How can we / should we leverage AI to accelerate discovery and product delivery?

Continuous delivery is achievable for any software, regardless of complexity. Success depends on investment in automation, quality, and process improvement—not technical barriers.

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

Learn why many Product Owners and Managers worry about the wrong thing: saying no instead of saying yes to everything.

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

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

Excessive handoffs in software development create delays, reduce quality, and harm team morale. Learn how eliminating handoffs boosts agility, flow, and value delivery.

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...

Despite 25 years of the Agile Manifesto, countless books, conferences, and armies of consultants, we’re still collectively struggling to make Agile work.

Stop treating AI as a team member to “onboard.” It’s a tool.

People tend to highlight that Scrum is best suited as training wheels. However, what most people forget is Scrum is a means to an end; it's not a silver bullet. It is only as good as the members of the Scrum Team. If your team is not getting the desired results with Scrum, then it probably is not Sc...

Our Professional Scrum Trainers have worked to gather many of the questions that are asked by their students, the Scrum.org Forum and other places to provide answers to your Frequently Asked Questions about Scrum. How do we handle spill-over between Sprints?There is no spill-over (or carry-over) of ...

This article explores how AI interview analysis can be a powerful sense-making tool for agile practitioners who need to quickly synthesize unstructured, qualitative data, particularly when joining a team mid-crisis.

AI is transforming product management across the entire Planning Onion, from vision to validation. Learn how AI enhances market analysis, backlog prioritization, and customization while rethinking technical debt. Discover how the Model Context Protocol and AI code generation are revolutionizing how ...

It may be tempting to push the team to deliver more by overloading the Sprint with extra work. But don’t do it! One of Scrum’s core values is focus, and that value exists for a reason. A team that focuses on delivering a reasonable amount of work will accomplish more than one that tries to take on e...

In this experiment, OpenAI’s new stealthy LLM Optimus Alpha demonstrated exceptional performance in team data analysis. It quickly identified key patterns in complex agile metrics and synthesized insights about technical debt, value creation, and team dynamics.

In this episode of the Scrum.org Community Podcast, Dave West and PST Lucas Smith, Director of Agile Program & Services, Toyota Connected, explore how Toyota Connected structures its funding models, defines product life cycles, and manages dependencies in complex product ecosystems.

Learn why succeeding with vibe coding requires a balanced approach: use it for rapid prototyping while maintaining rigorous standards for production code, with developers evolving from code writers to architects and code auditors.

In this episode of the Scrum.org Community Podcast, Dave West chats with Accenture’s Professional Scrum Trainer Dimitris Dimitrelos about how companies and organizations introduce the Agile Product Operating Model (APOM). (33:15 Minutes)

Learn more about how to embrace the alignment-to-value pipeline and create your product operating model.

Myth # 39: Technical Debt is the Developer's Problem. They caused it, so they should fix it on their own time.

Product Backlog Management is challenging. Imagine you’re a Product Owner with a backlog of 300+ items. Stakeholders keep adding requests, developers feel lost in prioritisation, and every refinement session is a painful, drawn-out discussion. If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. If you have e...

In part two of this portfolio management Q&A, Dave West, Yuval Yeret, and Darrell Fernandes tackle the complexities of funding products vs. teams, especially in nonprofits. They explore shifting from work-based to product-based funding, managing technical debt vs. product roadmap progress, and align...

Product Metrics That Speak Wall Street: Turn Misunderstood Products into Investor Gold

The only purpose of doing Scrum is to create a DONE Increment. To get to a DONE Increment, quality is key. In Scrum Teams Definition of Done enables transparency around quality and releasability of the Increment. However, more often than not the Definition of Done stops at meeting acceptance criteri...

PSTs Simon Flossmann and Stas Pavlov tackle listener questions about the challenges they are facing with their Product Backlog in this (recorded) live and interactive session. (1:00:56 hour)

An online version of The Evidence-Based Management Guide

Leverage AI tools in your day-to-day work and move to a new level of Scrum Mastery.

