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A-CSM Advanced Certified ScrumMaster training - November 19-20, 2024 in English

Join me on confirmed A-CSM Advanced Certified ScrumMaster training on November 19-20, 2024 in English. Training will be delivere online (Zoom)

Training CSP-PO Certified Scrum Professional - Product Owner in October 2024

Join me on the upcoming CSP-PO Certified Scrum Professional - Product Owner training on October 29-30, 2024. The training is delivered online and will be in English.

ICP-ACC - ICAgile Certified Professional in Agile Coaching - training in Prague on 17-18 September 2025

Date: 17-18 September 2025

Duration: 2 days

Early bird price: 24 000 CZK plus VAT (21%) valid until 30 days before the start of the training

Regular price: 29 000 CZK plus VAT (21%) otherwise

Place: Prague, Czech Republic

Language: English

Training is delivered by John Barratt accredited ICAgile trainer.

Training can be also bought as discounted combo together with Agile Prague Conference 2025.

5 Reasons Why to Attend AgilePrague Conference 2024

The 12th season of Agile Prague Conference is here. Read 5 Reasons Why to Attend AgilePrague Conference 2024.

Where Detailed Positions Can Be Harmful

Traditional organizations are based on hard skills. They hire for detailed position descriptions and look for certain experiences, and once you are hired, they evaluate your hard skills and focus on growing them. It’s all based on the presumption that we know what needs to be done. And because we know what needs to be done, we can plan the work and allocate people with needed skills.

ScrumMasters Only Make Sense in Scrum

Quite often during the last few months, I heard people being frustrated with not functioning ScrumMasters. One reason for it described in a post Why Some Organizations are Laying of “ScrumMasters” is that those are not the real ScrumMasters, but hiring Scrum “Project” Masters, Scrum “Ceremonies” Masters, or Scrum “Jira” Masters which will neither help organizations to achieve their business goals nor people to feel better or do a better job and as such it can only result in “Dark Scrum”. But surprisingly there is a whole bunch of experienced ScrumMasters who are unlucky enough to be hired to traditional organizations as ScrumMasters to “manage” individuals who only focus on delivery.

Top 10 Agile conferences to attend in 2024

Every year I speak at many conferences and based on my experience I recommend some places to go for inspiration. Here is my list of the Top 10 Agile conferences to attend in 2024.

Why Some Organizations are Laying of “ScrumMasters”

For some time there was a trend of laying off so-called ScrumMasters from mostly big organizations. At first, it looks like Scrum is over. However, I would be careful with such conclusions.

The Power of Metaphors

One of the tools I have started using more over the years is a metaphor. Many years ago I was taught the Speed Boat retrospective and tried it with teams. It brought great energy and fun, it helped us to uncover different perspectives. But it never occurred to me that I should take the idea to the next level and use it in other situations. So let’s have a look at different situations where metaphor can be useful.

Agile is a Change

It’s more than 20 years since Agile Manifesto and some organizations still take Agile as another process or tool. But it can’t be farther from reality. We try to explain that it’s not about “doing” agile but “being” agile. That it’s about changing the way of working and thinking, the overall mindset. But companies are often looking for shortcuts and searching for simple solutions.

Hiring ScrumMaster?

One of my biggest passions in the agile space is developing great ScrumMasters and helping them to become successful in their role. I become ScrumMaster in 2005 and I didn’t know much about either Agile or Scrum. I did all the mistakes you can ever imagine. I didn’t know anything about coaching or facilitation. Instead of acting as a leader, I was more like a team mom. Later, when I realized the whole potential of the role, and become the real ScrumMaster I decided I need to give back to the community and I dedicated quite a lot of effort trying to explain to individuals and organizations what is ScrumMaster really about and why is having great ScrumMaster related to the success of the agile journey.

