Some days ago we had the retrospective meeting and as a kick off for the discussion we wanted to describe the sprint by using one word. Most of my colleagues described their current sprint with “Successful” so we agreed to dig deeper in the topic and understand what happened, what were the factors that contributed…
Self-awareness and self-management are critical skills for any Scrum Master or Agile Coach. We need an awareness of our own emotional state before we can self-manage those emotions. Lack of self-awareness can lead to us not even knowing when we are being domineering, non-collaborative or biased about a topic. Therefore, as a Scrum Master or Agile Coach, that…
I love using games and interactive activities when I share Agile and Scrum with people. It allows me to explain concepts in a much more direct, fun and powerful way than any theory session will do. During the last retrospective meeting, we’ve used the opportunity to engage ourselves in an activity that will allow us to get…
This is what I’ve asked myself during one of my running trainings. I don’t know about the rest of you, but for me, this modern life has become increasingly complicated, busy and chaotic. I find in my long runs a place where I can truly take a timeout from the daily grind and look within,…
Don’t panic. It’s not uncommon for a team to have some unfinished work at the end of the sprint. One of the biggest misconceptions about Scrum is that it is perceived as a silver bullet solution to solve any problems in your organisation. It’s not like that! What Scrum does instead is to help you…
Have you ever been part of a team in which there was a high level of trust? What kind of team is a high-trust team? At a first glance, for me it’s when I know that others have my back, when I don’t have to be the hero every day because I know that one…
Retrospective meetings are a natural fit in any working environment and allow teams to improve practices, handle issues and focus attention on how they work and interact. It’s less important what kind of agile method the team is currently using, as long as they have the opportunity to reflect at the end of every product increment…
“Our life is what our thoughts make it” – Marcus Aurelius Often, when some sort of event is happening, that eventually also captures everyone’s attention, we don’t manage to see or to have the whole picture of it. This is mainly because each one of us have our own perspective on what happened. The topic…
“Don’t do it! If you can avoid it, do not use a scaling framework!” Imagine how puzzled I felt once the trainer kicked off the Scaled Professional Scrum course with this sentence! My enthusiasm dropped immediately but the curiosity grew even stronger: Why does he mean it like this? He got me! The 2 days-course was great…
Agile is a journey, not a destination. You probably already heard this quote, and hopefully you spent some moments to reflect on its truth. When starting from scratch — as it happens in agile transformation projects — the first steps of this journey might not be perfectly fitted to all agile good practices. But, hey!…