Have you ever done a Certified Scrum Training surrounded by BMW motor cycles in a BMW pavilion? Peter Hundermark, Certified Scrum Coach, Founder of Scrum Sense and a good friend of mine, organized the recent Certified Scrum Training I gave in Cape Town, South Africa.
26 people came to this event and became Certified ScrumMasters. We [...]

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“Transforming the World of Work” – I was so exited when I read the new vision statement of the Scrum Alliance under the Scrum Alliance logo this week.  We - Jim Cundiff, Scrum Alliance, Peter Hundermark, Scrum Sense and myself helped to start the Scrum User Group South Africa this week in Cape Town and in [...]

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Die am wenigsten analysierteste Rolle in der agilen Software Entwicklung ist die des Managers, also des Managements. Bei keiner anderern Rolle wird soviel mit Vorurteilen, Geringschätzungen und falschen Bildern gearbeitet wie hier. “Manager haben keine Ahnung.” “Manager wissen nicht, wie man Software entwickelt” “Alles wäre viel besser, wenn wir keine Manager hätten.
In meinem Buch hatte [...]

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A new star was expected
When we first heard about Mingle everyone expected a new approach in using Scrum Tools. In one respect Mingle fulfilled our expectations in others it did not. Mingle went totally in the direction of using the story card metaphor for its Scrum Tool. From a Product Owner point of view it looks very [...]

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Good morning to all. Sorry for not writing a couple of days. I tried to do some vacation and failed. Instead of spending my vacation with everything else then work, I spent almost 60% of my holidays on reading emails, visiting customers and coaching people.
I got reminded about this again, when I was hearing to [...]

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Die Rolle Anwender kommt in der ursprünglichen Formulierung von Scrum ebenfalls nicht vor. Sie ist jedoch zunächst als Konzept, als Rolle, ebenso wichtig wie der Customer. Die Rolle des Users hat keine Verantwortlichkeiten. Wir können ihn nicht für die Qualität des Produktes verantwortlich machen oder für die Lieferung. Der User hat also kein Verantwortung in [...]

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When you listen to Jeff Sutherland and hear all the stories about 400% revenue increase of company X,Y, Z then you start to wonder why we do Scrum. Most companies whichI coach and train want to do Scurm because they want to make more money.  And in a business context it is usually fully correct [...]

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In 2006 I wrote a short article “Scrum Delivers” [1] in which I showed that the principles of the Toyota Production System as described by Jeffrey K. Liker [2] can be mapped to Scrum. In the following weeks I will show how Scrum maps these principles. The idea is to understand Scrum as a mindset [...]

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On my quest to re-invent the Certified ScrumMaster training to create a real learning environment I found this cool location in Vienna:
Built by an architect for his own purpose it creates a relaxed and undemanding atmosphere for our training.
In contrast to the usual locations where we perform trainings: Like hotel facilities or conference rooms in office [...]

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Recently I did not have enough consultants to do a huge organizational Scrum implemenation. In my desperation I found these great consultants:

They helped me to run a huge visualization project. We worked with the customer on “showing” his organizational structure by using these ScrumMobils as actors.
First we did a casting. From the 165 consultants we [...]

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I found on Seth Godins Blog a very nice new story that tells us Ken’s squirrel burger story in a different way. Seth wanted a tea with ice (I know it’s odd ;) but did not want to pay for the ice. Have a look at what happend in: The bitter taste of …

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[Die Rolle des Product Owners] zerfällt in den Customer, den User und den Product Owner. Der Customer ist derjenige, der für das Gesamtprodukt zahlt. Er ist es, der eine neue Anwendung haben möchte, die seine Problem in einem bestimmten Bereich löst. Er ist es, dessen Geld wir haben wollen, damit wir das Projekt durchführen können.
Der [...]

