One of the key aspects of Scrum is that each Sprint should result in a Done, usable increment of product. But what happens if your team struggles to achieve this? Here are ten practical ideas that your team may consider adopting to help improve your ability to get to Done.

In this recorded episode of a live Ask a PST session held on September 16, 2025, PST Ryan Brook answered a wide variety of challenging questions from Agile practitioners! (59:01 Minutes)

Waste hides in “the way we’ve always done it.” In Scrum, Lean thinking is about spotting waste—whether it’s defects, overproduction, bloated backlogs, or wasted talent—and making it smaller, less important, or gone. Here’s how to see it, reduce it, and free your team’s focus.

A modern, agile approach to transforming legacy software, which is often too risky for a complete rewrite is possible. The strategy combines three key elements: the Strangler Fig Pattern, an incremental method of building new services around an old system; AI-powered code generation tools like Blitz...

The first line of the Agile Manifesto—“We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it”—captures the humility and curiosity of its authors, yet it is often overlooked. Agile was born as a mindset of exploration, not a recipe of fixed practices. Today, many o...

Why Knowledgeable Agile Practitioners Are Perfectly Positioned for the AI Era and the Era of ‘Good Enough’ Agile Is Over.

The Scrum Guide urges teams to base decisions on what is observed. But what does that look like in real teams, with real complexity? Let’s unpack the word and its impact.

Effective Agile-transformation needs: deep and narrow change, top-down and bottom-up support, and strict volunteer contracts — driving 2x–5x gains in speed and adaptability.

Wir haben das alle schon erlebt: Sie bereiten sich auf die nächste Retrospektive vor und bitten ChatGPT um Hilfe: „Ich brauche ein paar Vorschläge für die Retrospektive“, tippen Sie. Was bekommen Sie zurück? Allgemeine Retrospektivenmuster, die Sie schon hundertmal gesehen haben.

What a shame: We are often ignoring the benefits of Meta Prompting, or having a conversation with the AI, before proceeding to the task.

If you’ve ever been a Developer on a Scrum Team, you’ve probably experienced this moment: you’ve completed all of the work you originally planned for the Sprint, and there are still a few days left. What now? It might seem like a good idea to just pull more work into the Sprint, but that sometimes c...

Your LLM tool doesn’t think. It’s a statistical AI parrot: sophisticated and trained on millions of conversations—but still a parrot. Teams that fail with AI either don’t understand this or act as if it doesn’t matter. Both mistakes are costly.

The Scrum Master role is at risk of fading away unless the profession changes. Too many organizations misunderstand the accountability, reducing it to administrative tasks instead of leadership. The Scrum Masters who will thrive are those who grow beyond facilitation, actively protect empiricism, in...

Why the Goldilocks Approach to Context Provision Works with Generative AI — An Experiment with GPT-5.

In this episode of the Scrum.org Community Podcast, Dave West is joined by Darrell Fernandes to tackle questions from a recent webinar on the Agile Product Operating Model and incentives (44:47 Minutes).

This blog explores the future of knowledge work with AI, arguing that teams will remain relevant due to technical debt and organizational resistance to change, even if AI tools lead to smaller teams. It also asserts that Scrum remains valuable for individuals, offering discipline, transparency, and ...

Let’s explore how a Scrum facilitator embodies each Scrum Value

This post challenges teams that claim to be Agile by spotlighting one brutally honest metric: Days Since Last Release. Release frequency is a clearer indicator of agility than velocity or story points. By tracking how long it has been since the last release, and striving to keep that number at zero,...

I tried the new ChatGPT Agent mode, a valuable new tool for those who cannot program?

In this post, I share my own personal experience transitioning from traditional product development to agility. We explore the #1 challenge to being a great Scrum Master and the three ways it most frequently shows up. We also look at better approaches.

PST Bart Versteegen recently answered some burning listener questions about the Scrum Master Accountability. Tune in for great insights!

With tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude, facilitators can shift from **manual mode** to **mastery mode**. You just need to know the right questions to ask of both your participants and your AI assistant.

Scrum exposes what’s not working—but doesn’t stop there. Its real power lies in what happens next: creating moments for deliberate, continuous improvement. This post explores what that really means, and how teams can turn visibility into action.

Not everyone is ready for Scrum. This blog explores common personality types that resist Scrum ways of working, such as The Pessimist, The Perfectionist, and The Order-Taker, and explains why they struggle. You’ll also learn practical ways Scrum Masters can coach these individuals, reduce friction, ...

In a recent conversation with an executive leader, she shared a very interesting insight: “Leadership is a lot like being a glorified Scrum Master.” It may sound surprising to you at first, but the more I think about it, the more it makes sense to me.

