In short, yes - absolutely. This is a common question I get from my clients. “We used to have weekly status meetings and now, with Scrum, we have them every day. Can’t we skip a few or just do twice weekly?” When I get a question like this, I can tell that the person asking doesn’t understand the purpose of the daily Scrum. And I will admit, when I was new to Scrum (having come from the world of project management) I fell into this too.

Convention says that the daily Scrum should always be done standing up. Staying on our feet helps keep the team focused, prevents long-winded conversations that wander off-topic and avoids the feeling of doing a status meeting. So sitting down during a daily scrum is always bad, right? Not necessarily. In short, it depends how and where you are sitting.

Want to know how NOT to create a successful agile team? Rest assured, I have a proven formula for you. You need look no further than Dance Moms. Over the holiday season, I spent more time at home than usual. In the spirit of the holidays, I indulged in the typical American past times: I drank eggnog, I lounged on my sofa, and...

Being part of a company that merges with or, even more harrowing, is acquired by another company can be a nerve-wracking experience. You may have hard-won improvements in your work environment thanks to implementing agile practices and worry that the new company culture won't support them. Worse, the new company may...

With the recent popularity of the film “Invictus” and its inclusion as an Olympic sport coming in the 2016 games, many Americans are being exposed to rugby for the first time. Those of us who engage in agile software development practices know that the term “scrum” has its origins in rugby and that Scrum, the agile software development framework, is...

Like many Scrum trainers, I use the Ball Point Game in my Certified ScrumMaster course. We do it fairly early on, in the first hour, before we`ve gotten know each other. I use the Ball Point Game to show teams that they in fact already know how to do Scrum, meaning they know...