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 ...

This week I facilitated a Scrum Master training in which we gathered the most common pitfalls of the Scrum events. It resulted in a nice overview with lots of recognizable pitfalls. In this blog post I'll share the results with you, completed with some ideas of my own. As you will see, it's only a b...

Scrum is a framework within which people can address complex problems, and productively and creatively develop products of the highest possible value. It's tool organizations can use to increase their agility. Within Scrum, self-organizing, cross-functional, and highly productive teams do the wor...

I am sure it would not come as a surprise, but our website (www.scrum.org) needs a major refresh. The current implementation has become out of date and less and less supportive of our vision and mission. As a team, we quickly realized that we do not possess the resources needed to take on a full web...

The Scrum Master is responsible for ensuring Scrum is understood and enacted. Scrum Masters do this by ensuring that the Scrum Team adheres to Scrum theory, practices, and rules. 
The Scrum Master is a servant-leader for the Scrum Team. The Scrum Master helps those outside the Scrum Team understand ...

Recently I wrote an article about the characteristics of a great Product Owner. It gave me the idea to do the same for the Development Team and Scrum Master. This blog post focuses on the Development Team; I'll describe the characteristics, skills and conditions. Great Development Teams... ...

After downloading and studying the Nexus guide, you have questions about how the Nexus Integration Team actually works, so here are some keys to understand the role and its fit within the Nexus. It’s all about solving dependencies Nexus is focused is solving the primary source of issues and ...

During a recent Product Owner training I gave the participants the assignment to complete the sentence "A great Product Owner..." The result was a nice overview of characteristics, skills and conditions necessary to fulfill this role in a great manner. In this blog post I'll share the result, comple...

Last week I attended a workshop provided by Patrick Verheij, who is a board member of the Agile Consortium. Patrick explained the foundation of Agile and shared a characteristic of "Agile DNA" within organizations

What is a 'Product Owner'? Scrum is a framework for product development, and specifically well suited for complex products. The Product Owner is the role in Scrum to bring the business perspective to the team(s) creating and sustaining a software product. The Product Owner acts as the single re...

Within companies that use Scrum properly, the organization is built around fixed, cross-functional, self-organizing teams who are given the freedom and responsibility to think of a strategy they believe will result in the best product. Everyone around the Development Team is focused on supporti...

At some occasions we stop to look back. We see the trail we left behind, the bigger picture, the impact we made. Small or big. We think of the impact we hoped to make, small or big. A humbling experience before making our way forward again. Early 2011, nearly five years ago, Scrum.org launched th...

This is a list of 10 questions a Scrum Master may ask a Product Owner, in order to help coach them in their role.

This blog post talks about the issues caused by unlimited budgets.

Inspiring Lessons From the Life Journey of Mr. Warrick Dunn __________ As many of us in the USA prepare for the big college football rivalry weekend, let’s take a moment to learn about Agile leadership from Warrick Dunn, retired football star with a storied career in college and...

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...

Just like how the Development Team role and Scrum Master role that can be easily misunderstood, the Product Owner is also easily misunderstood by organisation who are using Scrum. Over and over again I see people who are assigned as Product Owner are not really a Product Owner, either they ...

Although the Daily Scrum seems to be a simple and straightforward event, I still encounter a lot of teams struggling with it. In this blog post, I'll share my tips & tactics. You can use it as a checklist for your own Daily Scrum, and hopefully, it helps you ensure the event to become (or stay) ...

I notice how many people struggle when they try to improve their understanding of Scrum. I notice it in classes, on forums, at conferences, through mail. They look for detailed instructions. They ask universal questions that demand exact and precise answers. How long should Sprint Planning b...

Update: after receiving some valuable feedback, I've added the third lesson learned. The previous week I used the Spotify Squad Health Check model to assess a team's situation and condition. One of the cards the game contained caused quite a lot of discussing during the retrospective and also ga...

The concept of user stories is a well-known tool for describing requirements. In a simple format, it captures the ‘who’, ‘what’ and ‘why’ of a requirement. User stories have their roots in Extreme Programming (XP) and are an often-used tactic within Scrum. In 2001, Ron Jeffries proposed the Three C’...

The Scrum Guide begins the description of the role of the Product Owner as follows: The Product Owner is responsible for maximizing the value of the product and the work of the Development Team. How does a Product Owner do this? Which instruments does Scrum offer to achieve this? How can a P...

Learning, responsibility and power - the three psychological models very useful in a Scrum Master's daily work.

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.

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.

The Scrum Guide requires that the Product Owner ensure that "key stakeholders" attend the Scrum Sprint Review, but who are these "key stakeholders"? According to the Scrum Glossary, a stakeholder is "a person external to the Scrum Team with a specific interest in and knowledge of a product that...

The Scrum Master role can easily be misunderstood as it is harder to grasp by reading the theory; hence people often compare the Scrum Master role to Project Manager or Technical Leader. Scrum Master's primary job is to place himself in service consciously, with self-awareness, and for the benefit o...

