Scrum

While digital tools can help teams visualise and manage the Product Backlog, they also introduce challenges that can impact collaboration and transparency…

Complex digital tools can hinder team collaboration and ownership of Sprint Backlog management.

A pretty common question I get asked when teaching Scrum is about the Scrum Master as a second role for a Developer or the Product Owner. While this is a typical implementation, and several other authors are arguing for the Scrum Master to be a temporary, part-time or rotating role among the rest of the Scrum Team, I have to disagree for three primary reasons…

Managers constantly watching over agile teams during sprints destroys team autonomy, reduces accountability, and undermines the motivation that comes from self-organisation.

I like to think of the retrospective as a piece of art and the facilitator (usually the Scrum Master) has to learn to be the artist. This meeting is totally in the hands of the facilitator, so you can easily think that it is about the facilitator. It is not: providing a process for a retrospective is very much different from being the star of that meeting. Your role as a facilitator is to provide a structure and otherwise stay out of the way, letting the team to be on the stage.

One of the assumptions of a retrospective is that the team should come out with concrete action items they will work on to become better. While this is the preferred way, it is not the only one.

Usually the retrospective is done within the team, but in some cases there might be somebody more or somebody less…

Following the Agile Manifesto’s advice to reflect at regular intervals creates superficial continuous improvement that fails to address deeper systemic issues.

Suppose you need to choose the Scrum Master for your team and there is no ’natural’ candidate available. Suppose you have two alternatives who could do the job, but you are not sure who fits best?.