An introduction to a series of articles I wrote describing how to start working with Scrum — this article was originally published at goretro. A scholar, full of knowledge and opinions about dharma came to a monastery to learn about Zen. After several weeks, he was sitting with his master, drinking tea. His master refilled his teacup but did not stop pouring when the cup was full…

A moment to stand still and think, a moment for serendipity — this article was originally published at goretro. This is the seventh and final article in the Starting with Scrum series. Have a look at this cover article for an overview of the series. In this article, we discuss the final event of the sprint, the Retrospective. What is the Sprint Retrospective? According to the Scrum…

Satisfying our addiction to statuses and command & control — What happens when you tell Scrum Teams that their performance review will depend on their predictability as a team? Easy, within no time you will have teams that are 100% predictable. That is Goodhart’s Law in action: make any metric into a target and it ceases to be a good…

A moment to round up the Sprint, evaluate results and think about the next step — this article was originally published at goretro. This is the sixth article in the Starting with Scrum series. Have a look at this cover article for an overview of the series. In this article, we will talk about the event that concludes the Sprint: the Sprint Review. What is the Sprint Review? According to the…

Keeping the course set out by the Sprint Goal, tweaking the plan made in Sprint Planning — this article was originally published at goretro. This is the fifth article in the Starting with Scrum series. Have a look at this cover article for an overview of the series. In this article, we discuss the one event that happens every single day of the Sprint and which helps…

Scrum is a framework and a framework is usually taken down after its purpose has been realised. What would that look like with Scrum? — “What about this user story?” “Oh yeah, we did that two sprints ago!” “That one?” “No idea, let me check. Yes, it’s done, but no idea when.” This was the typical kind of conversation we had during the refinement of a team I worked with recently. Mind you, they were…

The moment the Sprint starts, nowhere to hide, now we really have to ‘be’ Agile — this article was originally published at goretro. This is the fourth article in the ‘Starting with Scrum’ series. Have a look at this cover article for an overview of the series. In this article, we pick up where we left off and get started with the first Sprint! What is Sprint Planning? If you…

By helping a Management Team embrace Scrum. — I often notice how Scrum Teams get caught up in endless discussions about how Scrum should be done. These are often not about solving the problem at hand, but about fitting some theoretical interpretation of Scrum. Discussions can become quite dogmatic and polarising. …

How do we prepare for our first Sprint? That is what the Backlog Refinement is for! — this article was originally published at goretro. This is the third article in the ‘Starting with Scrum’ series. Have a look at this cover article for an overview of the series. In this article, we pick up where we left off, and focus on the next step: refining the backlog…