What is Scrum?
The most popular Agile Development framework, Scrum, can be explained in many ways. If you're just trying to understand what Scrum is, this post is for you.
Gearing a Team for Maximum Outcomes
Creating a maximum outcome team is every ScrumMaster’s goal, but you must first understand how great teams form and what YOU need to do to create a great team.
It's All About Value
One small change can make a BIG difference to your Product Owner success. Before worrying about putting value on backlog items, here's some simple tips.
Simplify Your Work by Slicing
When slicing a backlog item, we're taking a complex problem and paring it down into smaller problems, which are easier to solve and build.
Speeding up Your Scrum Teams
Effective Scrum use is more than Sprint Planning, Daily Scrums, and so on. To see a big difference in your team's Sprints, make these workflow changes.
Don't Waste Time in Sprint "Capacity" Planning
Trying to plan detailed capacity for a Sprint? Thankfully, there are two things we can do to make capacity planning easier (and faster) in Sprint Planning.
DONEness Definitions (DoD)
What's the one thing YOU could do as a Scrum Master to improve your team's reliability, quality, and productivity? Read on and find out!
Sprint in Trouble? Here’s What Great Scrum Teams Do Next
In Scrum, it’s not enough to deliver high-quality work. Teams must also take ownership of how the work is done and how they respond when things don’t go as planned. This post outlines five actions Scrum teams can take when they realize the Sprint Goal is at risk—and how to develop the habit of self-correction before it’s too late.
The Hidden Cost of Big Backlog Items
In creative work like software development, bigger always means riskier. Large backlog items increase complexity, delay feedback, and compromise quality. This post breaks down why “smaller is smarter” in Scrum and how decomposing large Product Backlog Items (PBIs) can dramatically improve your team’s flow, confidence, and results.
Keep Your Work In Process Low
The fastest team productivity killer is working on 3+ backlog items at once. You'll end up with a team that's great at starting work, but lousy at finishing it.
Swarming Backlog Items
Teams that "Swarm" backlog items find it's a better way to get work done than approaches that lead to handoffs and continuity loss.
Backlog Refinement Part 6: Slicing Backlog Items con't
This blog post seeks to provide some tips you can use to help your teams successfully do large item estimation. Part 6 of my series on Backlog Refinement!
Backlog Refinement Part 5: Slicing Backlog Items
This blog post seeks to provide some tips you can use to help your teams successfully do large item estimation. Part 5 of my series on Backlog Refinement!
Backlog Refinement Part 4: Estimating Backlog Items
Keeping the Product Backlog estimated is hard because of constant changes. What's the best estimation technique? Part 4 of my series on Backlog Refinement!
Backlog Refinement Part 3: When Have We Refined Enough?
How do you make sure the Scrum team refines enough backlog items for the next Sprint? Part 3 of my series on Backlog Refinement!
Backlog Refinement Part 2: How Small is Small Enough?
How do you know how small to make your backlog items before you stop refining them and move on to something else? Part 2 of my series on Backlog Refinement!
Backlog Refinement Part 1: What It Is and How It Works
While coaching Scrum teams I've noticed how difficult effective backlog refinement is, so I wrote a blog post series on how backlog refinement works.