Agile Mindset

We talk about changing agile mindset for years now, and it’s hard to describe. People who are far from being Agile are often saying “That’s what we are already doing, so what is this buzz about Agile about?” or “This will never work in reality, Agile is only for unicorns.” So let’s see how that agile mindset is changing.

Time to Change Performance Review and Rewards System

I wrote here about the need of changing the HR in agile organizations. Agile HR helps organizations to adapt their culture to be more creative and collaborative and less control and compete oriented. They are here to create best employee experience from the first contact, through day one, support their growth, motivation, and increasing their value to the organization. And once you embrace such collaborative and creative culture, it’s time to redesign the performance review and overall evaluation process.

Positions and Career Path in Agile Organization

Considering the shift from siloed based departments with subject matter experts focusing on their specialization in traditional organizations to more general cross-functional teams where members combine different skills to maximize the value in agile organizations, there is a trend to generalize positions and flatten the career path as the hierarchy got less important.

Psychological Safety, Motivation, and Growth

In my previous post, I was writing about the need for awareness of what is happening in the organization. Looking deeper into the culture, safety is a prerequisite of collaborative environments. Without it fear of failure will take over and people stop experimenting and try new things and start hiding behind roles, rules, and processes.

Top 10 Agile conferences to attend in 2023

Every year I speak at many conferences and based on my experience I recommend some places to go for inspiration. Here is my list of the Top 10 Agile conferences to attend in 2023.

Top 10 Agile Podcasts

Lately, I realized that people start listening more than reading and that podcasts become quite popular. So here is a list of my personal recommendations on top 10 agile podcasts.

You are a Leader

Some time ago I published my new book The Agile Leader: Leveraging the Power of Influence that is looking at organizational agility and is focusing on the shift required from the leaders. I wrote this book to help people understand that agile is more than just some frameworks and practices. There are many stories from my friends and colleagues, which can give you a different perspective on the agile journey. People often ask me what is the biggest obstacle preventing organizations from embracing a greater level of agility. And I usually turn that question back to them. Everyone is a leader.

ScrumMaster Mind

Great ScrumMasters are patient, can give space and dedicate their time to help other people grow. They are servant leaders and Catalysts. It sounds simple and not conflicting at first look, however, the real disconnect people feel at first, when they came across the role, is often about their ability to let things go.

Autonomy

Autonomy is a topic that is in my mind for a while. How come that in some environments it’s so simple to let it grow and some others are so much struggling with it. The more I think about it, the more I feel it’s about trust or fear of losing position, power, or comfort. And environments with no trust are not places where agile is much successful. In order to allow autonomy in even a small group as a development team, the trust must be there.

Barriers of Agility

In most of the surveys about barriers of agility in organizations, you learn that the top three places are culture, structure, and leadership. There is no surprise.

Appreciation

It’s the end of the year, and that’s always a good time to reflect back. So how about if you do a very different retrospective this time, and instead of focusing on improvements talk about some great things which happened this year. What did you change which helped you to be a better team? What made you happy? What do you appreciate about your colleagues?

Top 10 Agile conferences to attend in 2021

Every year I speak at many conferences and based on my experience I recommend some places to go for inspiration. 2020 was a weird year with almost every conference canceled or transferred to virtual space and there is a risk 2021 might be the same. But no matter if you are virtual or not, we still need to get some inspiration and interaction from similarly minded people. So here is my list of Top 10 Agile conferences to attend in 2021.

Failing Fast

To my huge surprise, I realized that the concept of failing fast and learning from failure is difficult for some people to accept. They always feel the frustration when I say that ScrumMaster needs to feel comfortable to let the team fail so they can learn. I wrote about it here a few times, so you most likely know it, but the goal of a ScrumMaster is to make teams self-organized.

New Scrum Guide

There was a new version of ScrumGuide published last week. And I have to say that I mostly like it. It’s lighter, less prescriptive, and simple. Here are a few differences.

