My personal takeaways from the Professional Scrum Product Backlog Management Skills™ (PSPBM) course and assessment

My personal takeaways from the Professional Scrum Product Backlog Management Skills™ (PSPBM) course and assessment

As a Scrum Master and Agile Coach, I have embarked on a personal quest to deepen my understanding of effective Product Backlog management. My organization faces the challenge of a massive Product Backlog which, thankfully, has seen notable improvements in quality over the past year. However, there’s always room for growth and refinement. That’s why … Read more

Let’s have a tough conversation

Let's have a tough conversation

We’ve all been there. Uncomfortable silences, glaring issues that everyone knows about but no one wants to talk about, the proverbial ‘elephant in the room’. As humans, we naturally avoid conflicts. We would rather ignore the issue or get lost behind our screens, coding away, or jump into another meeting. The problem, however, continues to … Read more

Help, my Scrum Teams have become self-managing

Help, my Scrum Teams have become self-managing

As a diligent and incisive Scrum Master, your hard work in fostering self-managing Scrum Teams has finally paid off! These teams, thriving in autonomy, show a high level of engagement which correlates with improved productivity and innovative solutions. They are responsible for their work, make crucial decisions, and resolve challenges independently. However, you may now … Read more

What does servant leadership mean?

Servant Leadership

Servant leadership is an innovative approach that contrasts traditional leadership styles. It emphasizes empathy, listening, and placing others’ needs before one’s own. We see the importance of servant leadership, especially in Agile and the Scrum framework. In this article, I explore how managers can apply servant leadership and why it’s a vital tool in today’s … Read more

Making metrics matter: what can we measure in a Scrum team?

Scrum team metrics

In agile development, metrics carry real weight. They shape what teams pay attention to, how managers decide what “progress” looks like, and whether the Sprint Review ends in a genuine conversation or a defensive performance. Get the metrics right and they become a lens for improvement. Get them wrong, and they become ammunition. This post … Read more

Do It Yourself, Dammit: impediments and self-management

Do It Yourself, Dammit: impediments and self-management

The Scrum Master has two important roles: to remove impediments that are blocking the team’s progress, and to coach the team in becoming self-managing. While these roles may seem contradictory, they are actually complementary and interconnected. As a Scrum Master, you’re kind of like a parent to your Scrum Team. Your primary job is to … Read more

When a Scrum Master evolves into an agile leader

When a Scrum Master evolves to an agile leader

My employer announced my promotion to the company’s middle management at the beginning of this year. So, as a member of middle management, does a Scrum Master ‘manage’ others? Gunther Verheyen explains in this 2014 article that the Scrum Master role is not a management role, but rather a facilitation role. The Scrum Master is … Read more

“Coaching Agile Teams” by Lyssa Adkins: a review

"Coaching Agile Teams" by Lyssa Adkins: a review

This article is a review of “Coaching Agile Teams” by Lyssa Adkins. I have based this review on a Dutch translation of the book.  “Coaching Agile Teams” by Lyssa Adkins is a well-regarded book on the subject of coaching agile teams and is recommended reading for those interested in the topic. The book provides practical … Read more

Addressing emergent architecture and technical debt

Emergent architecture in Scrum: a Developer's point of view

Embracing emergent architecture and resolving technical debt are two major challenges that Developers working with Scrum often face. These challenges can have a significant impact on a product’s overall success and necessitate collaboration and communication between the Scrum Team and management. Architecture without a predetermined plan Emergent architecture is a software development approach in which … Read more