Here are practical strategies, grounded in collaboration techniques, to help Product Owners manage both internal and external negotiations effectively.Use BATNA. One popular negotiating strategy is BATNA (Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement). This is a backup plan if all negotiations fail.Exa...

A common mistake Product Owners (POs) often make is assigning Product Backlog items to specific Scrum Teams or individuals. While this approach may seem efficient - and even helpful - it undermines team dynamics, disempowers Developers, and distracts the PO from their true purpose: maximizing value.

In this episode of the Scrum.org Community Podcast, Mik Kersten, CTO at Planview, returns to chat with Dave about the movement from project-centric to product-driven models, reflecting on the recent Project to Product event where they both spoke. (42:12 Minutes)

Struggling with unclear priorities, technical debt, or stalled progress with your Scrum Teams? Adopting a product-focused approach can unlock your team's potential and drive continuous value. Discover how one team went from nine months of frustration to delivering game-changing solutions in just wee...

In this video, PST's Robert Pieper and Jason Malmstadt explore how technical debt impacts Scrum teams and whether it can be managed responsibly. Learn how balancing technical debt with strategic decision-making can lead to more effective development and avoid future pitfalls.

A common question for those new to the practice of #StoryPoints: Should we assign points to #bugs?

In this episode of the Scrum.org Community Podcast, PSTs Paul Kuijten, and Fredrik Wendt join Dave to discuss the "lead to value" capability in Professional Product Ownership. (27:15 Minutes)

In this article, we explore the Kanban practice of "make policies explicit" and how it equips teams for self-management

Dive in to explore how the Agile community is coming full circle, rediscovering the essence that made Agile transformative in the first place.

In their latest episode, Todd and Ryan explain why Scrum is often harder than waterfall development, emphasizing that iterative processes require constant adjustments to engineering practices and architectural decisions. They highlight that Scrum forces teams to move away from over-planning and fo...

In 2022, Andrew Sales (Chief Methodologist and SAFe Fellow at Scaled Agile, Inc.) was talking at the Tecnifor SAFe Day. You can find the talk here. His subject was “accelerating flow of customer value”. I want to reflect on this talk and share how we can help improve flow of customer value in SAFe s...

This article explains why pre-mortems are a brilliant tool for risk mitigation, improving your team’s decision process, and how they can transform your product development process.

The short answer is yes, they can. Here's how.

Scrum, often confined to the 'build' phase in traditional project frameworks, can be more effectively leveraged in a product-centric environment. By transforming the Sprint Review into a collaborative platform for strategic alignment and continuous improvement, organisations can maximise Scrum's val...

How to Elevate Your Standing as a Scrum Master or Agile Coach

For the following article, I aggregated exercise suggestions on how to “best” game velocity.

Understanding the true nature of the Product Backlog is essential for the success of Scrum and the delivery of value to stakeholders. By dispelling common misconceptions and embracing this knowledge, teams can enhance their responsiveness, prioritize effectively, and deliver maximum value to their c...

Agile Teams as Investors: A Deeper Dive into Maximizing Organizational Value by Trusting Your Teams to Find Solutions to Your Customers Problems.

While there are various ways to write or format items on the Product Backlog, one of the most popular and effective methods is writing them in the user story format. This practice, though beneficial, is not mandatory. Scrum teams may choose to adopt the user story format when it suits their needs an...

Velocity is a popular tool that many Scrum Teams use to size and forecast work. But so many organizations equate "velocity" to team "performance", and that is not what it's for.

Strobbo, an HR platform, faced challenges with its software development processes. The company’s initial mechanical approach to Scrum, coupled with poor communication and lack of trust, hindered progress and morale. To address these issues, Co-Founder Bert Neels brought in Professional Scrum Trainer...

In this article, we discuss 10 signs that your company may have at least some elements of "Agile in name only". Do you recognize yourself in any of these?