Being Agile, Embracing a Change, and Going Online

I had never been any fan of the virtual world. I mean emails are fine, they are relatively private and wait in your mailbox until you have time to answer. Better than calls. But otherwise? No way. I was using all social networks just one way, mostly posting and not reading much. I didn’t like teleconferences, I would rather travel for a day there and back to talk instead. However, life had changed and now, I have no other choice.

Top 10 Agile conferences to attend in 2020

I travel & speak at many conferences each year. Here is my list of TOP 10 conferences you shall attend in 2020.

Agile HR: Shape the Culture

I already wrote here that during the agile journey, the Agile HR changes the entire focus from being compliant driven to focus on overall employee experience. Agile HR is about leadership, system coaching, and large groups facilitation. And there is another layer.

Agile is Not Another Project Management Method

Agile is not about new practices, processes, or tools. It’s a different way of thinking and approaching things. In one word it’s adaptiveness. If we go next level, it’s a customer-centric value-driven iterative team approach to deal with complex problems. You need the courage to do things differently, be open and transparent to allow collaboration, focus on customer and commitment to deliver the value, and have respect so you can learn from diverse perspectives. But I guess you know all that.

We Don’t Need Another Method

Let’s start with a bit of context. We apply Agile not because it’s a new cool method but because it’s a good answer to the complexity of the nowadays world.

Great ScrumMaster is a Catalyst Leader

ScrumMaster is a Catalyst leader introduced by Bill Joiner in his book Leadership Agility. Catalyst is the third step on the leadership journey from Expert to Catalyst.

Agile HR: Leadership, System Coaching, and Large Groups Facilitation

Finally, as the last blog about the Agile HR in this series or talent management if you like, is focusing on the skills and experiences of good HR. Primarily it’s about the understanding of Agile mindset and ability to create an environment where Agile culture can flourish. Environments supporting collaboration, transparency, open peer feedback, trust, team spirit, ownership, empowerment, and responsibility. The more Agile your organization is, the higher the need for coaching and facilitation skills it creates. The role of HR is critically important to grow coaching and facilitation skills in the organization and support individuals and teams with education on coaching, facilitation and guide them on their journey.

Agile HR: Career Path and Salaries

The third blog from this Agile HR series focuses on positions, career paths, and salaries. As I already mentioned in the first Agile HR blog about hiring, positions are not that important in agile organizations as people collaborate, take over responsibility and become leaders as needed, not because they have it in the job description. Read more about Career Path and Salaries in Agile Organisations.

5 Reasons Why to Attend AgilePrague Conference 2019

The Agile Prague conference is one of the top European Agile conferences. Read my 5 reasons why to attend AgilePrague Conference 2019.

10 Most Common Mistakes of Product Owner

Being a Product Owner is not simple. At the end of the day, Product Owners are responsible for the overall Product success. They need to have business knowledge, authority and time. But let’s have a look what are the typical mistakes of a Product Owner as this is one of the very common questions at the classes and learn from that perspective. Here is the list of the 10 most common mistakes of Product Owner.

10 Most Common Mistakes of ScrumMaster

Being great ScrumMaster is a journey, where you have to learn a lot about Agile, Scrum, coaching, facilitation, change, business agility, technical practices, leadership… But all over it all starts with having the agile mindset. This time, I’m not focusing on who you need to be, but quite opposite what you should avoid, as one of the very common questions at the classes is what are the most common mistakes of ScrumMaster. So what are the most common mistakes?

Do we need CEO in Agile Organization?

Agile at the organizational level changes everything. I wrote here already about Agile HR, Agile Board of Directors, and Agile at the Executive Team Level. Let’s have a look at the top of the organization. Should it remain the same? Or shall we go one step further and change it as well?

From Good to Great: Cross-Functional Teams

Next blog in the “From Good to Great” series (Don’t Copy Find Your Own Way, Radical Transparency, Agile Mindset, and Collaboration) is focusing on cross-functional teams. It seems like basics, but I realized that organizations still don’t fully understand why the cross-functional teams are critical to Agile and Scrum success.

