

“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 this episode of Ask a Professional Scrum Trainer, PST Stephanie Ockerman answers questions related to the role of the Scrum Master. She provides insight on practices and techniques useful to Scrum Masters and Scrum Team Members alike.

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.

As a coach, I’ve gotten many inquiries from colleagues and students asking for advice. How do I support my team during a time when we have and are still experiencing so much change and high levels of uncertainty? How do I even support myself right now? I too have struggled (and still do on a dail...

Difference between Project Manager and Scrum Master.

Inspiration for fulfilling the stances of a Scrum Master, remotely.

This eighth article now looks into supporting a distributed Development Team organizing a remote Daily Scrum.

The COVID19 pandemic gives us plenty of opportunities to think about uncertainty, complexity, and how to deal with those using Empiricism.

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.

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.

Like many Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches and Agile Managers, I am beginning to understand organizations are complex adaptive systems.