In this blog, PSTs Sjoerd Kranendonk and Wilbert Seele explain how to achieve more and risk less by being a less visible Product Owner. In the Scrum Guide the following is written about the role of the PO: "The Product Owner is responsible for maximizing the value of the product and the work of the ...

Work is complex, and to honour the empirical approach is harder. It requires trust, in order to be transparent. To enable the responsiveness that agile promises there needs to be discipline and rigour.

“Agile” has become a buzzword in the software development industry as well as the wider business landscape. And for good reason – several organizations have cited Agile principles as the influence behind results such as better financial performance, project success, customer satisfaction and employe...

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, Professional Scrum Trainer David Dame talks about his experiences over many years working in the Agile community and with Ken Schwaber, co-creator of Scrum, founder of Scrum.org and signatory of the Agile Manifesto. David looks at his history with Ken and Ke...

Flashback to 1995, Jeff and Ken had presented their paper at OOPSLA on Scrum. People recognizes it as one of the new ways of working. Fast forward to Feb 2001, no ski resort gathering and no Agile manifesto. People are trying different methods, frameworks and practices for improving the state of sof...

Do you think people need to be forged into a T-shape? Think again. Focus on the aspects preventing people from employing their intrinsic T-potential. I have never worked with a single person who mastered no more than a single skill. Every individual I worked with had the intrinsic capability to p...

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...

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 ...

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...

True story - happened in one of my recent Professional Scrum Master workshops. I think had just mentioned that there is no "Sprint Commitment" in Scrum, only a "Sprint Forecast".

Are you ready to escape the average and become awesome? Do you want to overcome your fears and follow your dreams? We all want to escape the average and the humdrum. The essential step in achieving any great goal is to "START." Inspired by author Jon Acuff's book, Start, I've come up with this ...

If agility is why your organization adopts Scrum, look for more sophistication in employing Scrum. Through Scrum, teams and organizations create the opportunity of having a releasable version of product no later than by the end of each Sprint, where a Sprint takes no more than 4 weeks, and often ...

What is the difference between a traditional and an Agile Manager? Keep reading, if you want to learn how a manager evolves.

We find this a common thread amongst our customer teams, which can be attributed to a lack of backlog refinement.

This presentation from by Professional Scrum Trainer Erwin Van Der Koogh from Agile India looks at scaling Agile. 

Today Scrum.org announced a partnership with the DevOps Institute to provide a foundation to building stronger working relationships between the Scrum and DevOps communities

In this video, Ken Schwaber, co-creator of Scrum and original member of the group signing the Agile Manifesto discusses how it came about.

Ken Schwaber, the co-creator of Scrum, original member of the group who signed the Agile Manifesto in an interview with the Boston Business Journal talks about why they created the Agile Alliance.

Let me quickly describe a potential situation how this came about. During the Sprint Planning, the team had agreed to deliver the top 5 Backlog items. They had some conversations about what the items are and where the problems could lie within those. The Product Owner had the feeling that just th...

NEW YEAR RESOLUTION So it's a new year. New Year, new start, yadda yadda yadda... Maybe you are considering some New Year Resolutions so I wanted to invite you to take our 2017 waste-loss challenge by decreasing your Sabotagile Quotient. This challenge builds upon my previous blog - "Agile or S...

Recently I got asked what I consider the most common challenges with Agile projects. These are projects that have such a high rate of uncertainty and complexity on how and what to build, an Agile approach is necessary. Although my gut feeling immediately provided an answer, I gave myself some more t...

Because there's no easy way in telling you this, I'll just share it straight away... Next week I'll be setting up a Jira environment for the product teams I'm coaching... Yes... Jira! The issue & project tracking system for software teams created by Atlassian. It's pretty easy to find negativ...

EMBARRASSING CONFESSION OK, so this will be awkward, and maybe cringe-inducing post. But we are approaching the new year. Plenty of people might be making new year resolutions. Many will be around fitness. So everyone needs to read this. I was once really impressed by 24 Hour Fitness. I used...

SCRUM IS NOT THE END. IT IS A MEANS TO THE END… The end goal of empirically building strong, self-organizing Scrum Teams to help your business… Increase Sustainable Value Sustainably Decrease Waste & Sustainably Manage Risk It seems quite straightforward, however, ...

