The fifth blog, in a blog series about the upcoming book: Creating Agile Organizations - A Systemic Approach, by Cesario Ramos & Ilia Pavlichenko.

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 ...

Three simple retrospective formats based on the Liberating Structures "Conversation Cafe", "Troika Consulting", and "Discovery & Action Dialogue"

Some time ago, whilst discussing this topic with my fellow Professional Scrum.org Trainer Todd Miller, he shared his experience with using White Elephant principles to enable a participative facilitation environment (thanks Todd!). It inspired me to use it and write this blog. 

Powerful Product Owner. It sounds like a threat, isn’t it?  Anyone overpowering affects the whole team’s activity and outcome. No wonder this affects retrospectives as well. 

Why many Scrum teams struggle with continuous improvement, and how you can do better

Once the team has selected a point system, they need to decide which types of items to classify as a 1, 2, and so on. In this article, we will provide an exercise that can help your team create a point system organically no matter what’s in the Product Backlog.

Keine andere Rolle in Scrum kann so sehr zu mittelmäßigen Ergebnissen beitragen wie der Product Owner — Garbage in, Garbage out. Die folgende Liste mit den häufigsten Product Owner Fehlverhalten könnte daher ein Ausgangspunkt sein, über die Tätigkeit als Product Owner nachzudenken; vielleicht gibt e...

TL; DR: Scrum Master Anti-Patterns No other role in Scrum can contribute to mediocre outcomes like the Product Owner—garbage in, garbage out. Therefore, the following list of some of the most common Product Owner anti-patterns might be a starting point to reflect on the role; maybe, there is room...

Three simple retrospective formats based on the Liberating Structures "Conversation Cafe", "Troika Consulting", and "Discovery & Action Dialogue"

Das Sprint Planning ist ein zentrales Scrum-Ereignis, welches entscheidet, wie sich das Leben Ihrer Kunden mit dem nächsten Inkrement verbessern wird. Erfahren Sie mehr darüber, wie Sie Ihren Kunden durch die Vermeidung von 20 gängigen Sprint Planning Anti-Patterns helfen können.

TL; DR: Scrum Master Anti-Patterns The Sprint Planning is a core event that defines how your customers’ lives will improve with the following Product Increment. Learn more on how to improve its effectiveness by avoiding 20 common Sprint Planning anti-patterns. 🇩🇪 Zur deutschsprachigen Versio...

Die Gründe, warum Scrum Master den Geist des Scrum Guides verletzen, sind vielschichtig. Scrum Master Fehlverhalten reichen von unpassenden persönlichen Eigenschaften über die Verfolgung persönlicher Agenden bis hin zur Frustration mit dem Scrum Team selbst.

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.

Three simple retrospective formats based on the Liberating Structures "Conversation Cafe", "Troika Consulting", and "Discovery & Action Dialogue"

Scrum ist ein taktisches Framework für die Entwicklung von Produkten, vorausgesetzt, Sie erkennen im Voraus, was es wert ist, entwickelt zu werden. Aber selbst nach einer erfolgreichen Produktentdeckungsphase, neudeutsch: Product Discovery, kann es Ihnen schwer fallen, das Richtige auf die Beine zu ...

When you aspire to a Scrum Master role, some form of certification on your resume is a must. Scrum.org offers the acclaimed PSM learning journey to support Scrum Masters to professionalise their skills. I am a Professional Scrum Trainer for scrum.org and I have trained hundreds of Scrum Masters over...

Scrum is a tactical framework to build products, provided you identify what is worth making in advance. But even after a successful product discovery phase, you may struggle to create the right thing in the right way if your Product Backlog is not up to the job—garbage in, garbage out.

This blog talks about Integrating UX with Scrum.

When I coach, consult and teach classes, I often get questions about creating an agile maturity tool or defining agile maturity metrics. Agile Maturity metrics are used by many businesses to better understand their present agile practices and monitor to improve them. I understand the need for this k...

How to support Scrum Teams to effectively bridge the gap between their current and desired state

Willkommen zum Sprint Anti-Patterns-Artikel aus unserer Serie über Scrum-Anti-Patterns. Ich adressiere in diesem Artikel sprintbezogene Fehlverhalten der drei Scrum-Rollen, der Stakeholder bzw. Interessenvertreter sowie des IT-Management.

​​​​​​​The concept of iterative, incremental Product delivery is included in the Scrum Guide.  But did you know that the Agile Manifesto refers to incremental, iterative delivery in at least 3 of the principles?   

TL; DR: 28+2 Sprint Anti-Patterns from Sprint Stuffing to Gold-Plating Welcome to the Sprint anti-patterns article from my series on Scrum anti-patterns, covering the three Scrum roles—pardon me: accountabilities—and addressing the contributions of stakeholders and the IT/line management. Moreove...

Teams that change the framework are not using Scrum and are missing out on some of its benefits.  The Scrum framework consists of 5 events, 3 accountabilities, 3 artifacts and five values.  Today, we will talk about the order of the events in Scrum. 

