Don't write Product Backlog Items, have a conversation about them!

🔍 Discover the underpinnings of a transparent and promising future in Agile Product Management! My latest blog post explores the indispensable role of an ordered Product Backlog that is coherent, refined, and rightly sized.

To excel as an Agile facilitator, understanding the importance of facilitation skills and mastering the essential Scrum facilitation techniques are paramount. This blog post provides insights into these essentials while shedding light on how our Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills™ course can aid...

Learn how these Scrum anti-patterns categories manifest themselves and how they affect value creation for customers and the long-term sustainability of the organization — Scrum Anti-Patterns Taxonomy (1)

A personal experience and a tangible exercise to show why complexity requires ‘doing’ instead of ‘thinking’

If you are eager to drive change and improve your business agility, check out this video by PST Robert Pieper.

The concept of limiting work in progress revolves around the principle that focusing on fewer tasks at a time leads to better outcomes. In a Scrum context, this involves setting a cap on the number of user stories, features, or tasks that the development team is actively working on during a sprint. ...

How does your Product Owner support adaptation in order to minimise deviations from agreed goals? Each of the Scrum Accountabilities has a role to play. So does the Product Owner. Check it out!

It's common practice to ask the Scrum Master to take on the role of facilitator in the 5 Scrum events. Let's go beyond this and move towards more learning strategies, for both the Scrum Master and the Scrum Team.

In this article, we will explore some tactics which I found valuable when I was in need to align Scrum with Project Management practices.

How do you uphold Scrum without becoming a Scrum dictator? How do you lead the Scrum Team to ever greater adoption of Scrum within the organization… without direct authority? This article explores the challenges faced by Scrum Masters in their balancing act and how they navigate through it to ensu...

This case study analyzes the transformation journey using Org Topologies™ Scans and focuses on the Business Banking Hub. The article is valuable if you want to understand how Org Topologies™ can help improve organizational design.

At the heart of Scrum is a unique and indispensable accountability: the Scrum Master. This enigmatic figure may not possess the traditional authority associated with managers, nor do they hold executive powers. Yet, they play a vital and indispensable accountability in the success of the Scrum Team ...

Scrum Tools, Part 2: From Design Thinking to Lean UX to User Story Mapping

Scrum is a Product centric approach to delivering value. But what if your team is not aligned with a Product? In this blog, we discuss what Product means in Scrum and why it can help a team even if they do not feel they are working in a Product organization. In this blog, we talk about why Product i...

🎯#Agile Usable Products vs. Documentation in Traditional Project Management📝 💡Are you still torn between embracing Agile's nimble strides or holding onto the tried-and-true documentation-heavy Traditional Project Management? Let's crack the code! 🕵️‍♂️ In an ever-evolving software development landsc...

In our quest to improve the working place, we propose to view an organization as an ecosystem. #OrgTopologies is a framework agnostic thinking tool that will allow managers to purposefully design organizations for high performance. In this article, we describe an A-level ecosystem and how to improv...

The purpose of the Scrum Master is to enhance the efficiency and productivity of the Scrum team. It’s an important accountability for the success of the Scrum team, and yet, it is surprising that many people are uncertain about the qualities they should seek when hiring a Scrum Master. In this arti...

The Agile Leader's commitment goes beyond mere lip service to the Agile Manifesto. It's about creating a conducive environment for teams to innovate, collaborate, learn, and grow. It's about leading by example and embodying the principles and values that Agile upholds. But what exactly are these com...

From Spotify to The Liberators to Self-Made: Eight Self-Assessments to Get You Started.

The purpose of the Scrum Master is to improve the effectiveness of the Scrum Team. And yet, so many people don’t know what to look for in a Scrum Master or how to evaluate the Scrum Master’s performance. A great Scrum Master possesses a unique blend of technical expertise, leadership skills, and int...

What does "ready" actually mean and maybe more importantly what does it not mean?

Learn about an oversized Product Backlog’s negative impact on innovation, your Scrum team’s ability to create value, and your relationship with stakeholders.

How does your Sprint Retrospective support adaptation in order to minimise deviations from agreed goals? Each of the Scrum Events serves to adapt. So does the Sprint Retrospective. Check it out!

