This week I had the privilege to facilitate the Zombie Scrum workshop with Christiaan Verwijs. Together with Johannes Schartau, Christiaan created the Zombie Scrum workshop with the goal to call attention to the alarming condition of Scrum in many organisations. In the article "The Rise of Zombie Sc...

This post is part of a series on debunking Scrum Myths.  While my business cards say Professional Scrum Trainer, I may change that to Scrum Myth Buster.  This post debunks the myth that the Daily Scrum is a status meeting.  This myth undermines the effectiveness of Scrum in major ways.  I will share...

People always as ask me if agile is just for software. Saying agile is just about software is like saying software is just about science. Initially, computer science was about replacing manual processes. Now, it’s about creating human experiences. Building human experiences needs to extend beyond s...

The Scrum Team consists of 3 distinct Scrum roles that promote Self-organization: the Scrum Master, the Product Owner, and the Development Team. The accountability of each role complements the accountability of the other roles. Hence, collaboration between these roles is the key to success: The Sc...

When Scrum is introduced in a company, most of the time, the development team embraces it with lots of enthusiasm. Scrum embodies self-organizing, autonomous, multidisciplinary teams that acknowledges individual qualities and reinforces the strengths of the team as a whole. Who doesn't want to be pa...

THE (MIXED) BLESSING OF NEXTGEN REWRITES  About 10 years ago, I experienced the mixed blessing of being part of yet another nextgen rewrite project. I was guiding a team of about 25 really smart team members, part of a much larger team of about 150+ people. Our team was responsible for completely re...

One of the recurring Scrum Myth discussions I have with colleagues, teams new to Scrum and those attending training when comparing Scrum & DevOps relate to a misinterpretation of the following paragraph from the Scrum Guide. At the end of a Sprint, the new Increment must be “Done,” which means ...

One common consequence of teams that do not deeply understand Scrum and the nature of its events is that they believe it is possible to run sprints which do not produce a Done and releasable increment of the product. This belief typically leads to dangerous consequences so it’s important to caution ...

Clients and training attendees ask me "Can you use Scrum for something else than software?”. What they usually mean is building some other products or organizing team’s work. Let’s explore a more exotic idea. It’s beginning of a new year, the time when people make and try to achieve new year’s resol...

The Scrum framework thrives on empirical process control. The inspection of observable results gives us insights in what might be most valuable next, always acknowledging that the future is unwritten. The Scrum events function best when employed in such forward looking mode. Inspection is pointless ...

One of the arguments used against Scrum and a common misconception at the same time is the idea that quality is traded for speed in Scrum. As a PST with years of experience in Quality Assurance I decided to challenge this myth. I believe and I have seen many times that proper way of implementing Scr...

At Amsterdam Airport Schiphol we're using an Agile approach to realise a large digital program. This program includes 5 value streams with multiple teams. Due the increasing scale of the program some challenges arise. For example: How to organise a Sprint Review with an increasing amount of teams an...

IMAGINE Imagine you have just been asked to build an Agility Enablement Organization for your company. Sounds like fun, but there are some constraints you need to work within or around… There are 100+ teams with varying levels of interest in Agile You only have a small team of enablers You woul...

NEW YEAR RESOLUTION So it's a new year. New Year, new start, yadda yadda yadda... Maybe you are considering some New Year Resolutions so I wanted to invite you to take our 2017 waste-loss challenge by decreasing your Sabotagile Quotient. This challenge builds upon my previous blog - "Agile or Sabota...

In a previous post describing challenges to creating a Done Increment, I identified impediments as one of those challenges.  More specifically, NOT removing the impediments makes it difficult to create a Done Increment.  Scrum Teams will always face impediments because the work is complex and dynami...

In a previous post describing challenges to creating a done Increment, I identified too much change during the Sprint as one of those challenges.  The Manifesto for Agile Software Development talks about responding to change over following a plan.  It also says that the best architectures, requireme...

This year I was in the lucky circumstance to be part of some awesome (Scrum) teams. It certainly wasn't all "Scrum by the book" but I've learned a tremendous amount of lessons and generated lots of values insights. As always, some things turned out to be a success, other things failed miserably. Thi...

I would like to kick off a series of posts in this blog trying to debunk some common myths about Scrum. Many of them arise sometimes from a poor understanding of the Scrum Guide, and even more often, from not having read it at all. What is velocity? According to the Scrum.org glossary, Velocity is “...

In a previous post describing challenges to creating a done Increment, I identified a lack of clear Sprint Goals as one of those challenges. According to the Scrum Guide, the Sprint Goal is an objective to be met by the Sprint through the implementation of part of the Product Backlog. The Sprint Goa...

In a previous post describing challenges to creating a Done Increment, I identified a lack of team collaboration as one of those challenges. Collaboration is what enables the whole team to be greater than the sum of its parts.  Collaboration allows a team to work together to complete a product back...

In a previous post describing challenges to creating a Done Increment, I identified a lack of team ownership as one of those challenges. The Development Team is accountable as a whole to create a Done Increment by the end of the Sprint. When team members do not feel team ownership, individuals focus...

Recently I got asked what I consider the most common challenges with Agile projects. These are projects that have such a high rate of uncertainty and complexity on how and what to build, an Agile approach is necessary. Although my gut feeling immediately provided an answer, I gave myself some more t...

As a Product Owner and the CEO of Scrum.org, Dave West was invited to speak at ProductTank NYC earlier this year about the conflict between the roles Product Owner and Product Manager.

