Skip to main content

Due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we have paused all purchases and training in and from Russia.

Blog Post

5 Ways Empiricism Can Make You a Better Scrum Master

March 14, 2023
Successful Scrum Masters continuously find ways to improve their practice to have greater influence and impact on their teams and organizations. Scrum’s foundational concept, empiricism, which advances learning through experience and observation, can support this kind of growth. In this blog post, we’ll explore five ways that a Scrum Master can use empiricism to improve their own practice and become a more effective leader. 
Webcast

Tips to Overcome Agile Skepticism

January 18, 2023
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 and how to overcome them.
Blog Post

7 Tips for Setting More Effective Goals

January 12, 2023
Goal setting is an essential tool supporting agility in complex environments. Various A-B-C formulas lead us to believe it’s a straightforward process, but setting and using goals effectively is challenging. Common pitfalls include not going deep enough with what we aim to achieve and bringing a success-or-failure perspective to the process rather than an empirical mindset. If it feels like your team is missing the mark, consider my top seven tips for setting more effective goals.
Blog Post

Uncovering the Product Owner Role

January 11, 2023
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.
Podcast

Professional Agile Leadership - Part 3 - Hierarchy and More

November 23, 2022
In this episode of the Scrum.org Community podcast, Kurt Bittner, PST Ron Eringa and PST Laurens Bonnema come together again to join host Dave West for a discussion on some of the topics in the new book, The Professional Agile Leader, including hierarchy and shifts to more flat, agile organizations. (27:32 Minutes)
Blog Post

What are the focus areas of an Agile Coach?

November 16, 2022
Though, there is no universal definition of what is an Agile Coach. I want to define, Someone who developed deep expertise to help people, teams, and organisations enable better customer outcomes by focusing on an organisation’s internal and external orientation.
Podcast

The Professional Agile Leader part 2 - Dual Operating Model, Self-Management and More

November 1, 2022
In this episode of the Scrum.org Community podcast, Kurt Bittner, PST Ron Eringa and PST Laurens Bonnema come together again to join host Dave West for a discussion on some of the topics in the new book, The Professional Agile Leader: The Leader's Journey Toward Growing Mature Agile Teams and Organizations, including the Dual Operating Model, Culture, self-management, bottom up intelligence and more!
Podcast

Ask a Professional Scrum Trainer - Scrum for Leaders

September 14, 2022
In this episode of Ask a Professional Scrum Trainer Yuval Yeret answers the audience's pressing Scrum questions focused around leadership, how leadership and Scrum Mastery are intertwined, and how leaders can engage with Scrum. Yuval is co-author of the Scrum Guide Companion for Leaders.
Blog Post

Agile Leadership Myths and how to move past them

August 30, 2022
The best Scrum teams that I have worked with were supported by management leaders focused on removing impediments, providing resources, and promoting an agile mindset and culture that supports the Scrum values. It’s not an easy job. Making it more challenging are the agile leadership myths out there that can get in the way of being effective. In this article, we’ll look at three common agile leadership myths and how to move past them.
Blog Post

The balance of power in Scrum

August 22, 2022
I think of the three accountabilities in the Scrum framework as creating a balance of power.  But what happens when an individual fulfilling one (or more!) of the accountabilities in Scrum gets a bit — um — power hungry?  In this article, we will discuss a few examples of how people fulfilling each of the three accountabilities can overstep their bounds. 
Blog Post

Using Agile in Project Management

August 1, 2022
As a project manager, I have delivered many complex initiatives, from re-platforming a consumer products website to doubling the size of a line of business.  My most successful projects have one thing in common; I used an agile approach to deliver them.
Blog Post

When Will Scrum Die?

