About the Daily Scrum Event Purpose: Developers inspect progress toward the Sprint Goal. Output of the Daily Scrum is a plan for the next working day Facilitator Focus: Enable an atmosphere where the team focuses on delivering quality, commitment (Sprint Goal) and addressing impedimen...

Accountability is the act of being answerable or accountable for something. It is a key component of any successful organisation. In this blog post, we will cover the benefits of organisational accountability and how it can help you improve value delivery.

A very interesting (and sad) piece of news made headlines in Spain recently that provides some lessons about agile product development and incremental delivery. 

Sprint is the heartbeat of Scrum. But, how do you select the right Sprint Length?

We have a Product Owner, a Product Goal, and a Product Backlog in Scrum. Why don’t we have a Product but an Increment? Read this blog to understand the reasoning behind the naming.

How does the Sprint Backlog supports Transparency? Transparency being one of the core underlying concepts of the Scrum framework. How can you use the Sprint Backlog to raise transparency?

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!

How does the Sprint itself supports Transparency? Transparency being one of the core underlying concepts of the Scrum framework. What happens during your Sprint that could raise transparency?

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...

Card, Conversation and Confirmation. Understand what professional confirmation looks like.

Nützliche ChatGPT-Prompts für Scrum Master, Product Owner und Entwickler

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

Kann ein großes Sprachmodell, das nicht auf „Agile“ spezialisiert ist, bereit heute ein Sondierungsgespräch für eine Scrum-Master-Stelle bestehen? Werden Scrum Master zumindest anteilig künftig durch einen Chatbot ersetzt?

Several years ago, I was the Scrum Master for a team working on a technology product.  Two of the team’s Developers told me they would like to try pair programming.  

A scenario showing how the scrum framework and metrics can help a team self manage for improvement.

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.

What happens when a Scrum Team becomes overwhelmed with requests that stakeholders make directly to the Developers instead of the Product Owner?  

Professional Scrum Trainer Sander Dur from Xebia joins host Dave West for a discussion about leadership where they delve into topics including the importance of building trust, transparency and psychological safety in Scrum Teams and organizations. (27:35 Minutes)

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 your Daily Scrum?

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.

There are many ways to facilitate Daily Scrum. In this Introduction to Facilitating a Daily Scrum, you will learn three different techniques along with the benefits and challenges of each. Your team can experiment with these as they see necessary and choose whichever method helps them best focus on ...

What are the characteristics of a Scrum-friendly environment that supports nurturing high-performing Scrum Teams? Such an environment is your north star that your organization can always get aligned against. In this post, you will get a clear and solid image of a Scrum-friendly Environment.

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.

In this episode of the Scrum.org Community Podcast, Kurt Bittner guest hosts and has Professional Scrum Trainers Peter Goetz and Thomas Schissler on to talk about the relationship between software architecture and Agile Teams. They discuss common misconceptions Agile teams have about software archit...

Somewhere along the line, people and organizations seem to have lost a certain sense of pragmatism. Job requirements are more focused on theoretical knowledge, rather than certain (work)life skills. In other words, we need to focus more on solving challenges, and less on flashing around theoretical ...

During refinement, the team discusses what we will deliver with each Product Backlog item. Although it's easy to drift into sorting out how we will deliver each PBI during these discussions, planning at this stage is a mistake. 

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)

In this vlog, PST Joshua Partogi shares a simple guideline that he used to help teams improve their Sprint and to get them out of mini-waterfall.

No matter how much a Scrum Team plans, there are times when someone asks them to undertake unplanned work mid-Sprint. In this article, we will discuss how to handle unplanned work in Scrum.

Is your organization having trouble instilling self-management? Then this is the article for you!

Three simple Retrospective formats based on the Liberating Structures “Conversation Cafe”, “Troika Consulting”, and “Discovery & Action Dialogue”.

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

I gotta say, refining work items is usually, by far, the Scrum Team’s least popular activity.  No one gets up in the morning saying, “I can’t wait to refine the Product Backlog!” In this article, we will discuss five reasons why refining your Product Backlog is worth the time.

There are eight hours available for Sprint Planning. In those eight hours, a lot can be done. Too often this event is rushed, limiting the ability to maximize the possible achievements. In this article, I share nine things to do to make the most of your Sprint Planning.

There are many great reasons to use Scrum. Focus on quality, frequent delivery of value, and limitation of risk, to name a few. Saving money is not one of them...

Many organizations are trying to improve the alignment between strategy and execution with the OKRs framework (Objectives and Key Results). There’s good intent there, but more often than not, looking under the hood, you notice:  OKRs that look more like tasks than strategic objectives – especiall...

The Scrum Events are in place to support empiricism and the delivery of value. You need to run them at least once per Sprint. But could we do them multiple times in the same Sprint? Find out in this article!

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

Understanding the “why” behind the Scrum framework can help Scrum teams improve their ability to deliver value to the organization.  We previously discussed the purpose behind each Scrum event and the purpose behind each Scrum accountability.  In this article, we’ll take a deep dive into the purpose...

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.

In this episode of Ask a Professional Scrum Trainer moderated by Patricia Kong, PSTs Simon Flossmann and David Spinks answer your burning questions about Scrum and the challenges you or your teams may be facing when using Scrum, particularly within the Scrum events and other scenarios when it may be...

​​​​​​​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.