I’ve spent a lot of time looking at how organizations are using DevOps to improve their software delivery cycle time, their ability to innovate, and their ability to improve quality. I’ve heard some people go so far as to say that DevOps has replaced Agile, but I don’t think that’s true. If anything...

More and more large companies in traditional industries are singing the Agile song. I have noticed, though, that there seems to be a general misconception that Agile is onlyabout creating happy teams. There’s more to an Agile mindset than happiness. It’s about learning, struggle, and growth. This is...

I’ve been working in software for a long time, and for most of that time I’ve been trying to find better ways of delivering working software. I’ve had the good fortune to start my career, in the early 1980’s, at the beginning of a real revolution in the way software was developed and delivered. For ...

If this post resonates with you, please consider spreading the message so we can educate and inspire the entire professional world together. I invite you to ‘Follow’ my professional journey through LinkedIn and Twitter. ~~~ The colorful wall posters are ubiquitous in organizations small...

In my last post, I explained the pattern of the evolution of the Product Owner. This blog is about the evolution pattern of a Scrum Master. Do you want to know more about what it takes to be a good Scrum Master? Would you like to know how to grow in your role? Then you should probably keep read...

The role of a Scrum Master is one of many stances and diversity. A great Scrum Master is aware of them and knows when and how to apply them, depending on situation and context. Everything with the purpose of helping people understand the spirit of Scrum and hereby apply the Scrum framework better.

Question from a budding Scrum Master, who is transitioning from a background as a traditional project manager: “In order to promote team bonding and self-organization, from now on I am going to try something new with the team. In the sprint planning meeting, instead of me breaking down the tasks ...

Last year, I was facilitating a workshop on Agile and began the conversation, as usual with introductions. I asked each attendee what was the most important burning question that brought them to the workshop. One of the attendees replied

A lot of people talk about scaling Agile. It’s all the rage nowadays. Everyone wants to scale Agile. But what does that actually mean? What does it imply? What are the underlying assumptions? Capital-A Agile When people refer to capital-A Agile, mostly they are referring to the value stateme...

The role of a Scrum Master is one of many stances and diversity. A great Scrum Master is aware of them and knows when and how to apply them, depending on situation and context. Everything with the purpose of helping people understand and apply the Scrum framework better. In a series of blog posts...

The role of a Scrum Master is one of many stances and diversity. A great Scrum Master is aware of them and knows when and how to apply them, depending on situation and context. Everything with the purpose of helping people understand and apply the Scrum framework better. In a series of blog posts...

Do you want to pass a small test? It is very simple - please reproduce in the exact sequence literally four values of ​​Agile Manifesto. Well, how did it go? If you succeeded, then you get my congratulations. 3 years ago I failed the test, though I knew the Scrum Guide almost literally and was...

"Agile" (the label) is all over the place. Who would have guessed in early 2001? When the Manifesto for Agile Software Development was created and the English adjective ‘agile’ obtained its specific meaning in the context of software development. What is this manifesto, commonly known as the Agile M...

This blog is part of my series on “Agile Trojan Horses – Covert Appetizers for Agile Discovery”. This series helps spark conversations that restore focus on Agile Fundamentals, whet the appetite to discover more about Agile and help apply Agile in day-to-day decision-making. I am writing this b...

If I had a penny for every minute I sat in a meeting where teams argued about what was and was not “Agile” I would be a gazillionaire by now. Sometimes, the most vocal and dominant voices are the least aware of the fundamentals of Agile. To many, Agile is a buzz word and does not mean more than what...

I was coaching a number of teams and their Sprint Reviews were boring status meetings and few stakeholders attended. I see this pattern often at companies and a reason for poor stakeholder attendance is that the discussion about added value happens in other meetings. In this post I want to share a l...

He could have wept tin tears, but that would not have been right. He looked at her and she looked at him, but neither spoke a word. (Hans Christian Andersen, The Brave Tin Soldier]). We raise our children and teach them to be "The Brave Tin Soldiers" that express only the “right” feelings, ha...

In 1995, the first codified version of Scrum was made public. In 2010, the co-creators of Scrum, Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber, described the roles and rules of Scrum in the Scrum Guide. The Scrum Guide is globally recognized as the definite body of knowledge to Scrum. The value of the Scrum G...

The Scrum.org crew just returned from the Agile 2014 conference in Orlando. The great conversations with attendees were as good as the sessions themselves. There are people doing some truly amazing things with Scrum and software and this conference is a great place to meet up with them. I haven’t...