Flow of work and, most importantly, value is paramount. There are times when you keep looking at the process and don’t understand what is going on, what is wrong, and why stuff is not getting to done. Read to learn how flow can help while limiting work in progress.

The House of Scrum metaphor and sketch seemed to have piqued some interest last year. In this video I go over the 3-5-3 framework, giving a high level overview of Scrum..

Organizations are always on the lookout to cut costs and scale back when they have unfavorable reporting periods. Hiring freezes, and cutbacks in training and traveling tend to be popular and convenient.

Many large legacy organizations are moving toward agile delivery methods in hopes of releasing faster to market. Based on my experiences, they look at it solely from a production view of getting software released faster and more often. This view has them believing this will result in getting more fe...

As many Professional Scrum Trainers have experienced, there is always a good discussion around the Sprint Goal. A similar discussion recently led me to address this not so well understood aspect.

One of the most important things we can do to help individuals and teams improve is coach them to embrace the agile mindset. The Manifesto for Agile Software Development provides values and principles to help guide teams in navigating the complexities of product delivery.

In the first part of Getting to 85 – Agile Metrics with ActionableAgile we looked at the Cycle Time Scatterplot created by ActionableAgile software. The second part was all about the CFD. Now it's time to look at the Aging Work in Progress chart.

Scrum and Kanban are a great combination. With this insight more and more Scrum Teams become aware of terms and phrases used in Kanban. Like 'WIP'.

As a Professional Scrum Trainer for Scrum.org I get to think about the Definition of "Done" and its meaning a lot.

The Scrum Team consists of accountabilities devides over three roles. The only three roles needed in Scrum. But all needed! And all equally important to be successful. If we would practice Scrum within our companies the way described in this way we can all be successful in delivering incremental val...

This blog post is about what I learned working with my team as a Scrum Master and improved between one year using Professional Scrum with Kanban.

Scrum is easy to understand, yet difficult to master. The Scrum Guide says so and it's true. If you have worked with Scrum in your organization you probably recognize it also. It's not difficult to start with Scrum.

In this edition of Ask a Professional Scrum Trainer, PST Wilbert Seele answered some tough Scrum questions from the audience.

As people become more empowered and capable of taking ownership of their process and executing on their decisions, the next area to focus is raising the bar. This is about a drive for continuous improvement. It will be demonstrated with valuable outcomes, higher quality, and growth in the capabili...

In my career, I have had the great privilege to witness different companies undergo many different phases of agile transformations. I’ve met many amazing Scrum Masters along the way that have evolved to take on major responsibilities in their organizations.

Why would Product Owners prevent value delivery, you ask? They shouldn’t, and don’t want to, but yet I see them do it every day. And usually, it’s without them even knowing they’re doing it. Here’s four observations of how Product Owners prevent value delivery, and suggestions to improve.

Scrum stands on the three legs of transparency, inspection, and adaptation. Of these, transparency can arguably be said to come first. Unless a situation is made clear it cannot be inspected, and any consequent adaptation arising therefrom is likely to prove futile.

A few days back I did a Scrum Tapas Video explaining a few of the rules within Scrum. Besides these rules, there are also certain guidelines which help Scrum Teams to make the best possible use of Scrum framework to create maximum Business Impact.

Hello great people of the world. It’s been a while since I wrote a blog post here. This time I want to share my experience working with Development Teams and a Product Owner at iPrice group who upgraded the way they ran their Sprint Planning.

Scrum is based on self-managed teams. Self-managed teams are able to evolve and adapt quicker in today’s highly complex working environments than traditional command-and-control management structures.

In this episode of Ask a Professional Scrum Trainer, PST Simon Bourk was live and answered the audience's questions about Scrum.

This article on Product Backlog refinement shows that Refinement is more than just a meeting where the whole Scrum Team is having a discussion. It requires and involves everyone with shared and special responsibilities.

The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe™) is one of the most popular approaches to applying agile at scale out there. SAFe's perspective is that "Nothing beats an Agile Team" and it doesn't try to reinvent the wheel or even innovate too much when it comes to the Team level

One of the key Kanban practices we discuss in the Kanban Guide for Scrum Teams is Limiting Work in Process. 

As a trainer, I often get asked for real world examples of Scrum implementations. You can't get any more real world than how Francis and Sally live their lives through Scrum, as they look for a way to help with ADHD.

