In 2009, I got a chance to see my beloved New Zealand All Blacks play England in Twickenham Stadium. I was thrilled at the prospect of seeing in person the players I’d watched on TV so many times. It cost a small fortune to get decent seats but I managed to do it, midfield about…

Of all the Scrum meetings, the daily Scrum is the one I am most likely to see done out-and-out wrong. I think this stems from the fact that many people learned what to do in the daily Scrum, but never learned what a daily Scrum is supposed to produce. The purpose of the daily Scrum is work coordination. It is a meeting for the team to…

Some of my clients grow frustrated with their disengaged, unskilled Product Owners. In an effort to get the work done, they create a new Scrum role called “Proxy Product Owner.” This person’s job, in a nutshell, is to do the “real” Product Owner’s job for them, particularly the…

One question I receive fairly often from harried ScrumMasters is: how do I help a poorly performing Scrum team member improve? What can I do to make that person perform better? To answer this question, you must decide if you agree with a key foundational belief in Scrum: the power of…

My clients who are still unsure about Scrum often ask me, “What are the benefits we’ll reap from doing Scrum? What are the downsides to using it?” Oh my – I could write a book to answer this. Well… actually, I DID write a book about Scrum :) In 30 Days to Better Agile, I talk about…

People often have preconceived notions about who can successfully implement agile practices and who cannot. Technology companies are “naturally” agile, right? And governmental agencies…

Over the years that I have been a Certified Scrum Trainer, the attitude and composition of my typical Certified Scrum Product Owner course has changed dramatically. Years ago, my typical CSPO course attendee was someone who came to class telling me, “My developer said we are…

In the previous installment of this blog series, we looked at what might happen when moving our managers or team leads into the ScrumMaster role. Now, we'll discuss the value of choosing a "natural" ScrumMaster. When I visit my clients onsite to give them private Scrum training, the…

In Part One of this blog series, we looked at the potential pitfalls of moving our project managers into the ScrumMaster role. Now, let’s look at what might happen if we move someone from a leadership position - a team lead or manager - into the ScrumMaster role.

In our previous blog series, we looked at traditional organizational roles that sometimes move into the Product Owner role. We also examined the benefits and pitfalls of “converting” these individuals to product owners. Now, let’s answer the same question for the ScrumMaster role. Who makes a good ScrumMaster? Before we can answer that question, we need to examine…