Running the Sprint Retrospective always in the same way (e.g. “What went well, what didn’t go well, what can we improve?”) is not going to provide much insight after a few times. The questions become stale, and the retrospective feels mechanical. A good Scrum Master changes the retrospective exercise every…

Is Scrum incremental or iterative? Sprints are iterations, yet in every Sprint we deliver an Increment. So, is it incremental or iterative? Let’s look at the difference between these two approaches first. INCREMENTAL: In an incremental approach, the development process is broken down into small, manageable portions called Increments. …

The System Story and the Job Story are two alternative formats to describe Product Backlog Items (tasks in a backlog) when the User Story format does not fit. Examples include technical enhancements, enablers, and when the work is done for a particular User Persona. What’s wrong with User Stories? When I work with teams on…

Agile practices have been around a long time, even before they were formalized in the Agile Manifesto https://agilemanifesto.org/ (2001). They promise to accelerate value delivery, reduce risk, and better adapt to change. The majority of companies I work with have either adopted Agile practices or are in the process of…

In a recent survey to a group of Scrum Masters, I asked a question about the definition of Velocity and I got a 50–50 split in the responses: “Velocity is a measure of work completed in prior sprints” and “Velocity is a measure of the value delivered in a sprint”. …

If you ask any company that is building a new product today, very likely they will reply that one of the most important tenets is customer centricity. Product managers know the importance of developing empathy for their customers since empathy is a cornerstone of customer centricity. …

Agile practices have been around a long time, even before they were formalized in the Agile Manifesto (2001). They promise to accelerate value delivery, reduce risk, and better adapt to change. The vast majority of companies I work with have either adopted Agile practices or are in the process of…

Many people I talk to say that their number one obstacle in finding a Scrum Master job is lack of experience. In a recent survey of Scrum Masters and Scrum Master candidates, people shared that the main challenge in finding a job included “Lack of Scrum Master experience”, “Difficulty in…

Being a Scrum Master is a fascinating job as it provides confidence, freedom, and satisfaction by helping other people to grow. The most recent poll in Glassdoor reports Scrum Master salaries in the range of $90k to $149k. And when asked about job projections for Scrum Masters, Google AI’s reports…