Scrum makes the impact of your practices visible—whether you like what you see or not. Learn what that means, and how to use it to improve your team's outcomes.

Discover how generative AI can supercharge Agile coaching in high-pressure environments.

Scrum wraps around existing practices—not to protect them, but to help you inspect and improve them. Learn how this works and what your team should wrap, replace, or retire.

Many Scrum Masters fall into the trap of quoting the Scrum Guide verbatim, mistaking recitation for servant leadership. Quoting the rules isn't the same as understanding them. This post explores why simply reading from the Guide can frustrate teammates and stakeholders, lack context, and hinder team...

Ever wonder why AI feels like more hassle than help? Discover the simple shift Product Owners can make to finally get real value—and better results—from tools like ChatGPT

Scrum isn’t about Jira, velocity, or checklists—it’s about how people relate, interact, and make decisions together. Learn why relationships and interactions are the heart of the framework.

In this "Value Delivered" episode of the Scrum.org Community Podcast, host Dave West and PST Jay Rahman, Founder of Fractal Systems discuss how agile principles helped a large investment bank turn a struggling multi-million dollar project into a success. (43:07 Minutes)

When a new Scrum Team first starts working together, they go through some common growing pains. Knowing what to expect for a new Scrum Team can help make things go a little smoother.

Scrum Teams often track velocity but struggle to turn data into lasting improvement. In this Scrum.org webinar, PST Stefan Wolpers explores how AI tools analyze complex team data—velocity trends, stakeholder signals, and even psychological safety indicators—to craft smarter, more targeted Retrospect...

The purpose of the Scrum Master is to improve the adoption of Scrum. So, it makes sense that the Scrum Master should ask the question What does a high-performing Scrum Team look like

Scrum Bingo is a fun way to reflect and sometimes laugh at our routines. But it also reminds us to be intentional with our words, honest with our blockers, and respectful of the team's time.

This week we had a great Q&A on Forecasting and Release Planning. During the "Ask a PST" session, we answered many questions. We got so many questions, that we could not answer all of them. This blog post tries to remedy that and answers most of these from my (Dominik Maximini) perspective.

Uncover hidden team dynamics, emotional burnout signals, and contradiction patterns that manual analysis misses—in real-time.

In this Ask a PST episode of the Scrum.org Community Podcast, guest host Lindsay Velecina is joined by Professional Scrum Trainer Dominik Maximini to answer listener questions about forecasting and release planning.

Scrum depends on the intelligence of the people using it. That means learning, understanding, and making reasoned decisions. Is your team thinking—or just doing?

Explains the difference between subjective goals and the objective Definition of Done in Scrum, highlighting how clear, measurable criteria ensure consistent product quality.

“Good Enough Agile” is ending as AI automates mere ceremonial tasks and Product Operating Models demand outcome-focused teams. Agile professionals must evolve from process facilitators to strategic product thinkers or risk obsolescence.

In this blog, Ryan Brook examines why many Product Owners fail to fulfil their accountability, acting as requirement managers rather than value maximisers. He explores the impact of missing product strategy, emphasising that true Product Ownership requires strategic clarity and a focus on outcomes i...

Most teams plan a Sprint with one question in mind: "What can we deliver this Sprint?" But here's a different take. What if, within every Sprint, we planned across all three horizons of innovation?

Sprint capacity planning is one of the most often used complementary practices by Scrum Teams. This article from PST Dr. Pawel Rola provides all the basic information and practical examples to help you plan your next Sprint capacity.

The biggest competitive edge your team can get is learning as fast as possible. Not the biggest feature, expendable budget, or exposure, but learning. The Learning Loop helps to shorten your learning time.

The Scrum Framework is simple, yet many misconceptions exist about applying Professional Scrum. We often notice cheat sheets and Scrum frameworks that do not match the Professional Scrum Standards. That is why we have decided to change our Scrum Framework poster and align it to Professional Scrum an...

This article challenges the conventional view of Scrum as merely a delivery framework and reframes it as a powerful engine for product innovation and evolution. While many teams use Scrum to deliver work more predictably, the real opportunity lies in using it to discover what truly adds value for cu...

In Scrum, “Done” means done. Not halfway done, not “almost there,” and certainly not “we’ll get to it next Sprint.” Yet, many teams find themselves with a growing burden of unfinished work. Over time, that burden starts to feel like a monkey on the team’s back—heavy, distracting, and hard to shake o...

Case Study on the Power of Flow Metrics: How a struggling team slashed their Cycle Time by 89% and rocketed their Release Frequency by 1.200%.