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...

What were you doing on Oct 19th 1995? According to the internet, not much with most of the news reminding us of Black Monday that had happened 9 years before. But for what is now over 11 million people who practice Scrum on a daily basis, it was a big day.   That was the day that Scrum was officia...

Recently I published the whitepaper "The 8 Stances of a Scrum Master". It describes the Scrum Master as a servant leader, coach, facilitator, teacher, mentor, manager, impediment remover and change agent. The whitepaper contains my personal experiences as a Scrum Master and includes my most importan...

I’m currently helping a small software shop within a government organization where multiple Scrum Teams are serving the same cause. They are building one product that has several sub-systems, which sometimes need to be integrated. Mostly, they have a low amount of dependencies between teams and syst...

This is Ken Schwaber's original paper on Scrum, based on his presentation on at OOPSLA 1995 where he initially introduced the concept.

This poster represents the Nexus Framework as developed and designed by Ken Schwaber, the co-creator of Scrum.

ScrumButs are reasons why teams can’t take full advantage of Scrum to solve their problems and realize the full benefits of product development using Scrum. Every Scrum role, rule, and timebox is designed to provide the desired benefits and address predictable recurring problems.

According to the Scrum Guide, the Scrum Master is responsible for ensuring Scrum is understood and enacted. Scrum Masters do this by ensuring that the Scrum Team adheres to Scrum theory, practices, and rules. The Scrum Master is a servant‐leader for the Scrum Team. He (or she) helps those outside t...

I’ve spent a lot of time looking at how organizations are using DevOps to improve their software delivery cycle time, their ability to innovate, and their ability to improve quality. I’ve heard some people go so far as to say that DevOps has replaced Agile, but I don’t think that’s true. If anything...

This white paper contains Professional Scrum Trainer Barry Overeem's personal experiences acting as a Scrum Master. Besides these experiences, he's added his most important findings while researching the 8 different stances studying books, articles and videos.

In this session, Karel Deman, global agile lead at Avanade, and Patricia Kong, who leads the Scrum.org scaling initiative, will describe how Avanade improved their organizational agility. They will also share the successes and challenges Avanade faced in scaling ability across the enterprise to best...

This summer, during the Olympics, the Euro Soccer Championships and the Tour the France, while cheering  in front of the tv, I noticed something in the way teams perform. And it worried me. Even more because I see the same thing happening in organizations. Why did the English soccer team fail agains...

The Kanban Guide for Scrum Teams helps you add professional flow concepts to improve your value delivery.

This Guide Describes Nexus, the Exoskeleton of Scaled Scrum.

Agile approaches, including Scrum, are empirical approaches to delivering software and business value. It is ironic, then, that the biggest impediment to adopting an Agile approach is the culture of the adopting organization. The Cambridge English Dictionary states that culture is "the way of life, ...

The Nexus Sprint Backlog is created during Nexus Sprint Planning. It is a visualization of the work across the Nexus that has dependencies. The purpose of Nexus Sprint Planning is to coordinate the activities of all Scrum Teams in a Nexus for a single Sprint. Read more to see what Professional Scru...

On July 7th the Scrum community gathered in Amsterdam (The Netherlands) for the 5th edition of Scrum Day Europe. This years theme was 'the next iteration'. Therefore we looked back to see what Scrum brought us the last 20 years, but also looked forward into the future of Scrum. Naturally, the evalua...

In this Scrum Pulse session, our PST panel will share their experiences, challenges and insights from guiding the effective adoption of Scrum in multi-cultural Scrum.

[caption id="attachment_22259" align="alignleft" width="428"] The perfect Sprint View is based on the use of production software[/caption] Throughout the Agile Alliance 2016 conference, I was struck by a recurring feeling that many people don’t understand what the Sprint Review is. This feeling has...

More and more large companies in traditional industries are singing the Agile song. I have noticed, though, that there seems to be a general misconception that Agile is onlyabout creating happy teams. There’s more to an Agile mindset than happiness. It’s about learning, struggle, and growth. This is...

Download this datasheet to learn more about the Professional Scrum Product Owner training.

This document provides an overview of the different Scrum.org training classes that are offered, by our 160+ Professional Scrum Trainers around the world.

This document provides and overview of the different Scrum.org assessments that are available. It includes details on both the free Open assessments and the Professional assessments that come with the industry recognized Professional Scrum certification for those who pass.  

Download this datasheet to learn more about the Scaled Professional Scrum training.

Download this datasheet to learn more about the Professional Scrum Developer training class.