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- A Jargon-Free Introduction to Scrum
- about this site
- About Us - Agile Pain Relief Consulting
- Advanced Certified Scrum Master (A-CSM)
- Advanced ScrumMaster Certification: Is the A-CSM Worth It?
- AI/LLM Policy
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- Blog archive
- Building High-Performance Organizations Game
- Certified Scrum Developer (CSD) - Non-Technical
- Certified Scrum Developer (CSD) - Technical
- Certified Scrum Master (CSM)
- Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO)
- Certified Scrum Professional – ScrumMaster (CSP-SM)
- Choose the Right Scrum Training for Your Needs
- Contact
- CSM vs CSPO: Which Scrum Certification Should You Get?
- Effective Scrum
- FAQs and Policies
- Get the Most Out of Your Certified Scrum Product Owner Training
- Get the Most Out of Your Certified ScrumMaster Training
- glossary
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- New to Scrum
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- Sample Systems Thinking Conversation
- Scrum and Agile Games
- Scrum Better with Kanban (SBK)
- Scrum Learning Library
- Testimonials
- Thank you
- The Complete Guide to CSM Certification
- The Complete Guide to CSPO Certification
- The Guide to Effective Agile Retrospectives
- The Story of a Sprint
- Virtual Lean Coffee
- Webinar Registration Confirmed
- What Is Scrum? – In a Nutshell
- What Is Scrum? A Practitioner’s Guide
- Where is AI Taking Software Development in 2026?
Articles
- $50 Million Phoenix Fix – Avoiding Disaster With Scrum
- Agile Bonuses - The Damage They Do
- Agile Change or Adoption Always Starts with Why
- Agile Change or Adoption: Create a Vision
- Agile Change or Adoption: Define Small Organizational Changes
- Agile Change or Adoption: Sense Your Current Culture
- Agile Change or Adoption: the Steps to Go from “Why” to “How”
- Agile Change or Adoption: Turn Vision into Strategy
- Agile Games for Making Retrospectives Interesting
- Agile Gurus or Thought Leaders?
- Agile Metrics
- Agile Retrospectives
- Agile Voices Finally
- Agile in a Tweet
- Agile and Scrum Smells
- Agile Tools for Job Search - An Evolving Post
- AI Code Generation and the Tennis Kata
- AI Chatbots for Agile Coaches: Why They Fail
- A Rebuttal of Groupthink
- AI-Generated Code Quality and the Challenges we all face
- Scrum Anti-Patterns: The Hardening Sprint
- Basic Explanation of the Different Parts of Agile Planning
- Be Better with Better Data
- Bell Curves and Measuring Badly
- “Because Our Competitors Are” is No Reason to Become an Agile Organization
- Beyond Scrum Blog Series
- Blind Estimation for Planning Poker
- Characteristics of Effective Scrum Teams
- Choosing a Scrum Sprint Length – Shorter Beats Longer
- Coaching Self Organizing Teams
- Scrum By Example - Waiting Too Long to Create Acceptance Criteria
- Collaboration, Over Work in Isolation
- Creativity for Agile Teams
- Scrum by Example – Feeling Pain from Your Daily Scrum?
- Daily Stand-up Variations
- Scrum by Example – How to Deal with Bad User Stories as a ScrumMaster
- Definition of Done vs. User Stories vs. Acceptance Criteria
- Do You Suspect You Have a Less than Productive Person on Your Team?
- Does Scrum Work? Hell Yes!!! Why
- Does Your Grocery Store Limit Work in Progress?
