Scrum by Example is a narrative-style blog series designed to help people new to Scrum, especially new ScrumMasters. If you are new to the series, we recommend you check out the introduction to learn more about the series is and discover other helpful articles. Dramatis Personae ...continue reading

As we discussed in “Specialists Are Overrated,” developing cross-skills and “T-Shaped” people in a team has many benefits – for the team/organization itself, the customer, and the individual. That’s all fine and good to say, but how do you figure out where to start? There ...continue reading

“Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.” – Agile Manifesto “Watch the baton, not the runner.” – D. Reinertsen, 2007[1] Traditionally, notions of efficiency have been to minimize cost by utilizing experts (i.e. ...continue reading

(This article is part of the Beyond Scrum series) We’ve all experienced the pain of having someone impose a change on us – it doesn’t work. Forcing change conflicts with the essential human need for autonomy – No one likes being told what to do (if they didn’t ask to be). ...continue reading

There are many ways to redefine a work environment to support greater creativity that have been discovered through experience, experimentation, and accident. At the same time, modern neuroscience suggests guidelines for deliberately designing conditions to enhance creativity, ...continue reading

Effective testing should be done to ensure that a Product solves the business problem, in the way it was intended. It also seeks to prove that no change to the Product harms an existing working system. (It’s a much deeper topic than we can cover here.) These are the goals of ...continue reading

No, of course not. So when should your Team start and end Sprints? The usual rules of Scrum apply – ask the Team. Run an experiment. There is an instinctive tendency to want to wrap up things at the end of the work week so we can unplug our brains for the weekend, and start ...continue reading

(This article is part of the Beyond Scrum series) I’m frequently asked if a Tester, Business Analyst, User Experience (UX) person, Database Analyst, or Security Expert is part of the Scrum team? Short answer: Yes. Long answer: many people misunderstand the Scrum Guide. Scrum ...continue reading

Definition of “Done” The ScrumGuide says that: “When a Product Backlog item or an Increment is described as ‘Done’, everyone must understand what ‘Done’ means.” I can promise you, that sentence and the paragraphs that follow are the most poorly understood aspects of the ...continue reading

In April 2017, United Airlines made global headlines when they forcibly removed one passenger (David Dao) who had already boarded the flight, to accommodate crew flying to another destination. The flight staff called the airport police and Dao was hurt as he was dragged off the ...continue reading