Free games, templates, formats, and inspiration for Scrum Teams

We love to create games, exercises, visuals, and other things that are helpful to Scrum Teams. On this page, we share what materials we can share freely. This is one small way we want to contribute to the community that we’ve learned so much from. And we also hope that we can contribute — in a small way — to making work more enjoyable, fun and liberating.

You can find more free downloads in our online shop. We also offer physical versions of most of the card exercises.

Free Online Tools

• Check for Zombie Scrum with our free online symptom checker. You receive a nice profile with extensive feedback afterward;
• Measure Team Morale with our free tool TeamMetrics. You receive a nice profile with extensive feedback afterward;

Free White Papers

• Scrum: A Framework to Reduce Risk and Deliver Value Sooner. An overview of the Scrum Framework, for people new to Scrum and those who’d like to refresh their understanding.
• Liberating Structures — an Antidote to Zombie Scrum. In this paper, we describe what Zombie Scrum is about and offer tangible examples of how to recognize, treat, and prevent Zombie Scrum by using Liberating Structures.
• The 8 Stances of a Scrum Master. In this paper, our personal experiences of being a Scrum Master are captured by describing the preferred and misunderstood stances. In addition to the English version, a Brazilian-Portuguese version was created by Fábio Fioratti Azevedo and Danilo Almeida.

Check out patreon.com/liberators

Free Posters & Illustrations

• Enjoy this comic in which we explain the ‘why’ of Scrum;
• A folder with visualizations for myths and misunderstandings in the Scrum Framework. They accompany our on-going series of Scrum Mythbusters (art by Thea Schukken);
• A 1–2-Tweet template (PDF) for gathering insights and new ideas during workshops, training, and other events (art by Thea Schukken);
• An Improvement Canvas (PDF) for making improvements specific and practical. This is excellent for Sprint Retrospectives or to translate other learnings into the next steps, as a team or individually (art by Thea Schukken). Note that we did not invent the canvas, but created a nice PDF for it;
• A template for the Liberating Structure Ecocycle Planning (PDF). We’ve found this a very helpful tool for cleaning up Product Backlogs, stopping unproductive behavior (as teams), and for personal coaching. Read more about using this model here. Note that we did not invent the model, but created a nice PDF for it;
• A Stakeholder Map (PDF). This is an excellent tool to help Product Owners map their stakeholders and identify strategies to involve them. We did not invent the model, but merely created a nice PDF for it;
• A template for Purpose To Practice (PDF). This is part of a powerful Liberating Structure called Purpose to Practice and can help create enduring initiatives. Great for starting and refreshing why and how a group works together;
• A poster to explain and structure Conversation Cafe (PDF). This is one of our favorite Liberating Structures for creating powerful, personal conversations about common challenges;
• A poster with 10 strategies (PDF) to break down work on a Product Backlog;

Free Games, Exercises, and Icebreakers

• An entire board (Trello) with inspiring combinations of LS that we’ve used during the various meetups of the Liberating Structures User Group of The Netherlands. Use the Chrome plug-in ‘Scrum for Trello’ to make the timeboxes work and add up automatically;
• An entire board (Trello) with many, many exercises, icebreakers, energizers, and other formats we’ve come up with (or collected). We are still busy translating them to English and adding more detailed descriptions. But it may be helpful to look around and find inspiration;
• 40 Seconds of Scrum (PDF) is a game you can play with Scrum Teams to refresh core concepts related to Agile software development. The original idea is by Barry Heins. Read more about how to play this game here (art by Fonkel);
• 10 Scrum Cases (PDF). This deck contains 10 real-life cases that are inspired by our own experiences and those of the people we frequently work with. This deck is a subset. You can purchase all 52 cases for a small fee in our webshop. Use these cases for your community of Scrum Masters, as conversation starters in and around your Scrum Team, or put your own understanding of Scrum to the test. And no, there is no “right answer” :)

Other Free Resources

• Here is a thorough explanation of the Scrum Framework (44 min) in podcast-format.
• A PDF with the presentation we provided for the Agile Turkey Online Event. The topic we talked about was “The #1 Strategy to Fight Zombie Scrum!”.

Outcomes of meetups & workshops

• A PDF with the presentation we used during the Wise Crowds meetup on September 11, 2020. We used Wise Crowds to explore the challenge raised by Linda van Sinten: “How to implement Scrum when the complexity exists more in the environment of the Scrum Team than in the work itself?”.
• A PDF with the presentation we used during the Wise Crowds meetup on September 8, 2020. We used Wise Crowds to explore the challenge raised by Mark Marijnissen: in a result-driven workplace, how do you shift the focus from mechanics to humans? The presentation includes ideas from the 55 participants.