Nearly every client I work with asks me this question at some point. The Scrum Guide offers very limited guidance, suggesting 3-9 people per team (exclusive of ScrumMaster and Product Owner), without giving reasons or context for those numbers. There isn’t one, universally ...continue reading

In software development work, a design pattern is a description of a solution to a recurring problem. It outlines the elements that are necessary to solve the problem, including context and the consequences of certain actions, without prompting the reader to solve the problem a ...continue reading

A design pattern is a description of a solution to a recurring problem. It outlines the elements that are necessary to solve the challenge without prompting the reader to address the issue in a specific way. Unfortunately, we also regularly see recurring patterns of ineffective ...continue reading

Frequently in workshops, I get asked, “Where shouldn’t we use Scrum?” The short answer is there are lots of instances where the Scrum framework doesn’t fit. However, to give a more complete and effective answer to this question, first we need to have an idea of why and when Scrum ...continue reading

It is common in the early stages of Scrum implementation for there to be misunderstandings about what User Stories are for and what makes them useful. A ScrumMaster’s task is to be able to help the Team and Product Owner when they are faced with ineffective User Stories as they ...continue reading

The Team is in the middle of a Sprint, but the Product Owner has discovered unplanned work and interrupts their flow mid-Sprint to deal with it because it’s now “high-priority.” How should a ScrumMaster deal with this or similar Scrum Anti-Patterns? An anti-pattern is a common ...continue reading

What does it take to be a Great ScrumMaster? When I was in my early years as a Scrum Trainer, circa 2011, it was noticeable to me that while there was a plethora of content out there explaining the role of the ScrumMaster and what qualities you want in a person for the role, ...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

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 content has been updated. 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 ...continue reading