I was recently contacted by a senior executive of a mid-sized company that is evolving their product development to Scrum. He explained a situation he had been in and wanted my opinion. He accepted me to share his story here (with some abstractions, and calling him Jim) in an open-ended way, invitin...

Scrum brings agility to and creates Agile organizations through the implementation of empirical process control, the process of frequent inspection and adaptation. The empiricism of Scrum serves discovering and taking advantage of opportunities and options, at all levels; people, technology, market....

Making a purchase can feel great when you’ve developed a rapport with the salesperson. Regardless of the product; from a tasty treat at the farmer’s market to a major purchase like a new car; a sale is much more likely when the vendor not only cares deeply about their product but also takes time to ...

A program team of over 40 people decided to move to Agile from their traditional development practices. The program was old and had been in existence for over 6 years. In these 6 years they had released multiple versions of their software product to their customers. In the rush to satisfy the custom...

EMBARRASSING DISCOVERY True Story from when I was Agile Coach for a Multi-Billion Dollar, Fortune 15 Giant… It was a large Agile program and we had new team members joining the program in waves. Not everyone was familiar with Agile and we did not have money for in-person training. So we had ...

Dear Scrum Master! Being a Professional Scrum Trainer, agile coach & consultant for a while I had a chance to work with around a thousand Scrum Masters across different organizations. I see recurring patterns of misunderstanding and misapplication of Scrum usually visible in how Scrum Masters...

“Eventbrite Order Notification” – This is probably one of the best mails I receive as a ScrumTrainer It usually means I have another student with whom I can share my passion for Scrum. Sometimes it doesn’t quite work that way. Last year, I got this notification for a student who wanted to attend...

[Author’s note: I will be a Scrum Day Dallas on 27 March 2015; a great opportunity to meet me and other master Scrum Masters. Find me there and let’s talk about your Scrum Master journey. Exciting travels –Mark Noneman] So you’re a Scrum Master now. Maybe you’ve volunteered to fulfill the role or...

Watch a video version of this blog or scroll down to read a text version… I used to be passionate about Agile Coaching and Scrum. I have spent many years and a lot of money to get here. So it is strange that I am now writing about how all the investment made me a gambling addict. Writing t...

Setting up an enterprise-scale agile department with 200 developers working towards the same vision will ensure you are invited to speak at all of the most prestigious conferences, but is there a simpler solution? Just get Sam to do it The simplest way to build software is to find one talented...

Recently I just got an email from a QA manager who wishes to send his team members to Scrum.org Professional Scrum Master course: I’m so interested in Professional Scrum Master course. I’m working as a QA Manager on Scrum projects. Therefore, I intend to join the Prof...

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...

My name is Peter Götz. I am an experienced software engineer. I started in 2001 and have worked in several projects and with several teams since then. Besides actually developing software I have also prepared and conducted several technical trainings (Java, JBoss, OOAD) for developers. For more than...

Traditionally an individual is declared a ‘manager’ when having hierarchical control over other individuals. There are many sorts of power that come with it. A traditional manager assigns work, follows up on the execution of the work, is responsible for the results, judges and assesses the people...

Find out with a short test? A single instance of Scrum has one Scrum Team that works from one Product Backlog. The team sprints against the selected Product Backlog items and creates an increment of potentially shippable, or usable, functionality by the end of the Sprint If you want to test yo...

When I first started doing Scrum I was focused on project delivery. As a software professional I wanted to find better ways of delivering customer value and Scrum made total sense to me. But as I applied Scrum, I started to realise that Scrum isn't actually about delivery; it is about change. Now...

I am sitting in in a café in Singapore enjoying a well-deserved drink and dinner after teaching day 1 of the Scrum.org Professional Scrum Product Owner course. We have students from Indonesia, Singapore and Cambodia on the course. We have spent much of the first day chasing the idea of value...

Software is created by people; for better or for worse. That is very different from looking at software development as a robotizeable activity. The agile worldview builds on software development being a creative activity (not: industrial) undertaken by and for people (not: replaceable pieces of mach...

I work with a lot of companies to help them to improve their development processes and to either adopt Scrum or improve how they’re currently doing Scrum. Lately, I’ve noticed that a fair number of companies run into problems with a certain kind of project: The Rewrite Project. On this kind of p...

Recently I was involved in a discussion with Scrum.org trainers regarding the question “What is a failed Sprint?" I think we came to the same opinion and the same answer. And, in your opinion, what a failed Sprint is: If the team doesn’t complete all the forecasted Product Backlog ...

You need quality enablement to achieve predictable delivery for your organisation which takes effort to achieve. I do a lot of ALM Assessments for companies and almost every customer that I speak to has unpredictable quality in the software delivery that they receive from their teams. This is not...

As a Agile coach, I refer to a few tools to help me think about where my Scrum teams should go next on their path to Agility. One of these tools is the Agile subway map, a list of Agile practices grouped in different categories. It helps me think how a specific practice could help a team solve its a...

A few weeks ago I headed out to the Scrum.org offices in Boston to participate in training to hone my skills as an Evidence-based Management Consultant. I was talking to my father about it when I got back and was surprised that he recognised many of the practices and tools. In the 1990's my fat...