This blog gives a Lean perspective on the Agile Manifesto.

Background I wrote a definition of agility 6 months ago. It was like a change story. I didn't want a pithy definition of agility that would : let executive leaders think they were off the hook, change is for the teams and I don't need to change let specialists think they were off t...

In this blog post, Dave West, CEO and Product Owner at Scrum.org, will explore the benefits of using Scrum for Marketing, dealing with pressures from every side of the business and using Scrum to address complexity.

The traditional approach of RFI – RFP – Review – LOI is neither lean or agile. The Lean Agile Procurement approach reduces the sourcing cycle time to days, with collaborative clarification of the product with prospective partners while reducing the risk of a poor partner and company evaluation.

I recently started aggregating my notes, links, and references related to agile leadership to understand better what it — in the context of an agile transition — may look like.

In many organisations I see Scrum not producing its anticipated value. The concept of value varies across organisations.

An organization’s ability to rapidly and deliberately respond to changing demand, while controlling risk helps ascertain its Agility.

The comparison between Kanban and Scrum obviously comes up often when we're talking to teams, especially in the context of Professional Scrum with Kanban. While they are more similar than many practitioners realize, one key difference is the perspective on Teams. 

What exactly is “agile” or even an agile leader? This is one of the biggest problems our industry faces. Ask a room full of people to answer and you may get as many answers. Common ones include “it’s a mindset” or “it’s a software methodology” etc…

An Agile mindset is crucial in management roles for organizations that are moving towards Agility. I observed this while working in various organizations and currently am a witness of it while assisting my customers. Decisions, actions, directions and vision often come from the management level, ...

An executive is a person who owns the strategy or sets the direction of travel or sets justifications for spending. This exec could be the Product Owner for a chunk of the organization.

Many Agile coaches and Scrum Masters believe they know best. They believe teams must follow a certain set of steps and do things a certain way, and if they do, those teams will be more productive, happy, and successful than ever.

The Agile Manifesto statement of “Customer Collaboration over Contract Negotiation” is less than helpful when it comes to writing contracts for projects to be worked in an Agile fashion.  Contracting for Agile software development projects continues to be a major organizational impediment.

If you’re a veteran of the software industry, you probably remember those days where we released to production/GA every couple of months. Heck, many of the companies I meet these days still work that way.

Just a thought on architecture in a complex environment. What is the value of a perfect architecture? Is there something as a perfect architecture? Perhaps more importantly, when is the architecture perfect?

"An Agile Coach know more than just Scrum", said one consultant in a boardroom meeting, "he/she knows organisation dynamics, executive coaching and other Agile practices like Kanban and DevOps", he continued.

From my go-to barbecue chicken to practicing Scrum, I have tried adding many different ingredients over the years. Is there a point when too many ingredients get in the way of the original recipe?  Would the Scrum framework in your world of work be more optimal with less of them?

In this session, Valerie Pearce, Senior Software Architect and Nic Easton, Nexus Scrum Master and Software Engineer III from Net Health, and Patricia Kong, Scrum.org Product Owner of Enterprise Solutions, walk through how Net Health scaled Scrum by implementing the Nexus framework in their product d...

I remember going on a PRINCE2 course a few years ago, and trying to determine how this celebrated stage-gated framework might be applied to an agile mode of delivery. I was employed in the UK public sector at the time, and I had come to know how instrumental "PRINCE2 compliance" can be to the striki...

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 ...