The belief that an idea like Scrum can be easily and predictably rolled out in an organization is still wide spread. It’s a tempting fantasy and a potent recipe for problems. Scrum is not about installing best practices – it is about activating curiosity, using all of the brains we do have, and giving experience […]
Category Archives: Scrum
Copy-Paste Management
Developers sometimes engage in copy-paste development. If you’ve never written code, this is when a developer copies, pastes and possibly slightly modifies some existing code – instead of following the cleaner practice of reusing the code by (for example) turning it into a single function that can be called from multiple places. Copying and pasting […]
Prioritizing Effectively as a Team
My new article “Prioritizing Effectively as a Team” is up on AgileConnection.com. The article starts out like this: “A common reaction to the product owner role is to see it as too big for a single person. If the idea were that one person should do everything from guiding the vision to writing user stories, I […]
The Worst Daily Scrum Ever
I once observed what was probably the worst daily scrum ever. Just when I thought it was over, something interesting happened.
What Is an Advanced Scrum Master?
Being a scrum master is more than just reminding a team to perform certain ceremonies, it’s about growing the best possible workplace. To begin with, let’s clarify this whole thing about the “scrum master”. It’s the name of a role. It’s a relatively new and pretty ridiculous name by intent, because a change was needed […]
Check-in in a Circle
When I kick off a class or workshop, I want participants to engage as soon as possible after entering the room. I do work through some practical bits first, but after that I quickly hand things over to participants. For a long time, I’ve been using an opening exercise I learned from Ken Schwaber. In […]
Pit of Specialization
In an effort to prove I’m not a perfectionist, I’m publishing this work of art I just created, while sketching out some ideas for an upcoming talk. Being a specialist can be a double-edged sword. Have you experienced this pit? Did you like it there, or did you find a way to get out of […]
Tankar om rollerna i Scrum
Jag skriver på en bok med arbetsnamnet “Nyckeln till Scrum”. Min erfarenhet säger mig att de som lyckas bäst med Scrum är de som inte bara kan metodens praktiska steg, utan som också förstår varför den är utformad som den är. Beväpnad med den förståelsen öppnar sig också vägen framåt, möjligheten att gå bortom Scrum. […]
An Exercise for Defining Done for Scrum Teams
In this post, I’m going to share an exercise you could try for helping a team start their journey towards a clear and shared definition of what it means to done with a feature in a software product. I’m looking at this from the perspective of agile development with Scrum, but my guess is you […]