From Good to Great: Collaboration

Next blog in the From Good to Great series (Don’t Copy Find Your Own Way, Radical Transparency, and Agile Mindset) is focusing on the collaboration. There is nothing magical on it, just people are so got used to working as individuals that they forgot what the collaboration is about. However, collaboration is the key aspect of the Agile environment and if you can’t collaborate, there is no way you become Agile.

Agile HR: Evaluations and Performance Review

The next topic in my Agile HR series focuses on evaluations and performance reviews.

Agile HR: Recruiting

The more organizations shift to Agile, the more they need to redesign how they work with the employees. During this series, we focus on different functions of HR in Agile organization and explain the fundamental shift HR need to do in order to support agility in the organization. Let's talk about Recruiting.

From Good to Great: Agile Mindset

The next blog in the From Good to Great series which started by Don’t copy, find your own way and Radical transparency is focusing on the most important part of being Agile – Agile mindset.

Top 10 Agile conferences to attend in 2019

I travel & speak at many conferences each year. Here is my list of TOP 10 Agile conferences you shall attend in 2019.

From Good to Great: Radical Transparency

I started the series From Good to Great by advising you to find your own way of being Agile. The next blog focuses on radical transparency. Let’s be truthful for a moment, how many organizations you worked for have real transparency, and how many are hiding information behind the teams or department walls, encourage by processes and claimed the necessity of being compliant. Lack of transparency is a strong weapon which eventually can kill any Agile transformation as it makes collaboration and self-organization almost impossible.

From Good to Great: Don’t Copy, Find Your Own Way

Agile become part of our lives and you can see some sort of “Agile” in every other company, but still, many companies are failing to be Agile and understand the mindset. Ron Jeffries talks about “Dark Scrum” for years and I see more and more frustrated people around than ever. So why are the companies failing?

Agile Board of Directors

Are you also wondering why you shall be Agile and your board of directors and the executive team is not? I wrote about Agile at the executive team last time, now it’s time to have a look at the board of directors. Read more about Agile at Board of Directors level.

Toxic environments

Building a great team is not that simple as it may look. Sometimes you are lucky and the team just forms without any effort, sometimes you are not and all you get is the group of individuals and all the effort forming a one unifying goal are failing. In such a case, you may have a look at how toxic is the team environment.

Deadlines in Scrum

One of the topics most of the project managers and traditional organizations at the beginning of their Agile transformation journey are struggling are deadlines. How can we do Scrum and commit ourselves to the date when we don’t know the scope? Let’s make this clear.

Agile at executive team level

Agile can’t stay just at the team level. Agile transformation only creates disturbance and gap between the management and employees. And the more Agile the teams are, the bigger the disconnect is. Managers feel lost, forgotten and start to be frustrated that those self-organizing teams might eventually not need them. Read more about Agile at an executive team level.

Using tribes, squads, and gilds is not Agile by itself

Many Czech corporations are now starting their Agile journey, at least they say so. Despite fancy labels, they don’t have any desire to change so, unfortunately, you can only expect some ‘fake Agile & Scrum’ and no real outcomes nor fun. How do you recognize them?

Agile HR

Agile HR or if you want Talent Management as it is called nowadays turn the whole company around. It’s employees centric, delivering value to the whole organization. At a glance, not much had changed. So what's the key to Agile HR?

Five books every Agile leader should read before they start Agile transformation

To continue my with my book recommendations, I have several books here, I would recommend every Agile Leader and manager in Agile Organization to read before they start the Agile transformation.

Five books every Product Owner should read

I have several books here, I would recommend every Product Owner to read. It’s a mix which will help you to understand ScrumMaster role in a much broader perspective. Read more about my books recommendation for Product Owners.

Five books every ScrumMaster should read

I have several books here, I would recommend every ScrumMaster to read. It’s a mix which will help you to understand ScrumMaster role in a much broader perspective. Read more about my books recommendation for ScrumMasters.