TL; DR: 24+2 Daily Scrum Anti-Patterns In my experience, the Daily Scrum is the Scrum event with the highest anti-pattern density among all events. Learn more about Daily Scrum anti-patterns that threaten your Scrum team’s success, from becoming a reporting session to assignments to answering the...

A detailed description of how the Scrum Master role embodies 6 stances, and why I don’t consider “servant leader” and “manager” valid stances anymore

Professional Teaching is a complex skill that requires practitioners to probe, sense and respond to a changing learning environment. As Scrum Masters, we are naturally at home within complexity, and therefore the ability to apply empiricism to learning should be simple.

Scrum is simple, but that simplicity means that each of its elements is essential.  The values, accountabilities, artifacts and events are all part of the framework for a reason.  Teams that mess with the framework are messing with Scrum.  Teams that make changes to the elements limit Scrum's effect...

Welcome to Scrum Sutra — a series where I shall share a 2-min overview of each element of Scrum and how it connects with the other elements in the bead to form Scrum Sutra. Today, I shall talk about Sprint Backlog.

In this 18 part series of short Scrum Tapas videos, Professional Scrum Trainer Ryan Brook walks viewers through the Scrum Framework piece-by-piece, explaining each area and providing insights into how Scrum is used.  

TL; DR: Scrum Master Success — My Top-Nine Indicators How would you know that your Scrum Master is competent? What are indicators for Scrum Master success? Is the regular use of the Confluence retrospective template one of the desired signals? Or is the quest to understand contributing factors fu...

Three simple retrospective formats based on the Liberating Structures "Conversation Cafe", "Troika Consulting", and "Discovery & Action Dialogue"

With the rapid increase in the adoption of Scrum and other Agile frameworks over the past several years, I’m not surprised that a few misconceptions and myths about Scrum have surfaced.  While many more organizations embrace Scrum, many individual practitioners have not undertaken formal training.  ...

A learning model is a must to build a learning organization/team. Identifying and creating learning loops and cycles within the learning model is extremely important. In this article, I would like to share a learning model that I applied to the teams, helping them learn and develop.

A well-refined Product Backlog is essential for high-performing Scrum Teams.  Without it, teams will likely struggle to deliver a Done increment each Sprint.  But like all things in Scrum, we must have a balance.  So, how far out should the Product Backlog go?  

A collection of powerful questions & opportunities to help your team reflect, learn, and improve, continuously.

The Agile Manifesto (penned in 2001) includes four values and 12 principles that describe a new approach to complex work. Agile is an umbrella term comprising a variety of frameworks and approaches to value delivery, including Scrum.  Previously, we discussed the 12 principles included in the Agile ...

Welcome to Scrum Sutra — a series where I shall share a 3-min overview of each element of Scrum and how it connects with the other elements in the bead to form Scrum Sutra. “Successful use of Scrum depends on people becoming proficient in living five values.” — Scrum Guide 2020 Scrum as a fram...

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. 

Misconceptions about Refinement—the process of adding detail, order and size to individual Product Backlog items can be highly detrimental to a team's ability to deliver value to the business frequently. In this article, we will discuss some of the most common myths about Refinement in Scrum.

In Kürze: Der NPS ®-Wert von SAFe ® als Skalierungsframework ist -56 SAFe® war schon immer ein kontroverses Thema innerhalb der agilen Gemeinschaft. Deshalb habe ich bereits 2017 eine erste Umfrage zum Net Promoter Score® des Scaled Agile Framework SAFe ® durchgeführt. Das Ergebnis war damals -52...

The Scrum framework comes with its own guardrails and values, but it is worth taking a moment to consider the base upon which Scrum is founded by examining the principles and values of the Agile Manifesto.  The Agile Manifesto includes four values and 12 principles that describe a better way to appr...

TL; DR: The SAFe ® NPS ® Score as a Scaling Framework Is -56 SAFe® has always been a controversial topic within the agile community. Therefore, back in 2017, I ran a first survey on the Net Promoter Score® of the Scaled Agile Framework SAFe®. The result back then was -52. Four and a half years la...

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

Scrum involves a radically different mindset that involves fully embracing Empiricism, or making decisions based upon what is known. Rather than creating project plans, teams rely upon Goals to measure success. The list of the most valuable things to do next is the Product Backlog, and it is the p...

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 ...

Scrum uses an iterative, incremental approach to deliver value to the business through the medium of the Sprint. The purpose of each Sprint is to deliver a Done, usable increment. It sounds straightforward, but it can be tricky to achieve. Here are the three steps to Done in Scrum.

Als Steward für das Scaled Professional Scrum mit Nexus Training habe ich vor einiger Zeit an einer Podiumsdiskussion von Scrum.org über die Skalierung von Scrum mit dem Nexus Rahmenwerk teilgenommen. Bei dieser Diskussion konnten Yuval Yeret, Ravi Verma, Magdalena Firlit, Patricia Kong und ich n...

In this blog, I will share my valuable experience in my journey toward becoming a Scrum Master. I would also share stories of various professionals, including women, who successfully got a Scrum Master’s job even after a career break.