I have my own biases, having seen co-located teams work very well and having struggled with "dislocated" teams, I often recommend my clients to reconsider "dislocated" teams. And by "dislocation" I am not saying you cannot have teams ten time zones away. What I mean by a "dislocated" team is when three team members are… Continue reading Remote Teams and Virtual Facilitation
Category: Organization
[Product Owner – Dev. Team] Ladder of Empowerment
"Scrum Teams are self-organizing and cross-functional. Self-organizing teams choose how best to accomplish their work, rather than being directed by others outside the team." - The Scrum Guide. When the whole Scrum Team is self-organizing (in addition to the Dev. Team being self-organizing in executing the Sprint Backlog), understanding the context of Product Owner -… Continue reading [Product Owner – Dev. Team] Ladder of Empowerment
Measuring the Performance of a Scrum Master
Someone asked me this question in LinkedIn "In your opinion, how do you measure a scrum master’s performance?" There are some good answers in the comments, and I thought I will elaborate on my perspective a bit more. To answer this question, we have to understand the dimensions of Scrum Master's work and the context under… Continue reading Measuring the Performance of a Scrum Master
Dysfunctional Product Owner Patterns
One PO per Development Team instead of one PO per Product Multiple PO for multiple smaller related "products" (e.g. PO for Android PowerPoint, PO for iPhone PowerPoint, PO for Windows Desktop PowerPoint, PO for Mac PowerPoint, PO for PowerPoint 365) There is only ONE product here - PowerPoint. Android, iPhone, Windows Desktop, etc are different… Continue reading Dysfunctional Product Owner Patterns
Scaling Scrum:Why Scrum Masters SHOULD NOT be coordinating between Development Teams
The role of a Scrum Master is not that of a coordinator. They should not create dependency for the Development Team (on themselves)
Scrum: What is the difference between “Undone Work” and “Incomplete Work”?
All work that needs to be done by cross-functional (Product) Development Team is in the Product Backlog. Each item in the product backlog (product backlog item, PBI for short) is expressed in a way such that the value of PBI is transparent to the Product Owner. During the Sprint, the Development Team works on the… Continue reading Scrum: What is the difference between “Undone Work” and “Incomplete Work”?
Scrum is not a Substitute for Common Sense
Have you encountered these situations below? We are adopting Scrum, I want my team/management/organization to listen to me, but they are not listening to me, what should I do? Scrum says self-organizing teams, so I (manager/scrum master) am going let them figure out everything. Am I doing it right? We want our estimates to be accurate,… Continue reading Scrum is not a Substitute for Common Sense
Helping Teams and Organizations be Agile 