Unlocking Continuous Improvement and Team Empowerment — In the realm of Agile methodologies, retrospectives hold a special and pivotal role. They serve as the crucible in which teams convene to examine their past performances, unearth underlying issues, and set a course for improvement. However, for certain teams, the act of opening up and engaging in these retrospectives…

When I first heard the quote “culture follows structure,” I loved it. It was liberating in some way — to change an organization, doing something more than talking about values or visions. The sentence talks to me about action, about breaking the existing hierarchical power structure to start fresh. To…

Three days surrounded by smart, positive, and friendly people — The global Scrum community is vivid, open to newcomers, and focused on the right challenges. This is how I summarize my experience at the Global Scrum Gathering Amsterdam 2023 in one phrase. As my employer Worldline sponsored my participation, I want to give a detailed report of the event. Overall…

The movie The Matrix, seen through Agile eyes — 1999 was the year The Matrix came out. I had the fortune to see it on the second evening of the Lowlands festival in The Netherlands. After the last band played, they rolled down a huge screen at the main stage and we all lay around on the grass and…

Unlock the power to constantly improve your team. — A few years ago, I started my new job as a Scrum Master. This time, I decided to question everything I had done during my previous employment and start from scratch. I already had a set of templates, best practices, and experiences from previous positions, but I was excited to…

By Refining the Implementation of Team, Events and Artifacts — One of my favourite quotes about the Scrum framework comes from Craig Larman and Bas Vodde when they discuss why Scrum has been so popular. The conclusion they land on is that: Scrum hits an ideal balance between abstract principles and concrete practices. Scrum is beautiful in its simplicity. It…

What was initially a mantra that attracted me to Scrum Mastery and Agile Coaching changed into a real situation I had to deal with. — Making One’s Self Redundant “The goal of a Scrum Master is to make themselves redundant” Romantic as it may sound, this is the mantra that has attracted me to the Scrum Mastery career path. While I could see other Scrum Masters deeply involved in their team’s ways of working and decision making, I trained…

From my series ‘Does Scrum Hold up to Scrutiny?’ Last week I finished my series “Does Scrum Hold up to Scrutiny?”. I wanted to assess every line critically and every word in the Scrum Guide 2020 to see if it makes sense to me. Overall, I can confirm that the…

It's a week-old Cross-functional domain Team. Scene: Daily Scrum. We crossed the time box many days during our first Sprint. There comes the suggestion from the product owner, “ Let's extend our daily scrum timebox”. Some team members supported his cause. At that time, as a Scrum Master who followed…