Retrospectives without concrete action items are pretty much a complete waste of time (and this coming from a guy who thinks the Retrospective is the MOST important discussion in Scrum!!). Over-and-over again, when I encounter teams and organizations struggling to adopt Scrum and Agile, I often find lame, uninspiring Action ...
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The Product Owner on my team is also a developer on the team. Do you have any advice on using Scrum in such a scenario? SHORT ANSWER: Yeah - stop doing it! LONG ANSWER: In a healthy Scrum Team, each person fills only one Scrum role at a time. Having someone ...
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Working Agreements are one of the core compacts that all good Agile teams need and use. For those of you unfamiliar with Working Agreements, they are nothing more than agreed upon protocols created by the team govern their interactions and clarify expectations. They are different from Ground Rules which tend ...
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How do you cope with the weak Product Owner? You don't - find a new Product Owner (PO) or stop using Scrum. Scrum is based on the idea that an empowered, knowledgable business leader is setting direction for the product (or service) under development. When that person does not exist, ...
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Coaching is a distinct and powerful skill from the eight other essential skills of an Agile Coach (CSP-SM). Because coaching is an overloaded word in the English language, let me provide some guidance to describe what I mean when I am referring to coaching. For me, a coach is a person ...
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Back in 2012, I worked with a colleague to develop a new course for ScrumMasters (and other Agile change agents). Our goal was to figure out a way to support learners on a progressive educational journey from ScrumMaster to Agile Coach (CSP-SM). While the specific offering we developed did not ...
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"That is nice a idea to try, but don't expect anyone outside your group to do it." "I would do it, but our company has already adopted X, so there is no use in trying." "There is just not enough time in this release to try something new. Let's do ...
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Stop doing things that demotivate people! Seriously...there are a lot of silly things that people are expected to endure in big companies that are severely demotivating. Almost all of Peopleware is spent identifying how common practices in software management demotivates people. If it is within your power to stop these ...
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As of today [2016], the Scrum Alliance identifies 322,157 people as Certified ScrumMasters (CSM). You can find 66,813 people identified as Certified Scrum Product Owners (CSPO), and a number of people have both certifications. Although the anemic number of Product Owners relative to ScrumMasters raises some questions, the more serious ...
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In the 1996, I attended the Amphibious Warfare School with about 300 other Marine officers to complete a one-year program to prepare us for the next level of our careers. One of the most valuable elements of that experience was the study group. Led by an instructor, our small group ...
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