- Don't Inflict Scrum or Kanban on Teams
- Early Feedback Reduces Anger and Frustration
- Drowning in an Oversized Product Backlog? Story Mapping Is Your Life Raft
- Scrum by Example – Don't Let Sprint Review be a Missed Opportunity
- Example Mapping: Your Secret Weapon for Effective Acceptance Criteria
- Forcing People Back to the Office
- Future Perspective for Change: Why Backcasting Helps Get You Where You Want to Be
- GenAI and the Feature Factory: Automating Away Collaboration
- GenAI vs Human Intelligence - a Reality Check
- GenAI Code Quality – The Fundamental Flaws and How Bluffing Makes It Worse
- Systems Thinking with GenAI: Solve Deep Team Problems
- Hidden Complexity Tax: How It Kills Organizational Resilience
- Good Agendas Make Great Meetings
- Giving and Taking Design Criticism – with Rebecca Wirfs-Brock
- How Escape Rooms Teach About Teams
- Scrum by Example - How Sprint Planning Mistakes Can Derail a Team
- How to Be an Effective Manager in Scrum
- How to Build a Powerful Team from Scratch
- How to Cross-Skill and Grow T-shaped Team Members
- How to Get the C-Suite to Support Agile
- In Agile, Where Change is Valued, Why Is a Stable Team So Important?
- Human-Powered AI - A Fun Way to Understand How GenAI Really Works
- Influence: Science and Practice - other sources
- Influence – how and why does it work
- Is AI Making Your Organization Fragile or More Resilient
- Is There a Best Day to Start and Finish a Sprint?
- Is the Scrum Guide Wrong About the Product Owner?
- Is there Value in the Noika Test
- Is Your Scrum Team Good Enough?
- It’s not Scrum if…
- JIRA is Not Agile
- The Jenga Effect: Why Clients Don't Make Good Product Owners
- Learning Best Approaches for your Brain Slide Deck
- Kanban Portfolio View
- Learning Scrum through Games
- Less is More: Creating Resilient Systems Through Simplicity
- Learning Story Mapping Through Exercises
- Lifecycle of a User Story
- Meeting Ground Rules Updated
- Measurement for Scrum – What are Appropriate Measures?
- Minimalist Coding Style
- Minimally Agile
- Mismeasurement Mess - IRCC Leads the Way
- Misconceptions with Test Driven Development
- Misuse of Velocity in Agile Projects
- The Modern Guide to the Daily Scrum Meeting
- More Notes on Story Splitting
- Multiple Returns from a Single Method
- Mythbusting - Collective Code Ownership
- New People on Your Project
- Onboard New People Without Losing Scrum Team Magic
- Pair Programming vs. Code Reviews - It's a no Brainer
- Portfolio Management
- Portfolio Management - Idle Teams
- Planning a Change in Career? Laid Off?
- Portfolio Management with Upstream and Downstream Teams
- Product Owner Isn't Just a Business Analyst on Steroids
- Product Owners and the Art of Saying NO
- Recommended Books for Scrum Product Owners
- Recommended Books for Scrum Developers
- Recommended Books for Scrum Masters
- Reinventing Existing Products – Big Bite vs Small Nibble Rewrites
- Red-Yellow-Green Status Reports and Other Models - How They Should and Shouldn’t Be Used
- Reviewing the Review Process for Agile 2009
- Scrum by Example – Same Old Song in Sprint Retrospective
- Scrum Alone is Not Enough
- Scrum Anti-Patterns: Unplanned Work Disrupting the Sprint
- Scrum Anti-Patterns: Micromanagement
- Scrum by Example – The Story of an Incomplete Sprint
- Scrum Development Team – Who’s In It?
- Scrum is Simple and Incomplete
- Scrum by Example - More Interruptions
- Product Backlog Refinement in Action (Scrum by Example)
- Scrum by Example - Is Your Scrum Team a Victim of Scrummerfall?
- Scrum by Example – How to Handle Production Support Issues in Scrum
- What is the Recommended Scrum Team Size?
- Scrum Without Removing Impediments Isn't Scrum
- Scrum by Example – ScrumMaster for Three Teams? What are the Alternatives?