I live many lives – in one of them, I am happily residing in the world of software development where I am also a Professional Scrum Trainer. In another, lesser known one – I am Band Manager (and former band member/musician myself) to a highly-regarded and awarded independent/underground musical act....

I have an important favor to ask to Scrum practitioners who are asking their team to commit themselves to their sprint backlog at sprint planning.

A couple of weeks ago we looked at Monte Carlo analysis. We saw how this technique can be used to forecast Sprint capacity, and to anticipate the likely completion schedule for a given backlog of work.

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.

Last week I co-taught scrum.org's new Professional Scrum Master II course with fellow Professional Scrum Trainer (PST) Todd Miller. This 2-day advanced Scrum Master class is designed to be the next step that a Scrum Master takes on their journey towards Professional Scrum. We had a wonderful ...

Over the years, I've seen countless Scrum adaptions, and I thought perhaps it would be interesting to sum up some of the common misinterpretations. I would love to hear about the misinterpretations that you have faced, so feel free to participate in the comment section.

This article aims at helping Scrum Masters to conduct the *MOST AWESOME* Sprint Review they ever witnessed. (This article could have been titled: 41 tips that will make your Sprint Review awesome!)

I recently attend the Professional Scrum Master II (PSM II) course and I'd like to share my thoughts with you about it. 

In Scrum classes we often ask the attendees to draw a picture of the Scrum framework, in order learn what their current understanding of the framework is. In many cases people are close to remembering the three roles, three artifacts and five events.

Agile coaching is a journey into irony. One of the chief discoveries you can make on this voyage is that the more experienced you become, the worse at the job others often think you get.

Hello, great people of the world. In my previous article, we have discussed how Scrum Masters need to master many things. In this article, we are going to discuss one of the stances that the Scrum Master need to master, that is the facilitation stance.

A goal, a forecast of functionality, plus the plan to deliver it. the Why, the What and the How. Sprint Goal + Sprint Backlog. How do these relate, plus a practical example.

Dear friends, I want to share an unusual view of Scrum with you. Perhaps you've never thought about such a point of view before. I hope it will be useful.

This is the third in a series of posts exploring Scrum Mastery. In our first post, we introduced the 4 dimensions of Scrum Mastery. In the second post, we explored how to grow a strong team identity. Now we will explore the team process dimension.

Bottom line - PSK improves the performance of Scrum teams, but WiP must be optimized for flow and work in progress should not relatively age compared with other in progress items

Bottom line - WiP limits must be applied to improve flow of the delivery of value. It's a key lever to improve the performance of Professional Scrum Teams, and it's required by the Kanban Guide for Scrum.

A common question I hear in Scrum training courses and in coaching sessions is, “how much Product Backlog refinement should we do and how much detail should be in the Product Backlog?”

In this blog article, we provide a quick overview of the most viewed blog articles over the past 18 months, giving readers insight into what they mind valuable to read.

One of the key Kanban practices is Limiting Work in Progress. If you want to be pedantic, actually what this practice aims for is Reducing and stabilizing Work in Progress. This improves flow, provides predictability, and is actually even more important for creating a pull-based Kanban system than v...

Improve and Accelerate Software Delivery for Large, Distributed, Complex Projects: The Nexus Framework is the simplest, most effective approach to applying Scrum at scale across multiple teams, sites, and time zones. Created by Scrum.org–the pioneering Scrum training and certification organization f...

As a servant-leader, the Scrum Master sometimes has to make very difficult decisions. This might even include removing someone from the Scrum Team. Obviously, this a difficult decision that should not be taken light-hearted. In this post, we'll share some perspectives on the kinds of situations wher...

I recently wrote an article for Entrepreneur on why Tech Companies need a code of ethics which got me thinking more broadly about the role of ethics, values and professionalism and why the agile community have been thinking about it more than most.

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...

We have gathered content on this page which we suggest you utilize when preparing for the PSM II. These are suggested resources, and you may find additional resources not mentioned on this page helpful, along with the application of your own experience using Scrum.

In the "Scrum from the trenches" blog post series I like to address topics that I encounter in practicing Scrum in the real world, with real Scrum Teams. Sharing where theory comes into practice, what challenges teams encounter along the way and ways to help Scrum practitioners use the power of empi...