It was Sprint Planning, and the Scrum Master was unexpectedly pulled into a leadership workshop. The team carried on without her. They reviewed the Product Backlog, clarified the top stories...
The team had started to wonder aloud: “Do we really even need a Scrum Master anymore?” Their standups ran smoothly, retrospectives felt familiar, and the board was updated. From their...
Introduction: Music, Rhythm, and Scrum Share a Common BeatI love music. Don't you love music? Some people don't. I love music. What I really like about music is the container...
At the quarterly business review, the VP of Engineering proudly highlighted the team’s velocity chart in our monthly metrics review with senior leadership. The graph showed a steep climb: the...
Scroll through LinkedIn or Twitter and you’ll see the headlines: “Agile is dead” or “Scrum Masters are obsolete".The debate rages with skeptics pointing to failed transformations, rigid processes, or teams...
At a client site, I observed a well-meaning leader insist that the Daily Scrum must be run “by the book.” Each developer had to answer the three questions in order...
A product team I once collaborated with was consistently frustrated by the same issue: their work kept getting delayed by security reviews. Each sprint, progress slowed, delivery dates slipped, and...
During a Sprint Planning session, a frustrated developer whispered under his breath: “Our Scrum Master just slows us down. Why do we even need them?” The room went quiet, but...
Why Organizations Need Answers About Project DeliveryI hear it all the time. The organization wants to know when is this work going to be done? How much does it cost...
Not long ago, a team I worked with decided they no longer needed their Scrum Master. “We know Scrum,” they said. “We’ll save time if we just do it ourselves.”...
Did You Know? I recently discovered this article from SafeDelusion. It does a great job at highlighting the challenges of the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), suggesting that while it promises...
A product team I once coached disliked the “no changes during the sprint” rule. It was hard to disagree as there seems to be an agile principle (#2 welcome late...