How can savvy Scrum Masters and Scrum Teams use the Retrospective Prime Directive to avoid Retrospective Witch Hunts but instead create a culture of continuous collaboration and learning?

Business agility is only possible with technical excellence. Learn more about the twelve success principles of employing a Definition of Done as a quality standard to support your organization’s path to agility.

Self-managing doesn’t mean that the Scrum Team — or the Scrum Master — is all-powerful.  (Sorry, not sorry!)  It means that the organization gives the Scrum Team the mandate to deliver value according to the product vision and goal within a set of guardrails.  

A Scrum Master is effective when their team is effective. As the Scrum Guide says, Scrum Masters are accountable for the effectiveness of the Scrum Team.  Let’s explore what this entails.

Let’s harden a popular Scrum Master interview guide in the age of ChatGPT!

If you look at Scrum Teams all around the world, you recognize a spectrum of productivity from completely passive to fully proactive teams. Productivity is a word that is used to represent the state of our way of working as a team. But beneath it, there is a more fundamental concept called vibration...

The idea of self-managing teams who have flexible scope and timelines can be perceived as daunting to some executives and senior leaders. In this session, Professional Scrum Trainer, Mary Iqbal talks about some of the common misconceptions about Scrum and Agile in general from a leader’s perspective...

Advanced ChatGPT Prompts for Scrum Masters, Product Owners, and Developers

Empiricism is one of the underlying concepts of the Scrum framework. Scrum is founded on empirical process control, and transparency is the first of the three pillars. How does this show during Sprint Retrospective?

David Ingram, VP of Global R&D at Gillette continues a discussion with Dave West, CEO at Scrum.org about how they developed a new exfoliating razor using Scrum, some of the challenges they have faced with scaling Scrum, and how they were able to adapt and evolve from a waterfall focused culture. The...

Product Owners are a critical role in the Scrum Framework, but what does a Product Owner do? This blog post will discuss the day-to-day activities of this position and explore how these accountabilities create successful projects.

Will Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches soon be replaced with a chatbot? In this ChatGPT job interview, I put OpenAI’s latest generative AI to the test.

Are you aware that as a human being, you have the ability to convert thought energy into results in the physical world? And of course, you can choose which thought you want to convert. In this "Professional Mind for Professional Scrum" series I will walk you through the marvelous world of the mind t...

Being an effective Scrum Master or team member inevitably involves difficult conversations. How we approach challenging discussions can mean the difference between a transformative moment and one that goes sideways. Fortunately, there is a lot we can do to prepare for those times when we need to wad...

Almost all Scrum Teams use a type of board to visualize their work giving them a better understanding of where they are currently and helping them make upcoming decisions. In this post, we investigate the techniques of effective collaboration on Sprint Board one by one.

Empiricism is one of the underlying concepts of the Scrum framework. Scrum is founded on empirical process control, and transparency is the first of the three pillars. How does this show during Sprint Planning?

Scrum is a lightweight framework for solving complex problems. The mechanics are relatively easy to understand, and your Scrum Master will help you with this. However, it is much more important for a Product Owner to exploit the benefits of Scrum from a business perspective.

I need your support, dear community. For months, I have been working on turning the popular Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide PDF into a new book from Scrum-org’s Professional Scrum Series, published by Pearson. There is one challenge, though, I like to ask for your support: which cover shall it be — re...

Sprint Planning is one of those events that even experienced teams don’t use to its fullest potential.  Here’s why. Many teams see the Sprint Planning event as the time for selecting which Product Backlog items (PBIs) they will deliver in the upcoming Sprint.  And that’s it.  There is so much more t...

We plan a lot in Scrum: There is a daily plan when the Developers think about progressing toward the Sprint Goal during the Daily Scrum. Of course, the Sprint Goal reflects an intermediate target the Scrum team considers valuable to solve their customers’ problems. Moreover, there is the Product Goa...

Let’s unpack what defines trust and how, although it does not sit among them, the Scrum values help build trust among team members.

This ScrumPulse Webcast moderated by Dave West, CEO of Scrum.org, Tomasz Maj, Expert at McKinsey, and Rishi Markenday, Professional Scrum Trainer, discuss their research and initial findings as presented in the new paper titled - “In pursuit of value, not work.” They will describe how companies typi...

What if a Generative AI can not just answer questions but also learn while constantly improving its model? Wouldn’t that lead to the long-run obsolescence of many knowledge workers, for example, Scrum Masters, agile coaches, product managers, and Product Owners?

