In this video, Mark addresses the purpose of Sprint Goals and then explores the message that they are sending when it's hard to define a single Sprint Goal. This can help you ask better questions and steer your team toward higher value.

Scrum with Kanban includes a definition of workflow, four practices, and four measures. The first practice is visualization of the workflow. The visualization of that workflow is essentially the Kanban board. 

Spark small and incremental change in your Scrum Team, with our community-driven actionable quick tips.

The 2020 Scrum Guide includes five values that are important to every successful implementation of Scrum.  These values are courage, commitment, focus, openness and respect. These values don’t get much attention, but the longer I practice Scrum and coach teams, the more important I find them.  This ...

Every Scrum Team, at some point, will struggle with how to facilitate the Daily Scrum. By using a Kanban Board and Flow Metrics, Scrum Teams can better collaborate on their work, visualize progress towards the Sprint Goal, and form the best plan possible for the day.

Does whiskey really help with Sprint Goals? Well, maybe not, but it sure would have helped my nerves creating this simple video about them. The basic idea is that Sprint Goals come first, and they will help the team focus.

Scrum has proven time and again to be the most popular framework for software development. Given that software is eating the world, a seasoned Scrum Master is nowadays in high demand. And that demand causes the market entry of new professionals from other project management branches, probably believ...

Many well-meaning Scrum practitioners have misconceptions about Scrum, which sometimes leads to creating “rules” that do not exist in the framework. In today's article, we will discuss the five of the most common misconceptions about the Sprint.

So there is Scrum and there is 'an implementation of Scrum'. Why is it important to understand the difference? I hope that after reading this blog, you will realise that many Scrum conversations are actually not about Scrum, but "an implementation of Scrum" and you didn't even realise it.

Es ist der Job der Scrum Master:in das Scrum Rahmenwerk zum Leben zu bringen. Und dennoch ist das keine Garantie, daß das Produkt erfolgreich wird. Es ist die Aufgabe der Product Owner:in den Wert des Produkts zu maximieren. Es werden 5 wichtige Elemente vorgestellt um Scrum gewinnbringend einzuset...

Here's my twist on an old classic. If I've learnt anything by writing this, it's that I should stick to training Scrum and not writing poetry! 'Twas the night before Sprint Review, when all through the building Not a dev was there stirring, definitely not out chilling; The increment ha...

Familiarize yourself with the principles of Liberating Structures and learn how they can strengthen your Scrum Team.

Read on and learn more on how to best sabotage a Scrum Master from the exercise results of more than ten PSM I and PSM II classes. (I slightly edited the suggestions for better readability.)

Last week, we talked about common misconceptions related to the Daily Scrum.  This week we’ll focus more broadly on misconceptions impacting everything from the Product Backlog to the composition of the Scrum Team itself.  

Why it matters to have a shared understanding of the product your Scrum team is building.

Kanban et Scrum sont deux outils qui se complètent très bien. L’un apporte des informations pour analyser la performance du flux de création de valeur, l’autre apporte des artéfacts et des boucles de rétroaction pour rendre transparent la performance de vos processus.

Aligning Scrum Team Topology to Strategy with OKRs and Product Goals Yeah, I know. Could I squeeze more buzzwords into the title? I guess I could include Digital Transformation, Cloud, AI, and Machine Learning for effect. But seriously, I wanted to share some insights around how to align your Scr...

TL; DR: Ignoring the Capacity Check during Sprint Planning There are plenty of failure possibilities with Scrum. Since Scrum is an intentionally incomplete framework with a reasonable yet short “manual,” this effect should not surprise anyone. For example, the Developers are ignoring a capacity c...

It might surprise you that even those with years of Scrum practice sometimes make statements about the framework that are, well, inaccurate. The Scrum Guide outlines how teams can learn to work together to deliver complex work. It’s not a how-to list of instructions, and perhaps that’s what leads to...

​​​​​​​According to the 15th annual State of Agile Report, there has been a tremendous increase in the adoption of agile frameworks this year.  Within software teams, agile adoption grew from 37% in 2020 to 86% in 2021.  This rapid growth undoubtedly means many individuals working within agile frame...

In this episode of Ask a Professional Scrum Trainer, PSTs John Riley and Ben Thorp answer questions related to regulating workflow effectively and developing a test-first mindset. They provide insight on practices and techniques useful to kickstarting continuously delivering software and non-softwar...

As long as the Scrum team has the drive to learn and to run experiments to figure out what works for them, Zombie Scrum (or fake Agile) won’t find futile ground and can’t take root!

Troverete qui di seguito una serie di articoli, le basi di Scrum, che approfondiscono i concetti che potete ritrovare nello Scrum Guide 2020 (versione italiana).

Leaders use the Scrum Artifacts as a window into the work of the Scrum Team. This transparency enables inspection and adaptation at the appropriate level while enabling the team to self-manage. 

La agilidad no ha parado de extenderse en los última década e incluso las organizaciones que miraban con recelo todo este movimiento están dando sus primeros pasos y viendo cómo pueden sumarse aumentando así su competitividad. ¿Cómo está conviviendo en estas compañías mentalidades tan diferentes? ¿C...