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Give Food – is one pattern in Linda Risings Book: “Fearless Change.”
Speed Dating is a very fast way to learn others peoples interest and to find out if you want to learn more or not!
Telling interesting Stories is a very good way to lean some new insights from experienced people.

Combine all three ideas and you [...]

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Everybody who ran through my training knows – I really like the idea of a Taskboard for Scrum-Teams. I even believe it is the best tool on the plannet to run a larger Scrum-Team on Product-Owner Level.
During the last couple of month I started to re-think the idea of Taskboards and one conclusion was that [...]

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Lean, Lean in Hospitals, Lean in Software Development, Lean Management, Theory of Constraints and a lot of other names for one simple idea: Focus. Ken and Jeff mentioned 1999 in “Agile Software Development with Scrum” that Scrum is based on a key values: “Focus.”
In “The Flow“, Mihaly Csikszentmihaly shows that Happiness will be achieved when [...]

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1. wir orientieren uns an der maximierung des wertes für den product owner/product sponsor
2. wir orientieren uns menschlichen werten untereinander und fokussieren auf den jeweiligen sprint-erfolg
3. wir werfen altes über bord und akzeptieren neues wenn es dem sprint nutzt
4. wir schätzen einander für die aufgaben, kompetenze und verantwortungen, zu denen wir uns comitten
5. wir generieren [...]

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I followed an article of Garr Raynolds about a book called “The Back of a Napkin” by Dan Roam. I am not going to explain what he talks about, because he has done this on his own website, very well.
I read his book, first I was disappointed, because he would show me, how to [...]

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Scrum Tools
Some people believe Scrum Tools are necessary. Companies that provide Scrum Tools are regarded as the best resource for Scrum Training and Scrum coaching by a lot of companies. Scrum Tools are good and Scrum Tools are evil. Scrum Tools help people to organize their work and Scrum Tools help people to hide what [...]

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Eine der Hauptaufgaben des Product Owner ist es, das Product Backlog korrekt zu priorisieren. Jeff Sutherland behauptet, basierend auf dem Buch: “Software by Numbers“, dass ein Unternehmen, das seine Projekte nicht korrekt priorisiert, mindestens 20% seines Umsatzes “verliert.”
Natürlich habe ich in meinem Buch: Scrum – Produkte zuverlässung und schnell entwickeln, erklärt, wie man ein Product [...]

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Running a Sprint Planning Meeting 1 is more simple than you might think.
Let us first discuss what you do not do:

You do not – resize the backlog items
You do not – estimate tasks

Most Scrum Teams believe they should base their commitments after Sprint Planning 1 on the “Estimates” for the backlog items.  Nothing is more [...]

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I found a review about the Certified ScrumMaster Training I did in Sao Paulo in May. Marcio Marinho said:
The course was great, and I don’t have words to thank Boris, Peter and Danilo about the teachings and experiences shared with us. More
The next classes will be in Cape Town and Johannesburg in  South Africa, Veijle [...]

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I found this book: Lean in Hospitals by Mark Graban. I have not read it yet, but the idea is very interesting.
I still believe that the focus on lean is the wrong direction. In “The Toyota Way” by Jeffrey Liker the principles behind the Toyota Production System are described. Liker mentions in his last chapter [...]

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I am sure you know this video – but in case not – it is worth the 60 min you need to spend on watching it.

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“Ein erstaunlich gutes deutschsprachiges Buch zu diesem Thema. Gut verständlich erklärt es die Grundlagen, geht aber auch ins Detail jedes einzelnen Punktes, beschreibt nachvollziehbar, wie man ihn umsetzen kann und geizt nicht mit Hinweisen aus der Praxis.” mehr
Vielen Dank für die netten Worte! Boris

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Heiko has written a very good enhancement of the Nokia Test. His idea is to add some aspects for the Product Owner:

Does the Backlog entail a Vision?
Does the Vision create a sustainable business values stream?

This will generate a view on the business aspects of Scrum projects. I agree with Heiko that we need to focus [...]

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