- Scrum by Example - Impediments are Holding Back the Team
- Scrum By Example – Learning How to Estimate
- Scrum By Example – New People on the Team
- Scrum by Example – Overtime on a Scrum Team is an Unhealthy Sign
- Scrum by Example – Stop Digging New Holes
- Scrum By Example – Story Splitting Fun
- Scrum by Example – Stuck Waiting for Other Teams
- Scrum By Example - The Team Collaborate on Acceptance Criteria
- Scrum By Example – Technical Debt is Slowing the Team
- Scrum by Example – Technical User Stories or The Team Try to Pull a Fast One on the Product Owner
- Scrum By Example – The Team Gets Bottlenecked
- Scrum By Example – The Team Learn How to Learn
- Simplicity
- Scrum by Example - The Trouble with Sprint Burndowns
- Software Development is Not a Form of Construction
- Solve your Task Estimation problem in Scrum
- Specialists Are Overrated
- Speed Trap: How the Obsession with Speed is Building Fragile Organizations
- Sprint Goals Provide Purpose: A Guide
- Sprint Planning from Hell
- Stable Teams Really Do Matter
- Story Splitting – a Play – Spike Sherman
- Taking Organizational Improvement Seriously - Case Study
- Story Slicing, How Small is Enough?
- Taking Organizational Improvement with Scrum Seriously
- TDD Randori Session
- Scrum by Example – Team Friction Inspires Working Agreements
- Test Driven Development is Not a Quality Assurance Technique
- TDD Randori Workshop
- Test Driven Development vs Plain Old Unit Testing
- The Culture Game - Book Review
- The Human Cost of GenAI
- The Sprint Backlog: A Truly Complete Guide with Examples
- The Real Cost of AI-Generated Code: It's Not All It's Cracked Up To Be
- The Role of Agile Managers: Why Job Titles Are Dangerous
- The Spotify Model of Scaling - Spotify Doesn’t Use It, Neither Should You
- Impact Mapping – What It is, in Depth, with Examples
- Tools, Tools, Tools
- Two Key Things for Sprint Retrospective Facilitation
- Unpacking Interruptions- Why Your Team Struggles to Get Things Done
- Using GenAI to Code? Not So Fast
- Vision to User Stories - What is the Best Flow?
- Welcome to the High-Performance Teams Game
- When to stop holding retrospectives?
- What Are the Limits of the Scrum Framework?
- What United Can Teach Us About Building Systems
- Why AI Doesn't Replace Your ScrumMaster (and probably never will)
- Why are Group Decision-making Techniques Important?
- Why Having a Tech Lead or Manager as Scrum Master is a Bad Idea
- Why Scrum Works??
- Why Scrum Works?
- Why are we so easily influenced? Weapons of Influence
- Will AI Make the Federal Government More Efficient or Just More Busy?
- Yahoo Bans Work from Home – an Alternative Perspective
- Working at a Distance is Hard
Glossary Terms
- 10 Minute Build
- Acceptance Criteria
- Agile
- Agile Architectural Patterns
- Agile Architects
- Agile Architecture
- Agile Business Intelligence
- Agile Contracts
- Agile Documentation
- Agile for Embedded Software
- Agile Engineering Practices
- Agile Game Development
- Agile Government
- Agile Hardware
- Agile Mainframe Development
- Agile Sales and Marketing
- Agile Outside of Software
- Agile Schools
- Agile Anti-Patterns
- Approval Tests
- Appreciative Inquiry
- ARC Motivational Model
- Behaviour Driven Development [BDD]
- Blame Chet
- Bottlenecks
- Business Analyst in Scrum
- Trunk Based Development
- Case Studies
- Causal Loop Diagram
- Coaching
- Code Reviews
- Code Smells
- Colocation
- Community of Practice
- Collective Code Ownership
- Complexity and the Cynefin Framework
- Cross-Functional Teams
- Continuous Integration [CI]
- Continuous Delivery and Deployment
- Core Protocols
- Cross-Skilling
- Cumulative Flow Diagram [CFD]
- Daily Scrum
- Cycle Time
- Decision Making Tools
- Definition of Done
- Developers
- Dependencies
- Definition of Ready
- DevOps
- Distributed Teams
- Effective Teams
- Dot Voting
- Diversity
- Empathy Map
