Why Tactical Adoption Rarely Leads to True Transformation and What to Do Instead

This blog discusses managing a product portfolio within the Agile Product Operating Model(APOM). It emphasizes shifting from funding work to funding products/teams, empowering them with ownership and decision-making. It also covers minimizing cross-product initiatives to maintain focus, enabling pro...

This is a quick-start guide that provides all the use cases for the Product Owner, Scrum Master, and Developers who can benefit from the power of AI and recommends AI tools.

A Product Owner is an important accountability when it comes to creating Valuable products. However, a Scrum Team may not always have a Valuable Product Owner. What I mean is, if the person performing the accountability of Product Owner is not well versed or executes their responsibilities poorly th...

The only reason for a Product Owner to exist is to maximize the value of the Product. One of the ways a Product Owner can accomplish this is by ensuring that most valuable items remain at the top of the Product Backlog and the Product Goal underscores their importance. So, how does the Product Owner...

This article explores the conditions under which pure Scrum thrives, the organizational DNA required to support it, and practical scenarios where it works best—along with a candid look at where it struggles.

In the final part of this series, PSTs Robert Pieper and Greg Crown share strategies for working with Scrum teams across time zones. covering co-located team benefits, reducing communication barriers, and practical solutions like rotating off-hours, fostering cultural understanding, and arranging me...

In Part 2 of this 3-part series, PSTs Robert Pieper and Gregory Crown focus on the importance of building trust and streamlining tools for globally distributed teams. Learn how to limit tool sprawl, foster a culture of autonomy, and set effective overlap times to support your team’s productivity.

Working across multiple time zones poses unique challenges for Scrum Teams. In this Part 1 of a 3-part series, learn strategies from PSTs Gregory Crown and Robert Pieper to ensure your global team stays connected and productive.

The Agile Product Operating Model (APOM) is a natural progression for your agile transformation. It provides an ‘in-between’ stage between the whole enterprise change and delivery team change with the idea of products. By aligning to products, you can incrementally change the organization, allowing ...

This article delves into the darker aspects of Founder Mode, popularized by Paul Graham and others, offering a critical perspective for agile practitioners, product leaders, startup founders, and managers.

I recently joined a conversation with Agile Coaches from various organizations. What started with lightweight chitchat ended with a depressing conclusion: many felt close to burning out. Learn more about the reasons, and how Agile Coaching Ethics and Liberating Structures can help.

Every Scrum Team wishes they had time each Sprint to accomplish more. By leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI), teams can get that time back and become more effective. AI is revolutionizing various industries, and its potential to enhance how people and teams work is becoming increasingly evident....

The implementation of an agile lean change approach is easy to talk about, but harder to execute. By focusing on incremental change, frequent feedback, and tailoring the approach to specific needs, Agile enables businesses to respond effectively to evolving markets and deliver greater value.

A former student of mine asked me a question: I've just started working with a product development team whose members live in India Standard Time, Central European Time, and East Standard Time I'd like to help to configure our Sprints. Do you have advice about stand-ups? How often? Should we meet la...

The impact of a powerless Product Owner and the strength of a Product Owner with a full mandate.

Ralph Jocham's Agile Journey as a PST

In this video, Martin Hinshelwood, a seasoned Agile and Kanban expert, takes us on a detailed journey through the intricacies of leveraging Azure DevOps to enhance our Kanban practices. 🚀 From setting up your first board to advanced customisations that breathe life into your workflow, this video is ...

This article covers the three Scrum accountabilities (formerly roles) and addresses interferences of stakeholders and IT/line management with this crucial Scrum event.

The 2024 Scrum Master Salary Report shows salaries increase with certifications, experience, and roles, collected from 1,114 participants through an online survey.

Applying Conway, Brooks, Hackman, Goodhart, Larman, and Parkinson in Practice

This article explores the different classes of service in Kanban and the Kanban Guide view on whether you should use different classes of service.

An important thing to understand when getting started with EBM is that there is such a thing as going too fast and too soon. EBM can create a lighting bolt of transparency, which in turn, could cause irrational responses. We humans can be emotionally triggered when we find a situation is much differ...

A Product Owner is the member of the Scrum Team that is accountable for “maximizing the value of the product resulting from the work of the Scrum Team.”The Scrum Team as a whole is accountable for creating a valuable product, specifically “for creating a valuable, useful Increment every Sprint.” It’...