5 reasons why to attend AgilePrague Conference 2018

Agile Prague conference goes to the 8th season. There are 5 reasons why you should attend.

Is Agile for us?

It seems to be a very common question. So is Agile for you?

Difference between manager and leader

Leader and manager, what is the difference? Is there any? People are often mixing these terms up so let’s make it more clear.

Contracts in Agile and Scrum

One of the very common questions I got at my trainings is how to do agile contracts. In a traditional world where there is neither trust nor collaboration, the contract is the key. It must be detailed enough so we can defend ourselves or blame the other party. Agile is trying to change this contract game, heal the relationship and build a partnership.

What is Agile Leadership

What is agile leadership about? How would you define it, how would you explain it? Those are just a few questions people are asking these days. Agile Leadership is ...

It’s all about the relationship

Some time back I went through the ORSC – Organizational Relationship and System Coaching and wrote this article to share my learning with the Agile community. Now it’s time to share some experiences.

The hot topic of the next few years will be leadership

Modern world brings not only the different way of developing software called Agile but also changes in the organizational structure and leadership. You see it more and more often. People at the classes are asking why their managers are not there to hear the message. But very often they are, and they are ready to change the entire organization and their leadership style. This is the reason why leadership will be so important in next few years.

Emerging Trends in Agile

The world is changing in cycles, fashion goes in cycles, and the same is true for Agile. What was trendy yesterday, is not today and it can change surprisingly fast. So let’s have a look what are the new trends in Agile and what the Agile community is talking about.

Agile Leaders are the beginning of modern management

In order to achieve success at the organizational level, we need to start management talent development program to create leaders who will help to grow a company, make quick decisions and stay ahead of others. Modern leadership style is no longer applying the traditional model of the “leader-follower”, i.e. one decides and the other executes orders. What is modern Agile management or Agile leadership about?

Top 10 Agile conferences to attend in 2018

Check my list which Agile conferences are worth to visit in 2018.

Latest State of Scrum Survey

The new State of Scrum Survey is out today. Together with some expected statistics, it brought also few interesting points and surprisingly also short success-stories from different industries for example application of Agile at psychological medicine center, Singapore’s Government Technology Agency, and Target. Read more.

Give Christmas present to your ScrumMaster and leverage his/her knowledge

The holiday season is here. It’s a lot of tips everywhere what to buy as perfect Christmas gift to your husband, friends, children, parents. But I wasn’t able to find any tips for ScrumMaster gifts. So I decided to write some to make even ScrumMaster happier and leverage their knowledge.

What Certified Scrum Trainers (CST) need to learn

One of the things you have to know as a trainer is how to design a content for your class. The traditional teaching methods which were mostly about listening and reading, are very inefficient. Even if you tell a lot of stories, most of the content never survive in people brains until next week. The modern teaching methods are about experience. Read what Agile and Scrum trainers (including CSTs) need to learn in my opinion.

Scrum Guide Update

A few days back there was a new update to the Scrum Guide – the definition of Scrum. So what’s new in Scrum Guide?

Make product as wide as possible

Some time ago, when I first heard the definition of LeSS (Large Scaling Scrum) product, I found it a bit unrealistic. Large Scaling Scrum is one of the Agile Scaling methods and I happen to like it as it’s very close to what I had experienced to be successful at various environments before. But the definition of the product is quite wide.

Are we Agile ?

Are we already Agile? How do we know we are Agile? What level of Agility have we? Read my opinion about 'Are we Agile?'.

Undone Organization

Agile and Scrum transformation is not any easy and it takes time. For a big organization, such time can easily be counted in years. During those years you would be dealing with so-called undone organization.

Agile Leader Competence Map

The more the Agile Leadership is popular, people are asking for more description. Who is the Agile Leader, what makes him different from a traditional manager, and which competences and skills they have to have. So I created this Agile Leader Wheel so you can map the competences and skills.