In this episode of Ask a Professional Scrum Trainer, PST Jay Rahman will be available answers questions on leadership, Product Ownership, Scrum Mastery and more! (58:14 Minutes)

Get to know your new Scrum Team now! Explore these 7 facilitation tips to start your Scrum Team.

Let’s look at how as a Scrum Master, you can facilitate a self-organization session, because the most empowered Scrum Teams determine the structure and organization of the team.

Value creation in Scrum is not as straightforward as you might have thought. You need a product discovery system feeding the Product Backlog.

A look at proven tools and practices enhancing a purposefully incomplete framework without defying its first principles.

Join PST Andy Hiles, Jessica Martin, Agile Coach and PST Ravi Verma in a panel discussion hosted by Patricia Kong, where they share their experiences with creating psychological safety in teams by using effective facilitation skills in conversations and other interactions.

According to the Scrum guide, Scrum teams typically have 10 or fewer people, including Developers, Scrum Master and Product Owner.  But what happens with a Scrum team that includes more than 10 people?  What if the Scrum team has 10, 15 even more people?

Is there a moment when a, so far, successful Scrum team starts outliving Scrum’s utility?

How the various ways of getting into a swimming pool are similar to how teams and organizations start with Scrum.

As this article hopefully makes clear, the mental well-being of the workforce is important. Being transparent about what happens after someone shares what they feel could improve is needed to ensure proper follow-up.

Scrum Masters are accountable for effectiveness of Scrum and yet many things are beyond their control. Let's unpack how to navigate this.

In the 45th Hands-on Agile meetup session, James Shore—author of ‘The Art of Agile Development’—shared his experiences with scaling “agile:” first with traditional approaches and, more recently, with FAST scaling.

The scrum guide has been thoughtfully crafted and frequently updated to help teams and organizations be more successful. While aimed primarily at individual teams it also speaks volumes to the type of environment organizations can create to help their teams to thrive.

An exploration of what scientific studies and a large dataset of Scrum teams tell us about the benefits of agility

​​​​​​​Scrum Teams that understand the “why” behind the Scrum framework can better increase value delivery to the organization. Internalizing the purpose behind the events, artifacts and accountabilities of Scrum allows the team to get the most benefit from them.  In this article, we will discuss th...

Suppose you are looking to fill a position for a Scrum Master (or agile coach) in your organization. In that case, you may find the following 73 interview questions helpful in identifying the right candidate.

Reflections and findings triggered by an experience interview with Daniel Vacanti.

Improving Employee Engagement with Professional Scrum (Questions 4-6 of Gallup's Q12 Survey)

Here are my observations made after teaching Scrum using Minecraft Education for approximately 3 years. Minecraft is used to create a world (metaverse?) in which students are asked to develop a product. The immersive nature of the platform replicates the workplace and invites students into refle...

No Scrum team has ever been able to reap the benefits of the framework without making the Sprint Goal a cornerstone of its efforts. The following nine principles point at critical issues any Scrum Team needs to consider on its path to excellence.

​​​​​​​According to the 2020 Scrum Guide, “The purpose of the Sprint Retrospective is to plan ways to increase quality and effectiveness.”  Scrum Teams must take the Retrospective seriously to achieve these outcomes.  In this article, we will look at four tips for getting the most from your Sprint R...

In this article, we will discuss how limiting Work in Progress can help teams deliver a done increment which meets the Sprint goal.

In its theory section, the Scrum Guide refers to the three elements of empiricism: transparency, inspection, and adaptation. However, a fourth element, foundational to enable empiricism, is hidden in a sentence on Scrum Values.

Tips and tricks to make Sprint Planning easier, master the "Groan Zone" and achieve strong outcomes.

Scrum’s strength is that it makes difficulties visible faster so the team can address them. While the framework helps to resolve many things that might not be working optimally, it doesn’t eliminate every issue. Let’s look at three problems Scrum doesn’t solve. 

Patricia Kong leads a discussion with PSTs Todd Miller and Glaudia Califano focused on how Facilitation can help Scrum Teams, the importance of Facilitation Skills for Scrum Team members. (26:37 Minutes)

Today, Scrum.org announced a new skills-based course focusing on facilitation. Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills (PSFS). This class provides a practical, hands-on learning experience focused on developing facilitation skills and the mindset to apply them. This class responds to the importance o...