Scrum Breakfast

I am pleased to once again offer a Certified Scrum Product Owner courses in Zurich.  (see my CSPO Course Description).

I have always been an entrepreneur at heart and the Product Owner role has always fascinated me. I have always been on the lookout for better ways to live role of the Product Owner. From Kanban, to Lean Leadership and Lean Startup to Radical Management: there are so many good approaches to help you be a better Product Owner (see for instance Scrum and 5 Principles of Radical Management).

I love teaching product ownership.

My other job is Product Owner and investor in the HappinessApp. So I am not just a coach or theoretician, I am living the role of Product Owner. This has been my best project and its been my worst project, and I will share the ups and downs of that product and others with you as you learn the values, principles, and tools of the trade of the Product Owner. (Check out our next product, the HappinessApp for Events).

In this two-day course you learn wha…

As another year comes draws to a close, we all start thinking about that annual ritual, the 'New Year's Resolution.' Inspect and Adapt. The core of Scrum is deeply rooted in our culture. And yet, how many of us really implement our Resolutions? We Inspect, but we don't Adapt.

I recently realized that I had been collecting feedback from my course participants for years but I hardly ever really acted on what people wrote. I inspected without adapting. This fall, in the face of lukewarm Net Promoter Scores, I resolved to implement at least one of the suggestions from each round of participant feedback by the next course (see Managing by the Numbers in the 21st Century).

Now, after each course, I go through all the feedback forms, summarize them, and send that summary as a follow-up feedback to the participants. In the summary, I tell the participants what improvement I intend to make in the next course based on their feedback. I always implement one item, and usuall…

I recently introduced Sharon Bowman's Myth or Fact exercise to my Scrum courses - it has proven to be very a popular way to explore Scrum. Last week in Brussels, we took it a step further - I asked the participants to identify their Myths around Scrum. Here is their list. What do you think, Myth or Fact?

Scrum is easy to implement.Scrum helps you recognize problemsIf you do not apply Scrum 100%, you cannot be successful with Scrum.Scrum can only be applied for time-and-material projects.Scrum is only for team playersScrum will solve any problemScrum is inflexibleScrum always worksScrum is a revolutionScrum gets easier over time In my humble opinion, 1 is fact if everyone wants to implement it, 2 is a fact, 3 and 9 are debatable (and probably depend on your definition), and everything else is a myth. What do you think?

... to do better Scrum.

In my Scrum Performance MasterClass Workshop, the participants reflect on how their teams and organisations do Scrum, compare how they do Scrum with Scrum 'by the book,' and create both a long term vision for improving their organization and a list of things they could start Monday morning to begin the improvement process right away.

Here's the list of things my participants identified to start doing on Monday after last week's MasterClass:
Pairing: Two people work on each story. ( See 'Pair & Share, How We Do Sprint Planning 2')Review the Definition of Done in my projectThe Implementation Team, not the Product Owner or other manager, decides on how much work to accept in the Sprint.Improve the quality of the User Stories in my projectMove testing from a separate group to the Implementation TeamHold a retrospective with the Implementation Team and ManagementBuild awareness and acceptance for the Scrum mindset among our customersRecogn…

One of the improvements I made in my Scrum courses and workshops is I commit to answer or address all of the questions which come up. There are always a few questions left over, so I pick them up in my blog.  
After last week's MasterClass, there were a number of unaddressed tickets left on the subject board: How to create interest in ScrumChange managementHow to address Senior Management and get them on boardTeam SkillsScrum of Scrums Let's have a look at the issues, one at a time:

How to create interest in Scrum. A very difficult question to answer briefly. I would seek to create opportunities to learn about Scrum. I would seek to create an interest in improvement. "We are uncovering better ways of ... by doing it and help others to learn to do it." Many of the patterns in Fearless Change are helpful. Sending links to short videos (e.g. TED Talks) and interesting books can be helpful. I have some links in the two blog entries that may be useful. 

Change management. T…

...so that's how Scrum works!


In my Scrum Performance MasterClass Workshop, the participants reflect on how their teams and organisations do Scrum. Then we review Scrum and its values, principles and practices so the participants can create a plan to improve their teams and organizations. Along the way, the participants experience moments of enlightenment - Wow! Eureka! -- in which they suddenly understand essential concepts, relationships and implications for their organization.

Here's a list of findings that caused my participants to say 'Wow!'
Inspect and Adapt: Everybody inspects. Who really adapts? I haven't. This needs to change.We need to raise the percentage of done stories closer to 100% of the team's forecast.The Implementation Team selects the number of stories to implement in the sprint.Technical debt is an important issue - we have to do something about itTest effort accumulates if not automated - this is 'technical debt'How-to-Demo is not t…