Traditional metrics are dead, let’s kill KPIs

Most of the people, when you ask them, admit that KPIs are not any useful at their organizations. They don’t motivate, they don’t change people’s behavior to any better way. In the best case KPIs are usually a formal metric, in the worst case a way how to punish people. In modern organizations, which are built on top of collaboration and teams, the need for individual metrics disappeared. So what can you do instead?

Agile Culture

Culture is intangible. It’s hard to touch. Hard to define, hard to measure. However, it is the critical piece for the organizational success. We may debate if culture follows an organizational structure or vice versa, but I don’t think it is important. Culture reflects our values and philosophy. The way we are. It is the Agile culture.

Entire System – The World Dimension – The #ScrumMasterWay Concept

The world dimension of #ScrumMasterWay concept represents three levels ScrumMasters shall operate. The third element is called Entire System.

Relationships – The World Dimension – The #ScrumMasterWay Concept

The world dimension of #ScrumMasterWay concept represents three levels ScrumMasters shall operate. The second element is called Relationships.

My Team – The World Dimension – The #ScrumMasterWay Concept

The world dimension of #ScrumMasterWay concept represents three levels ScrumMasters shall operate. The first element is called My team. Let's talk more about it.

Leadership – Myself Dimension – #ScrumMasterWay concept

Let’s continue with the last element of ‘Myself’ dimension. As we already said in the previous blog posts, each element of this dimension is represented by a dice which you can roll every day of Sprint and choose the aspect you are going to take. The fourth dice stands for leadership.

State of Mind – Myself Dimension – The #ScrumMasterWay concept

Let’s continue with the next element of ‘Myself’ dimension. As we already said in the previous blog posts, each element of this dimension represented by a dice which you can roll every day or Sprint and choose the aspect you are going to take. The third dice is for choosing the approach – State of mind.

Learning – Myself Dimension – The #ScrumMasterWay concept

Let’s continue with the next element of ‘Myself’ dimension. As we already said in the previous blog post, each element of this dimension represented by a dice which you can roll every day or Sprint and choose the aspect you are going to take. The second dice is for learning.

Metaskills – Myself Dimension – The #ScrumMasterWay concept

Let’s start with ‘Myself’ dimension. Each element of this dimension represented by a dice which you can roll every day of Sprint and choose the aspect you are going to take. Read more about the #ScrumMasterWay concept.

The #ScrumMasterWay concept

When I first time decided to write my new book The Great ScrumMaster: #ScrumMasterWay I have a clear picture in my head of what I have to write about. I wanted to share what I learned on my ScrumMaster journey, offer you hints on how to avoid problems, bottleneck, falls during the way, and give you an advice on how to become the great ScrumMaster. This was the moment when I invented the #ScrumMasterWays concept - unique path to achieve excellence in Scrum and become the Great ScrumMaster.

Top 10 Agile conferences to attend in 2017

I travel & speak at many conferences each year. Here is my list of TOP 10 Agile conferences for 2017.

Scrum Transformation Journey

As one of the CSTs – Certified Scrum Trainers – I’ve got a unique opportunity to travel around the world during the last two years and teach Scrum at a variety of businesses, organizational environments, and very different cultures. I must admit that Scrum is awesome as it is universal. You can apply it to software, hardware, marketing, HR, executive teams and be rapidly successful, significantly better, change the way of work and become the best of the greatest. See my vision of the Scrum Transformation Journey based on my hands-on experiences.

Thank you for your support!

Few weeks back I asked you my friends, colleagues, and people from the Scrum community, to support me during the Scrum Alliance Board of Directors elections. I want to use this opportunity to thank you for all the support you gave me and let you know that I’m officially in the board, my period as a member of Board of Directors of Scrum Alliance officially started January 1, 2017.

AgileNEXT podcast

Thanks to AgileNEXT team – Daniel Gullo and Stephen Forte – for recording a podcast with me at Scrum Gathering. Listen what we have talked about.