July 28, 2022
When will Scrum die? Some people would say it's already dying. There's so much inauthentic, Scrum being done, unprofessional, Scrum being done in the world. Whereas Scrum is part of what I call water Scrum fall, where it's put within a predictive deterministic system. We're predicting when work will be finished. When actually we’ve got so much work that where we don't know, what we don't know, that's really unauthentic. I see in those situations where the concept of done isn't even a concept there They think that done means we met the acceptance criteria when actually it's almost like the checklist for how we do things around here, the technical standards and the product quality standards, international standards, for example, that we might need to comply with.
Blog Post

Empiricism is not just a fancy word

July 13, 2022
I confess that the first time someone told me that Scrum is based upon empiricism, I thought they were a little pretentious.  After all, it’s a five-syllable word for a framework with only five events.  Why make it so complicated?  But as I’ve coached more and more Scrum Teams over the years, I have learned that empiricism matters. It’s not just a fancy word; it’s the foundation of Scrum.
Blog Post

8 Dinge, die angehende Agile Führungskräfte von Scrum Mastern lernen können

July 6, 2022
Angehende Führungskräfte, die agil arbeiten wollen, haben es schwer! Zwar arbeiten die meisten Produktteams bereits nach Scrum, aber das Management vertraut weiterhin auf einen von Kontrolle geprägten Führungsstil. Die Führungskräfte, die in der Agilität die Arbeitsweise der Zukunft sehen und deshalb die Agile Transformation weiter vorantreiben wollen, stellt dies vor ein Problem: Wen sollen sie sich im Unternehmen zum Vorbild für diesen neuen Weg nehmen? Die Antwort dazu im Artikel:
Blog Post

What to consider in your transition to Scrum

June 6, 2022
When people ask me the best way for their team to transition to Scrum, I have to tell them that there isn’t an easy answer because every organization is unique.  Keeping that in mind, here are some general steps to consider if implementing Scrum is on your horizon.
Blog Post

The Purpose of the Five Scrum Events

May 31, 2022
There are five events in Scrum.  But just going through the motions and having each of the events on the calendar is not enough.  To get the most out of Scrum, your team needs to understand the purpose behind each of the five events.  
Blog Post

Scrum Events Reduce Meetings

May 24, 2022
One of the first things that I usually hear after describing the Scrum framework and its five events to someone new to Scrum is, “that’s a lot of meetings!” I get it — at first glance, it seems like a lot. But it really isn't when I get the person to take a closer look. This article provides a description of each event and how you can reduce the need for other meetings by practicing them.
Blog Post

The Power of the Sprint Retrospective

May 19, 2022
​​​​​​​In my experience, it’s the Sprint Retrospective that teams are most likely to skip, berate, or otherwise bash.  When I hear teams talking about dropping it to “save time,” I want to pull a Darth Vader, shake my fist in the air, and say, “You don’t know the power of the Sprint Retrospective!” and then demand that the team meet anyway.  Alas, I am not Darth Vader.  But hear me out to consider these five reasons for never skipping a Retrospective.  
Blog Post

Tipps zur Vorbereitung auf die PSM I Zertifizierung 🇩🇪

April 26, 2022
Das klingt jetzt erst mal abschreckend. Nein, bitte nicht entmutigen lassen. Als ich die Zertifizierung gemacht habe, hatte ich schon etliche Jahre Scrum Erfahrung. Dennoch die PSM I Prüfung ist in erster Linie eine Validierung von Wissen. Die höheren Prüfungen PSM II und PSM III fokussieren dann auf schwierige Praxis-Fragen.  
Blog Post

When will we get there?  How to estimate in Scrum.

April 13, 2022
When will we get there?  It’s not just something you might hear from the back seat of a car on a long road trip.  It’s something that a Scrum Team’s stakeholders, customers, managers and many others want to know.  When will that thing you are working on be done?  How long do I have to wait for you to deliver what I want? Sound familiar? Today, we’re going to discuss three ways to estimate and in my next post, we’ll talk about forecasting.
Book

The Professional Agile Leader

March 29, 2022
The Professional Agile Leader is a realistic, practical guide, written by three Scrum pioneers who demonstrate proven ways to foster responsive and adaptive team cultures. They structure powerful lessons around a case study based on decades of experience helping agile leaders achieve and sustain transformations. Their strategic deep dives reveal how to rediscover the customer, shift from output to impact, convert predictable existential crises into opportunities, grow leaders everywhere, and much more. Best of all, they never settle for high-level hand-waving--they show you how it's really done.
Blog Post

The Order of Events in Scrum Matters

March 21, 2022
Teams that change the framework are not using Scrum and are missing out on some of its benefits.  The Scrum framework consists of 5 events, 3 accountabilities, 3 artifacts and five values.  Today, we will talk about the order of the events in Scrum.