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5 Crucial Servant Leadership Skills For Scrum Masters October 09, 2013
Servant leadership strives to generate a competitive advantage by enabling great team work and generate even greater form of human capital....
Four Retrospective Techniques - Part II May 07, 2013
In the first part of this article, I discussed two Retrospective techniques, the basic one and the starfish Retrospective technique....
Four Retrospective Techniques - Part I November 11, 2012
Retrospectives provide opportunities to teams to inspect their process they are current using, and continuously improve it....
Should the Product Owner Attend Daily Scrum, Product Owner and Team Engagement September 24, 2012
One of the most commonly asked question by the Product Owners (and at times other Scrum Team members) is, should the Product Owner attend the Daily Scrum? And one of the most hotly debated one is, should the Product Owner attend the Retrospective mee...
Are You Making These Review Mistakes? August 28, 2012
It is very difficult for Teams to inspect and adapt effectively if they fail to conduct a meaningful Review meetings....
Is Agile for project delivery only? June 15, 2012
In many organizations Agile is considered a solution to their project delivery problems. They are struggling with long delivery cycles, low quality and higher costs. Their competition is responding faster to customer needs and changing market dynami...
3 Common Scrum Master Mistakes - Part II May 01, 2012
In the first part, we discussed common mistakes. Now, we will focus on some of the consequences of these mistakes, typical causes and a few ideas that can help you to avoid making these mistakes....
3 Common Scrum Master Mistakes - Part I April 18, 2012
It is difficult for some Scrum Masters to stick to their servant leader role. Because of lack of support and limited experience, they fall back on what they know best ...
7 Reasons Why Your Team Does not Get to Done April 03, 2012
Many Agile and Scrum Teams struggle with very long release cycles. Sprint after Sprint, they produce work, but the work is not shippable, it is not Done....
3 Reasons Why a Cross Functional Team is Hard to Find March 27, 2012
A cross functional Team is crucial to get items to Done. However, not many Agile Teams become a cross functional Team. Some of the most important reasons they struggle to become a cross functional Team are...
Are You Making These Retrospective Meeting Mistakes? March 10, 2012
Continuous improvement is at the heart of Agile. Retrospectives provide opportunities to the Teams to inspect their process, and continuously improve it. Many Teams fail to take advantage of this and thus fail to improve. ...
Product Backlog Grooming February 12, 2012
Product Backlog is a living document that is updated continuously. It contains all the requirements, functional and non-functional. After a while, it tends to become messy. It needs regular upkeep, or grooming....
How to become a great Product Owner? January 10, 2012
Of all three Scrum roles, the Product Owner is by far the most misunderstood role. What is the core responsibility of the Product Owner? The typical answers that come out are...
Advantages of Agile and Scrum November 20, 2011
Curious about benefits of Agile and Scrum? Agile and Scrum enable you to...
2 Reasons Why Your Impediments Don't Get Removed August 01, 2011
Daily Scrum kicks off. The Team starts to gather around the Scrum board. They go through the paces as they are supposed to. Every team member answers three questions. There is a familiar pattern in the way they are reporting the impediments....
Definition of Done July 07, 2011
The Sprint has just ended. The team has completed a lot of work and they feel comfortable going into the review meeting. The Product Owner has been working with the team, although not on consistent basis, but the collaboration is getting better. ...
3 Reasons Why Teams Struggle to Self Organize May 20, 2011
The teams where one or a few team members are more skilled than the rest of the team struggle the most with self organization. The skills gap is rather significant within these teams. So these teams are 'led' by a person (or a couple of persons)....
Proxy Product Owner Role April 06, 2011
The Product Owners are like a ‘mini CEOs’. CEOs are held responsible for return on investment and are answerable to their stakeholders. Not many companies go around having a proxy CEO. Yet somehow, several companies feel comfortable in...
Sprint Zero - A Tool To Hide Waterfall Legacy February 25, 2011
Sprint zero is widely used antipattern to hide bigger and uglier issues. People using Sprint zero state different reasons for using Sprint zero. Some of the very common reasons include...
3 Reasons Why Scrum Masters Struggle to Become Servant Leaders December 12, 2010
This is one of the most common pitfalls. The lure of being a manager is too strong. Knowingly, or unknowingly people keep falling into this trap....
How to Conduct an Effective Daily Scrum? October 05, 2010
The Daily Scrum is a 15 minutes time-boxed meeting that enables the Team to inspect and adapt on daily basis. It helps the Team to focus on the its plan for the Sprint (Sprint Backlog) and take appropriate actions immediately, where needed....