- Ensemble (formerly Mob) Programming
- Explainer Video MVP
- Estimation
- Extreme Programming
- Facilitation
- Failure Bow
- Failure Demand
- Failure Modes
- Fake Agile - Anti-Pattern
- Fake Door MVP
- Feedback
- Feature Factory - Anti-Pattern
- Forecasting
- Impact Mapping
- Impediments
- Improvement Experiments
- Iterative and Incremental Development
- Kanban
- Interruptions
- INVEST
- Last Responsible Moment
- Lean Software Development
- Lean Startup
- Agile/Lean UX
- Lean Startup Experiments
- Legacy Code and Systems
- Liberating Structures
- Large Scale Scrum
- Minimum Viable Product [MVP]
- Metrics and Measurement
- Morale
- Niko-Niko
- Motivation
- Multitasking
- Organizational Structure
- Onboarding
- NoEstimates
- Pair Programming
- Part-time Team Members
- Portfolio Management
- Persona
- Personal README
- Prioritization
- Product Backlog
- Product Owner Role
- Product Backlog Refinement
- Project vs. Product
- Psychological Safety
- Production Support
- Pull Requests
- Quality Assurance in Scrum
- Refactoring
- Resource Utilization Trap
- Scaled Agile Framework
- Roadmaps and Strategy
- Safety Check
- SCARF Model
- Scaling and Large Teams
- Scrum
- Scrum Team
- ScrumMaster Anti-Patterns
- Scrum vs Kanban
- ScrumMaster Role
- Scrummerfall - Anti-Pattern
- Security in Scrum
- Self-Organization
- Servant Leadership
- Self-Selecting Teams
- Special Teams
- Slack
- Sprint Backlog
- Spotify Model
- Sprint Burndown
- Sprint
- Sprint Goal
- Sprint Planning
- Sprint Length
- Sprint Retrospective
- Sprint Review
- Stable Teams
- Story Mapping
- Swarming
- Systems Thinking
- TDD vs BDD
- Team Size
- Team Formation Models
- Team Launch
- Tech Debt Stories
- Technical Debt
- Test Driven Development [TDD]
- Testing
- Unit Testing
- User Story
- User Story Splitting
- Theory of Constraints
- Vision
- Wizard of Oz MVP
- When to Use Scrum
- Work in Progress
- Working Agreements
- Work Week
- Zoom Fatigue
- Zero Bugs
- AI and Skill Atrophy - Anti-Pattern
Get Certified
Explore what Scrum is and how to make it work for you in our Scrum Certification training. Hands-on learning will guide you to improve teamwork, deliver quick feedback, and achieve better products and results.
Registration is now open for workshops:
About this course
Focuses on the role of the team and the ScrumMaster. Get the skills and practical experience necessary to improve teamwork, take the exam, and advance your career with a certification that is in high demand today. Often the best fit for anyone new to Scrum.
Learning and Benefits
Relatable Scenarios
Learn on-the-job applications of key Scrum concepts, skills, principles, along with practical solutions that you can apply the next day for difficult, real-life situations.
Respected Certification
Everything you need to earn your Scrum Alliance® ScrumMaster certification, including exam fee and membership, and so much more.
Practical Exercises
With focus on the challenges that real teams face, and tools to dig deeper. You don’t need more boring Scrum theory. You need something you can sink your teeth into to see immediate results.
Jargon-Free Learning
This workshop is not just for software development or people with a computer science degree. We’ve helped many non-software teams with Scrum.
Career Advancement
Use Scrum knowledge to standout at work, get paid more, and impress your customer, all without burning out.
GenAI for Systems Thinking
Learn the basics of using Generative AI as a tool to support Systems Thinking in your ScrumMaster role. Explore how to leverage GenAI to help uncover patterns, and think more deeply about the systems your team operates in.
Ongoing Support
Your learning doesn’t stop when the workshop ends. You get lifetime access to all course materials, plus a followup email series designed to reinforce your learning objectives and help you apply what you’ve learned on the job.