My new book: The Great ScrumMaster: #ScrumMasterWay has been published by Addison-Wesley

At the beginning of the last year I finished my new book called The Great ScrumMaster: #ScrumMasterWay. At first I self-published it and the book was available for Kindle at Amazon and as a limited series in full-color printed version. I was very happy to see that the book was selling well and also that I got an excellent feedback from readers. My excitement was even bigger when Mike Cohn, one of the Scrum legends, accepted my book into his Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Cohn) and the book was published by this excellent publishing house in January 2017. Get more info about the book.

Agile Leadership

As the world is getting more complex, organizations has to change to keep competitive. They must become more flexible, team oriented, self-organized. And as a consequence, the leaders shall adopt another approach to motivate people and lead the organizations to keep up the speed. Agile Leadership concept was created to help the leaders to understand the nature of the change which is happening in the business right now, and be able to react to the challenges which modern organizations brought in its all complexity.

Review bazaar

One of the most interesting advanced techniques how to run Sprint Review is the Review bazaar where there is no official Sprint Review meeting, but we run it as a bazaar where different teams are showing their work simultaneously.

How to make great Sprint Review

Scrum Reviews have been for a long time left out of our focus. Teams and ScrumMasters are asking how to improve Sprint planning, Standups, Retrospectives, but most of the time there are no real questions related to the Sprint Review. So how to make the Scrum Sprint Review great?

User Story as a Card

User Story is one of the most common formats how to write Product Backlog Item. It has specific format which forces people to focus on business value. Let see example.

Product Backlog Example

When I teach Agile and Scrum classes, people often ask for Product Backlog Example. In order to start, you don’t need any complex tool. Read what I'm doing.

Only estimate when it makes sense

Many Scrum teams are asking at the classes how shall we estimate Backlog Items / User Stories? They seem not to be happy with my reply that you don’t need to estimate at all in Scrum. I try to explain. Estimates can be useful. But in that case something has to happen as a result of the estimation process. I want to give you few examples.

Product Owner is an investor

Product Owner role is usually more understandable for companies that the ScrumMaster role. After all, companies have someone responsible for the product or business. So that’s the candidate. The problem starts when we deep dive into the role understanding and find out that Product owner shall not only understand the business but needs an authority to say “NO”. If you don’t, we mostly end up being late, with stress and low product quality. Let's talk more about it.

Agile Prague Conference

Agile Prague Conference, which I organize in Prague every year, has already been here for 6 years. We are sold-out again. What is my idea and vision behind the Agile Prague?

What Scrum has and Kanban is missing

In my last post I made a point that Scrum contains Kanban. So let’s look at it from another angle. Let’s see what is the most important aspect Scrum provides and which is missing in Kanban.

Kanban is not Scrum, Scrum is Kanban

I often get question what is Kanban and if it is better than Scrum. So let's talk about it.

How to make your Retrospective great?

Retrospective is the crucial part of your success. Through Retrospective you implement Inspect and Adapt principles. Through Retrospective you learn and become better team, product group, and organization. Let me explain how to Mastering Retrospective.

Organization 3.0 – How to Achieve Modern Agile Organization

Organizations are constantly evolving. What's the modern Agile organization which I call Organization 3.0?

#ScrumMasterWay concept

During my CSM – Certified ScrumMaster classes and Agile coaching assignments I realized that the most difficult part of a ScrumMaster role is to accept your goal, and to create a self-organized team. Let me explain the #ScrumMasterWay concept.

The Great ScrumMaster

Great ScrumMasters are rare. Not because it is too difficult to become a great ScrumMaster, but because there is not enough advises on how to become one. Here are a few tips on how to become a great ScrumMaster. If you find this interesting, I’ve just finished a book, The Great ScrumMaster on Amazon Kindle. What Great ScrumMaster does?