​Table Manners There is a striking similarity between good table manners and good agile behaviours - "agile table manners". It is even more clear when viewed through the lens of the Scrum values: Focus, Respect, Openness, Courage and Commitment. The intent of manners is to help it be as safe and pl...

Because there's no easy way in telling you this, I'll just share it straight away... Next week I'll be setting up a Jira environment for the product teams I'm coaching... Yes... Jira! The issue & project tracking system for software teams created by Atlassian. It's pretty easy to find negative ...

This discussion features Professional Scrum Trainer Ravi Verma as a host with a featured panel of expert PSTs Rich Visotcky, Simon Reindl, Mikkel Toudal Kristiansen, and Gary Pedretti.

What are the characteristics of a good Development Team and how does a Development Team evolve when it is using Scrum? In my previous two blogs I described the pattern of an evolving Scrum Master and a Product Owner. This blog describes how a Development Team typically evolves. 10 Years ago I had t...

What Is Self-Organization? “Knowledge workers have to manage themselves. They have to have autonomy,” says Peter Drucker. Scrum Promotes Self-Organization By specifying a lightweight framework: three roles, five events, and three artifacts. By removing titles for the Development Team members. Eve...

Are we there yet? It’s becoming like nails-on-a-chalkboard to hear phrases like “We’re going Agile” or “We’re doing this because it’s agile.” People are putting everything they can under the Agile umbrella, right down to cleaning up your workspace at the end of the day. What does it mean to say you’...

Empiricism means working in a fact-based, experience-based, and evidence-based manner. Scrum implements an empirical process where progress is based on observations of reality, not fictitious plans. Scrum also places great emphasis on mind-set and cultural shift to achieve business and organizationa...

Here is a list of just some of the books that have been published by Scrum.org Founder Ken Schwaber

EMBARRASSING CONFESSION OK, so this will be awkward, and maybe cringe-inducing post. But we are approaching the new year. Plenty of people might be making new year resolutions. Many will be around fitness. So everyone needs to read this. I was once really impressed by 24 Hour Fitness. I used to see...

Download the slides from this special Spanish webcast.

Sin importar donde estés en tu transición a Scrum, el rol del Scrum Master se puede malinterpretar muy fácilmente.

Sin importar donde estés en tu transición a Scrum, el rol del Scrum Master se puede malinterpretar muy fácilmente. En este webinar, Joel Francia -Professional Scum Trainer- nos guiará en la exploración de algunas preguntas comunes acerca del rol del Scrum Master y como puede afrontar las diferentes ...

Here are the slides for this webcast.

I am listing out some commonly observed Scrum Myths, Mysteries, and Misconceptions from my experience. Scrum Teams are assigned to several projects or features. This results in context switching (i.e., multitasking), and the outcome is increased cycle time and delayed value delivery to business. ...

UNFLATTERING WISDOM OF HIND SIGHT As I look back at my many years as an Agile Coach - helping organizations introduce, optimize and scale Scrum, I am amazed and disappointed by the number of contradictory things I have been asked to do as an Agile Coach. And in all humility, I am also disappointed b...

Since 2009 Scrum.org Professional Scrum Trainers have helped over 60,000 people in their journey to Scrum mastery through training. They have worked with thousands of organizations delivering a consistent training experience and many of those organizations have made professional Scrum part of thei...

SCRUM IS NOT THE END. IT IS A MEANS TO THE END… The end goal of empirically building strong, self-organizing Scrum Teams to help your business… Increase Sustainable Value Sustainably Decrease Waste & Sustainably Manage Risk It seems quite straightforward, however, as you start traveling do...

I see four common reasons an agile implementation doesn't get the benefits hoped for. These reasons include a failure to limit risk, long end-to-end delivery lead times, consistent cost-overruns, and no one knows why you do what you do. Are you in this situation? Read on to see if these match up to ...

An online version of The Definitive Guide to Nexus:The exoskeleton of scaled Scrum development

This week I got a question from a colleague about the Scrum Retrospective. She's Scrum Master of a team that for sure has room for improvement. But somehow, during the Retrospective nobody is really challenging each other and the burning issues aren't discussed. Therefore the Retrospective often res...

In the Professional Scrum Product Owner course, we teach that high performing Product Owners are entrepreneurial. They not only act with the business in mind, they have the authority to make important decisions. What should we do now versus later? What choices give us the best return on investment? ...

Watch our international panel of Professional Scrum Trainers, as they share ethical challenges they have seen software delivery teams face in the real world and learn about an interesting approach your teams might use to tackle these challenges.

Ask a plumber not to bother with gluing the PVC piping under your sink. The fit is snug enough and will likely be just fine. It’s your risk to take, right? How would a professional plumber respond? It would probably be along the lines of “I can’t do that. It is against code and I could lose my licen...

A small software shop within a government organization where multiple Scrum Teams are serving the same cause is building one product that has several sub-systems. Sometimes, those sub-systems need to be integrated.

You hear a lot in Agile circles these days about the ‘declining need for managers.’ We may not need the managers of yesterday but, make no mistake, we certainly need the leaders of tomorrow. Leadership has become about creating a healthy environment for high-performing teams to thrive in – whethe...

The Daily Scrum, or most of the time referred to as  the "stand up." Probably the most well-known event when we talk about Scrum. An event that lasts no longer than 15 minutes and where the Development Team inspects the plan for the sprint and see whether this plan is still valid. That is it! Nothin...

Organizations who don’t understand why they want to become Agile also often take the wrong path to get there. Agility requires empowering teams and helping them make decisions on their own, learning from their experiences as they go. They must organize themselves, yet they often have Agile practices...