Career
How Scrum Masters Prove Their Worth
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...
Agility
The Cadence is the Secret Sauce of Scrum: Why Rhythm Matters More Than Rules
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...
Leadership + Organization
Beyond Velocity: What Leaders Should Measure
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...
Career
The Future of the Scrum Master: From Facilitator to Catalyst
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...
Agility
From Dogma to Pragmatism: The Scrum Master’s Balancing Act
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...
Agility
Scrum Masters as Flow Enablers: Beyond the Ceremonies
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...
Leadership + Organization
Scrum Masters Under Fire: Addressing Criticism with Pragmatism
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...
Leadership + Organization
Managing Team Capacity: A Budget-Based Approach to Agile Product Management
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...
Agility
Why Scrum Masters Still Matter
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.”...
Leadership + Organization
Is SAFe Really Agile? Escaping the Illusion of Framework-Driven Decisions
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...
Business Transformation
Scrum’s Enabling Constraints: Boundaries That Accelerate Improvement
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...
Agility
Failing Forward: Why AI Mistakes Are Your Best Agile Investment
The experiment seemed like a sure thing. The product team had been exploring ways to speed up definition-of-done checks, so they trained an AI to generate acceptance criteria for new...