Scrum Master job descriptions typically include the following: “Help remove impediments for the team” or “Accountable for removing impediments”. Organizations clearly find impediment removal to be an important aspect of the role. But what is meant by impediments? Should a Scrum Master remove all the...

According to the 2020 Scrum guide, “Scrum Teams are cross-functional, meaning the members have all the skills necessary to create value each Sprint.” But what does that mean, exactly?

Stuck in a boring, neverending, meaningless Scrum rhythm? Give Scrum a break, and rethink what approach suits your team the best!

How does your Sprint Review support adaptation in order to minimise deviations from agreed goals? Each of the Scrum Events serves to adapt. So does the Sprint Review. Check out our tips!

In this episode of the Scrum.org Community podcast, we get to know Professional Scrum Trainer Andreanna Marshall! (25:38)

There are certain misconceptions and patterns that can hinder the effectiveness of the Product Owner and lead to conflicts within the Scrum team. In this article, we will explore three common anti-patterns related to the Product Owner's accountability in Scrum and discuss strategies to overcome them...

Failing, one useless metrics at a time, from individual velocity to estimation accuracy to utilization rates.

A Comparison of Traditional, Guided, Immersive, and Flipped Learning Approaches to accelerate your knowledge retention.

Escape the Rinse and Repeat Cycle with 5 Sprint Retrospective Ideas

How does Sprint Planning support adaptation in order to minimise deviations from agreed goals? Each of the Scrum Events serves to adapt. So does Sprint Planning. Check out our tips!

From self-managing magicians to magic in metrics to vanishing obstacles: 10 indicators to identify successful Scrum Masters.

In this article, we explore the concept of catharsis and how its intentional, occasional integration into the Sprint Retrospective can foster emotional release, team bonding and ultimately drive higher team performance. We’ll also look at a practice that supports catharsis called the silent retrospe...

The Product Goal is a powerful magnet that propels Scrum teams towards value delivery. It guides efforts, prioritizes activities, fosters collaboration, and ensures focus on delivering value to customers. Regular evaluation and refinement are essential to maintain its effectiveness in driving value.

My excursion into creating useful Scrum Master interview questions with ChatGPT.

Embracing self-management can be challenging for teams transitioning to Scrum. It involves new skills and a different approach to getting work done. Scrum Masters play a critical role in helping their teams embrace greater autonomy. Let’s look at how.

Scrum.org's Evidence-Based Management (EBM) effectively combines the Scrum framework with an emphasis on value, vision, and strategy. This approach appreciates the unpredictability of product development, promoting fact-based management over speculation. EBM's core involves continuous inspection and...

In Scrum, the emphasis is on collaboration and flexibility. In this context, a cross-functional team refers to a group of individuals with diverse skills and expertise necessary to complete a software project. These teams self-organize and self-manage and are empowered to make decisions collectively...

Each of the Scrum accountabilities participates in one or more inspections. So is the Product Owner. Go check it out!

Effective Stakeholder Engagement is key to the product's success and one of the essential skills all product people should have. This article is part 4 of the Effective Stakeholder Engagement series. - Stakeholder Exploration - Stakeholder Analysis & Mapping - Stakeholder Communication Strategy ...

By offering just enough structure, Scrum enables teams to work together effectively while promoting innovation and adaptability.

Want to elevate your Retrospectives from Good to 🦄 Great? Check out the following ten benefits of this one Retrospective facilitation practice.

A prompt engineering guide covering the basics, services to enhance your prompts, and how to use ChatGPT to generate prompts. (Yup, that works, too.)

Let’s explore four ways Scrum Teams can manage production support in Scrum effectively.

In this recorded session of Ask a Professional Scrum Trainer, Reshma (Simran) Nagrani answers questions about the Scrum Master Accountability, estimations, metrics, facilitation techniques and more! (58:45 Minutes)

This article describes how I used the Org Topologies™ Map to coach a team toward ownership of their own agile transformation journey. Read this article to learn how Org Topologie™s can be applied to coaching the agnostic, framework-free thinking tool.

Scrum Teams need to make decisions all the time. Helping teams reach a decision effectively, and gaining necessary buy-in from all team members can be challenging, especially when team members are unclear on who has the final say in making it. Understanding the decision rule, how a decision is made and whose input is required, is necessary because ambiguity in the decision process causes confusion and frustration.