The Case for Flow Metrics
Agile teams often struggle with how to size and forecast upcoming work. Flow metrics offer a simple, effective way to solve that problem without the headaches that come…
Organize For Products – Not False Efficiency
Efficiency seems like an important word. Other words like productivity, specialization, capacity, utilization and standardization also sound pretty impressive. These words are important words for optimizing (another word!) repetitive…
Why is Scrum Mastery a Step Toward Leadership?
The journey is about listening, adapting, empowering, and inspiring teams and organisations to create impactful, resilient, and valuable products by fostering the right environment and practices. This article was first…
Embracing Positive Risk: A Path to Innovation
We often think of risk as a negative force, something to be avoided or mitigated. If you ask most middle managers what their main job is, a majority will reflect…
Product Owner Anti-Patterns
TL; DR: Product Owner Anti-Patterns No other role in Scrum can contribute to mediocre outcomes like the Product Owner—garbage in, garbage out—and it does not matter whether that’s due to…
Product Operating Models and Shared Services / Business Operations Teams
While Product Operating Models focus on developing new Products, they have implications and potential benefits for the teams operating the business and supporting these products. Improving the Interface between Product…
Scrum: The Power of Doing Less
From the Scrum Guide: “Scrum is a lightweight framework…” Let’s have a closer look at what this means? From Cambridge Dictionary: Lightweight “Weighing only a little or less…
The Power of Product Thinking
Many organizations approach development with a project mindset: define a scope, complete the work, and move on. It sounds efficient, but it causes a lot of painful side effects. Teams…
How to Handle Multiple Products as a Product Owner
Managing multiple products as a Product Owner presents both challenges and opportunities. In this Responsive Advisors Lightning Round, Professional Scrum Trainers Greg Crown, Jason Malmstadt and I share strategies…
Handling Technical Debt in Scrum: Practical Tips for Teams
In this Responsive Advisors Lightning Round, Professional Scrum Trainer Robb Pieper and I explore how technical debt impacts Scrum teams and whether it can be managed responsibly. Learn how…
What Is Product Leadership?
This leadership style is about creating products that meet customer needs and exceed their expectations, establishing a solid market presence and competitive advantage. This article was first published in the…
Ditch the Unfinished Action Items
TL; DR: Unfinished Action Items: How to Make Retrospectives Useful If your team consistently creates action items during Retrospectives but rarely completes them, you’re not alone. Unfinished action items are…
The 5 Worst Agile Mistakes I’ve Made
This article was tough to write, not because I don’t have enough mistakes to share, but because there are so many! Mistakes are where we learn, and that’s…
What Does It Mean That Scrum Is a Framework? Is it even important…?
What does it mean that “Scrum is a … framework…” (from the Scrum Guide). Let’s give this a closer look. From Cambridge Dictionary: Framework: “A supporting structure around…
What is Scrum of Scrums? | How to Scale Scrum Effectively
In this Responsive Advisors Lightning Round, Professional Scrum Trainers Jason Malmstadt and I, discuss the concept of Scrum of Scrums, a common practice in scaling Scrum across multiple teams.…