A dependency refers to a situation where one task, Product Backlog item, user story, or feature relies on another for completion or integration. In this article, we will discuss the impacts of high dependencies on value delivery.

Or is it a sacrilege to tweak the ‘immutable’ framework to accommodate our teams’ and organizations’ needs?

How to develop trust through self-management, psychological safety and Transactional Analysis as tools for improving relationships and communication within the Scrum ecosystem.

In this article, we'll explore some popular tools and apps, including Jira, Team Foundation Server, Rally, and others, that Scrum Masters can leverage to help teams visualize their work, increase Transparency and increase team efficiency.

Want to elevate your Retrospectives from Good to 🦄 Great? Check out the following ten benefits of this one Retrospective facilitation practice.

A workshop that enables teams and management to clearly express essential needs to use Scrum more effectively

Agile was born in software development and has been widely adopted in IT and Product organizations to the point that there's little argument that product/technology organizations should operate using agility principles. More recently, other functions, such as Marketing, have adopted these agility pr...

Take your Daily Scrum from a reporting session to true teamwork and consider why answering the obsolete 3 Daily Scrum questions negatively impacts that ambition.

The Scrum Master Salary Report 2023 is based on the answers of 1,143 participants globally. Find out how you compare!

No matter what the future brings, building a capable and resilient organisation is the need of the hour. At tryScrum, our mission is to help organisations become capable and resilient. In this blog, I will share my experience of some of the tenets that helped organisations I worked with. This model ...

The brand-new Product Owner & Product Manager Salary Report 2022 is available: How do you compare to 500-plus peers?

In this article, I’ll explore the need for and the attributes of an agile business operating system related to Private Equity (PE) portfolio companies. It hopefully helps leaders of such companies and PE professionals focused on the operations side expand their perspective on what “Agile” and "Agili...

Scrum and Digital are not the same things, but often Digital Transformations comprise some sort of agile change. In this blog, Dave West discusses a recent Dare To Lead Podcast where the overlap between Scrum and Digital was apparent. He discusses the six elements of a digital strategy and their rel...

Within the Scrum community, Open Space Technology is a common practice. This post can be useful to make the most out of it! 

What is your take on the Retrospective: A routine exercise at the end of a Sprint, supported by standard operating procedures? Or a critical part of a Scrum team’s journey of continuous improvement?

In this blog post, we describe the purpose of Generative Relationships STAR, how it works, and when you could use it with your Scrum Team.

What science tells us about how work agreements create high-performing teams. And five practical areas to focus on.

What if not all of your Scrum team’s members feel enthusiastic about the Sprint Retrospective? How can you help them become dedicated supporters?

During the first year of the pandemic, Scrum adoption more than doubled for software development teams. According to the 15th Annual State of Agile Report, the use of agile approaches for software development grew from 37% in 2020 to 86% in 2021. This means that agile adoption for software develop...

For many years the agile movement advocated that all teams had to be co-located for success. Scrum also encouraged that approach. But the pandemic taught us that remote does not always mean bad. However, we are seeing more and more executives force an in-person return to the office as the pandemic r...

Learn more about what to look out for if you want to support your teammates who build the Increment.

Are we still on track to accomplish the Product Goal? Moreover, how did the previous Sprint contribute to our Scrum team’s mission? Given the Sprint Review’s importance, it is worthwhile to tackle the most common Sprint Review anti-patterns.

TL; DR: Sprint Retrospective Anti-Patterns What event could better embody Scrum’s principle of empiricism than the Sprint Retrospective? I assume all peers agree that even the simplest form of a Retrospective—if only held regularly—is far more helpful than having a fancy one once in a while, not ...

The reasons Scrum Masters violate the spirit of the Scrum Guide are multi-faceted. Typical Scrum Master anti-patterns run from ill-suited personal traits to complacency to pursuing individual agendas to frustration with the team itself.

The Friedrich Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU) is a University in Bavaria, Germany established in 1742. The university has 70 departments distributed over 5 faculties. 40,000 Students are enrolled in 267 degree programs. FAU is one of the top-10 largest universities in Germany. FAU inco...

An investigation of three schools of thought on team development and high-performing teams