It's time to look at the Scrum Events In previous posts in the Scrum Guide for Leaders series we explored what Scrum means for Leaders, using the Scrum Values to create a Scrum-friendly culture, and how to effectively support the Scrum roles/accountabilities. Next, we turn to the S...

The 2020 version of the Scrum Guide dropped the classic “three questions” of the Daily Scrum. Yet many teams stick with the practice, even when it doesn’t produce the collaboration that is the hallmark of a valuable Daily Scrum. When a Scrum Team I worked with said that their Daily Scrum was lacklus...

The more ambiguous the requirement, the more difficult it is to calculate how long something will take. But teams still need to estimate their work to forecast releases. Relative sizing provides a realistic method for estimating. Ultimately, your team will find their own value scale and their own la...

TL; DR: My Top Ten Worst Scrum Anti-Patterns I recently was invited to a Scrum.org Webinar, and I picked a topic close to my heart: the worst Scrum anti-patterns.

A Scrum Event is a meeting. So why don't we just call it that? Why create a new word? Given the poor reputation that meetings have, maybe it's not a surprise. Rather than replicate the name and pain of meetings, the Scrum Events are designed to replace them and be all that you need. The power of the...

Scrum Teams entwickeln eben nicht nur Produkte und Services, sondern betreiben diese auch. Ohne den Betrieb einer Anwendung ist es unmöglich, Feedback zu erhalten. Allerdings ist Feedback essenzielle für erfolgreiche Scrum Teams, da es die Triebfeder ist, um Nutzer- und Kundenwünsche zu erfüllen. Be...

Let me share some of the controversial findings and discussions with you. As always, there are no simple answers in complex environments.

The Applying Professional Scrum class is frequently overlooked when it comes to public classes.  People tend to go for the Professional Scrum Master class or the Professional Scrum Product Owner class instead.  And those are really great classes.  That is… they’re great for those who already have an...

Scrum of Scrums describes one of the first approaches to scale Scrum and is often confused with Nexus Daily Scrum.  

TL; DR: The Obsession with Commitment Matching Velocity Despite decades-long efforts of the whole agile community—books, blogs, conferences, webinars, videos, meetups; you name it—we are still confronted in many supposedly agile organizations with output-metric driven reporting systems. At the he...

All elements of the Scrum framework play a role in enabling empirical process control. Sprint Goal is a commitment that reinforces empiricism, however, it remains a part of Scrum which often is being neglected or causes challenges to many Scrum Teams.

This latest update to the interview guide addresses Product Owner anti-patterns from Product Backlog management and refinement to the Sprint Review.

What drives you to achieve? Money? Promotion? Skill mastery? Whatever it is that motivates you, that’s okay — be thankful that you are motivated to move forwards. Without motivation in any form, you can personally and professionally stagnate to a point where you become a detractor in a team environm...

The past 18 months have been a whirlwind. Coronavirus, elections, inequality and conflict – a quagmire of micro and macro complexities that impact the feelings and behaviours of Scrum Teams. In my opinion, it would be fair to say that teams who consistently attempt to mitigate environmental and soci...

If I were to summarize the purpose of a Sprint, I would say that it’s to deliver a Done, usable increment that meets the Sprint Goal.

In this episode of Ask a Professional Scrum Trainer, John Coleman answers the audience's burning questions about Scrum and the challenges their teams are facing. He answers questions about Product Goals, Sprint Goals, Refinement, Team Dynamics, Performance metrics, Scrum with Kanban and more!

Being a Product Owner is tough. Having the accountability for maximising value can sometimes feel like a huge weight is on your shoulders and sometimes - it's hard to know where to begin. As a Scrum Master, you’re accountable for helping to establish empirical product planning – but how could you do...

If you are looking to fill a position for a Scrum Master (or agile coach) in your organization, you may find the following 54 interview questions useful to identify the right candidate.

This part I of a three-part series will focus on goals. We’ll examine how the goals set out in the EBM guide correspond to the Scrum Guide and some tools and formats for setting workable goals. Part II will focus on experimentation, and Part III will focus on measurement.

It is a common question that do we still need a Scrum Master for a mature Scrum Team. I would like to use the metaphor of a Soccer Referee to explain.

Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) act as goal-setting framework for defining and tracking objectives and their outcomes. OKRs are often misunderstood and are a powerful practice to create razor sharp organisational focus. Isn’t Scrum about goals and focus as well? There is the Vision, the Product Go...

According to the 15th annual State of Agile report, there has been a tremendous increase in the adoption of agile frameworks over the last year. Within software teams, agile adoption grew from 37% in 2020 to 86% in 2021.

TL; DR: Should Managers Attend Retrospectives? There are plenty of failure possibilities with Scrum. Given that Scrum is a framework with a reasonable yet short “manual,” this effect should not surprise anyone. A classic discussion is whether it is appropriate that (line) managers attend the Retr...

The Sprint Review is one of the most valuable events for the Product Owner, because it is an opportunity for the Scrum Team as well as stakeholders/customers to inspect what was delivered, discuss what progress has been made towards the Product Goal, and adapt accordingly. 

On June the 8th Scrum.org hosted a webinar on the subject of using Scrum in Biotech research. The blog addresses unanswered questions from the session