A week ago, I talked at DevOps Pro about the mistakes we have made in the last three years running SAFe. After the session, I was asked how to handle Technical Debt working with Scrum. I don't have a silver bullet, but having worked with Scrum for fifteen years, I…

Have you walked in your customer's shoes before setting a Sprint goal and more importantly will your customer let you? — The 2020 Scrum Guide clearly states that a team commits to a Sprint Goal rather than how many User Stories the team can complete. Having a Sprint Goal is a great idea, but I see it misfiring. Before I elaborate on why let me go back 15 years to when…

Scrum is about patterns. Scrum gives us reusable solutions for common problems. What if you don't see the patterns? Then, Scrum is like the Emperor's New Clothes. Do you remember the story by Hans Christian Andersen? The story starts when some swindlers arrive at the king's palace. They claim to…

Egoism, Altruism and Utilitarianism — “The Product Backlog is an emergent, ordered [my bolding] list of what is needed to improve the product. It is the single source of work undertaken by the Scrum Team.” — Scrum Guide 2020 How is your Product Backlog ordered? Based on Return on Investment (ROI)? Who your manager had…

In today's world, some 27 million developers exist, 22 million of who use some version of Scrum. Probably today, more developers use Scrum than any previous method or framework. 81% of agile teams report using some version of Scrum, including Scrumban or a hybrid Scrum model. (Source: Digital.ai) Having been…

A common obstacle I encounter in organizations is economists' old-school view of the world. Unfortunately, many of these are managers who both supervise and set expectations based on misunderstood principles on how to “build” software. Economists can be dangerous for Scrum or any Agile development team. Now I don't believe…

Too often, when scaling fails, the blame or focus is on the Scrum Teams and Scrum Masters. I hear managers blather about how teams should become more productive, effective, etc. The problem is that usually, teams are already doing great. The Scrum Team is usually not the problem at all. …

Get ready for Friday, September 16th — On Friday the 16th at 12.00 CET, we will open the virtual doors to the 2022 Serious Scrum UnConference. We will host the session using Zoom and the app Welo (install video here) plus Miro. The links to both the UnConference and the main conference will be available on Meetup. …

Some years ago, I worked for a company selling a market-leading product. As development manager, my main job was escalating problems and daily firefighting. Issues that should take minutes to fix took weeks. Deploying a new version required heroics every time. …