ScrumMaster State of Mind Model

The state of Agile and Scrum understanding in organizations is not, in any way, great. Many Scrum implementations are failing not because Scrum doesn’t work for the particular organization, but because companies lack the core understanding of the Agile and Scrum mindset.

Global Scrum Gathering® Prague 2015

I’ve got a unique opportunity to be co-chair of the global Scrum Gathering Prague. It’s an event for all Agile and Scrum enthusiasts around the globe – the European Gathering usually got around 600 people. Read about my experience to be co-chair.

Organization and Relationship Systems Coaching - ORSC and Agile

Just a few month ago I passed extensive training on ORSC - Organization and Relationship Systems Coaching. So let me share this experience.

Agile Prague Conference 2015

Agile Prague Conference 2015 – Sep 14-15, 2015 got awesome speakers for this year. We were able to get unique experts from all different areas of Agile and Scrum. We have talks on Agile Product Management, Scaling Scrum, DevOps, Test Driven Development – TDD, Behavior Driven Development – BDD, change and improvements. Read more.

Sprint Planning in 30 minutes

How much time takes your team to finish Sprint Planning? To my experience it could be anything in between of above mentioned 30 minutes and full day. If you are closer to the second option and it feels scary, annoying, waste of time for you, let’s have a look at few recommendations how to cut it out into 30 minutes.

Online Scrum Board

I belong to the Agile crowd who believe the physical board is very much useful and can’t be easily substituted for any online board. Let me give you a few reasons.

Scrum Master is Not a Secretary of a Team

I’ve been wondering why so many teams believe that Scrum Master is here to draw burndown charts, prepare reports and be the only point of contact for the team, whenever anyone wants anything from them. But the Scrum Master is not a secretary of a team.

Is Product Owner part of the team?

When you ask this question in the companies, you find out that about 30% of teams believe that he or she is not. What's the reason? Is it good? Just read my blog post Is Product Owner part of the team?

Measurements are dead, let’s measure

How about measurements and KPI’s? Read my blog post Measurements are dead, let’s measure.

The future of Agile and Scrum

Few weeks ago we've organized a discussion with Agile Alliance board members about the future of Agile.

Product Owner Development Model

During Agile transformation, we try to understand how individual peractices work together and what are the expectations from different roles. Product Owner Development Model is describung a way how a Product Owner is slowly changing and understanding the concept of Backlog and User Stories.

Agile Prague Conference 2014

It's time to join 4th year of Agile Prague Conference. It is in September 15-16, 2014 and it will host almost 40 wonderful speakers in the two days conferece program.

Over self-organized teams

Self-organization is one of the key practices. Every Agile team has to be self-organized. But what self-organized team means?

Agile at Saigon, Vietnam

Agile is the same at every place, however the particular impementation may differ based on culture and environment.

Forgotten practices: The Backlog Priority Game

Backlog prioritization seems to be easy, but it's not that simple. Relative weights game can help you with estimationg business value.

Agile Adoption Story – Common Mistakes (part 6)

Finally the next step in your Agile transformation is to realize our company need to change as well.

Agile Adoption Story – Common Mistakes (part 5)

Finally, in the Agile adoption story we had enough of trying. It’s just a process, follow it!

Agile Adoption Story – Common Mistakes (part 4)

The next step in the Agile adoption journey is to make a team. Is a group of collocated people a team already?

Agile Adoption Story – Common Mistakes (part 3)

The company started to realize that Scrum is not any silver bullet... so how about certification? That sounds great.

Agile Adoption Story – Common Mistakes (part 2)

To continue a story about most common agile adoption mistakes, the next one is We can use just a few practices.

Agile Adoption Story – Common Mistakes (part 1)

The first part of teh most usual agile adoption mistakes: don;t think about reasons for change as Agile is new and cool, let’s start!

Being Agile

What is Agile really about? It's hard to define, Agile is a culture and mindes more than traditional process.

Blog Archive

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