Writing my upcoming book on retrospectives makes me look with a beginner’s eyes at Scrummasterdom and the materials I use for it. This resulted in the first video about my facilitation kit and now this one about whiteboard magnets: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mziHvYiwgd8] So, if you are a whiteboard newbie and have only recently started to organize your …
Category Archives: Scrum Master
Fruit of 2 Weeks Sabbatical: Board Avatars
Two weeks ago I left my job for a 6-month Sabbatical to work on whatever the fuck I want – A big experiment on myself: What will I do when left to my own devices? Actually do stuff or slouch on the couch, eating pralines? I’m happy to report that I did in fact accomplish …
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How to keep up to date with Agile & Lean
Two weeks ago, this page about UX Design showed up in my Twitter stream. It’s a collection of Twitter accounts, blogs, conferences, etc. that people (newly) interested in UX Design might check out to keep themselves up to date. That page had already been an adaptation. The original inspiration was this one: Front-End Technologies. I …
My Facilitation Kit
About two years ago, I toyed around with the idea of a “Scrum Master Emergency Kit“. Today I’d like to show you the kit tray I really use. I hope it’s useful for people new to facilitating retrospectives (or meetings in general): [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpH9PIXY1xA] My tray contains (ordered by frequency of use): Whiteboard markers (no Flipchart …
3 Feedback Models
Feedback is important. Only by knowing how our actions affect others do we know what works and what doesn’t. Feedback becomes more effective, when it is frequent, timely and specific. Frequent Giving feedback only at quarterly or yearly reviews wastes a lot of time during which people could already have improved. Weekly One-on-Ones (that I …
One-on-Ones in Agile (Transitions)
Have you ever had regular One-on-Ones (“O3s”)? If not, I think you’re missing out. Mark Horstman and Mike Auzenne describe them as: 30 minute conversation every (other) week Between a manager and one of her team members. (Each team member gets their own O3 each week.) Default time division: 10 minutes team members topics, 10 minutes …
Minimum Viable Customer
Every once in a while I think about developing a product and / or founding a company. Up until 5 years ago I thought “the idea” would be crucial – that the product idea would make the difference between failure and success. Then I realized that ideas are cheap and the hard part is follow-through: …
Top 5 Songs for the Frustrated Project Manager
… or Scrum Master or whoever is at times upset with processes, structures or systems. Last Tuesday at the agile meetup in my hometown we started to joke around about what happens when projects or processes go awry. In the course of the evening we came up with 5 fitting songs – title-wise at least: …
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Is Scrum a Shu-Stage of Agile?
In my filter bubble there is this trend of teams switching to Kanban after they’ve used Scrum for a while. Typically they had been successful with Scrum and switched to Kanban, when they felt they’d taken Scrum as far as possible. After the switch they do even better. I’ve never heard of a team switching …
Quitting as a Scrum Master
About a year ago I felt miserable at work. Being a scrum master felt like repeatedly slamming myself face-first into a brick wall. I researched what happens when scrum masters quit and couldn’t find anything anywhere. There are tales of SMs getting fired – viewed by some as a badge of honour – but there’s …