No team members were harmed in filming Sh*t Bad Scrum Masters Say
Last Sunday, several Agile Learning Labs team members became actors for a few hours, turning out to help our brilliant colleague Adam Weisbart film the epic drama saga, Sh*t Bad Scrum Masters Say.This...
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When Should We Decide?
A scrum team has many decisions to make, all the time. Should we focus on usability or new features? Should we fix the bugs that are driving our current customers crazy or develop the new features that...
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Fun with internet memes: “What does a scrum master do?”
Inspired by Lesbians and Lawyers. Click the image to see at full size:If this makes you want to become a scrum master, you can take one of our certification classes. The next one is February 27-28, and...
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Scrum Product Owner vs. Product Manager: Is There a Difference?
Question: Chris just did a scrum workshop for us and it was GREAT–I learned a TON. I have a follow-up question about the scrum role of product owner, and how we should implement it in our organization....
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Want a smart team? Make sure it gets the recommended daily allowance of estrogen
A team without a woman is like a bicycle with… some fish? So it would seem, according to Grace Nasri, who writes in the HuffPo about the gender gap in tech from an interesting perspective. She got my...
View ArticleHear Chris Sims on the Agile Weekly Podcast
In the current episode of the Agile Weekly podcast Chris talks to Roy van de Water and Drew LeSeur of Integrum about running Agile Learning Labs as a transparent company with a radical compensation...
View ArticleAgile Performance Reviews
I recently received a the following question about performance reviews from a human resources professional at an organization that is adopting agile development practices.Question: My organization is...
View ArticleDymaxicon Leaves the Nest
A couple of years ago, Hillary Louise Johnson and I had nearly finished writing The Elements of Scrum and we were discovering that the options for publishing it through traditional means didn’t satisfy...
View ArticleWhere does User Experience Fit on a Scrum Team?
A recent email:My company is making a transition from waterfall to agile development using the guidelines from your book Elements of Scrum. In your coaching of various companies, I was wondering if...
View ArticleWhere does Quality Fit on a Scrum Team?
A recent email:Hi Chris. It was great to have you in Beijing and you provided us with awesome Certified Scrum Master and Certified Scrum Product Owner trainings. We are having internal discussions...
View ArticleManaging the Performance of Scrum Team Members
A client recently contacted us for guidance regarding managing individual performance in a scrum environment. This is a growing company that successfully adopted scrum a few years back. They asked me...
View ArticleAgile – From the Product Owner’s Perspective
One of my fellow Certified Scrum Trainers, Henrik Kniberg, created this excellent video that describes agile software development from the point of view of the product owner. I’m really impressed, and...
View ArticleIntroduction to User Stories and Splitting Stories
A common problem among the scrum teams that I coach is user stories that are too big. When a user story is too big, it is hard understand, estimate and implement. So what is a good size for a user...
View ArticleSplitting User Stories with Conjunctions and Connectors
As I described last week, splitting large user stories into smaller user stories has many benefits for the scrum team and the business. We also agreed that before we try to split a user story that we...
View ArticleSplitting User Stories with Generic Words
This is the third in my series on splitting larger user stories into smaller user stories. If you are just joining us, go back and read part one and part two. Don’t worry, I’ll wait right here for...
View ArticleSplitting User Stories with Acceptance Criteria
This is the fourth part of my series on splitting user stories. If you are just joining us, start with the first installment and work your way forward from there. Today’s technique is the third of four...
View ArticleSplitting User Stories with Timeline Analysis
This is the last of five installments in my series on splitting large user stories into smaller user stories. If your scrum team isn’t able to complete a minimum of four user stories every week, then...
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New! Quick Reference Guide for Splitting User Stories
We’ve been talking a lot lately about splitting user stories.After all, one of the keys to scrum team success and happiness is properly sized stories that play nicely in a sprint. To help teams...
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Dixit Sprint Retrospective Game
I was inspired to create a retrospective game for agile teams, based on the game Dixit. Dixit is a game that makes use of picture cards. Each of these cards has an unusual drawing on it. The Agile...
View ArticleStory Point Accounting Across Sprints
I recently received the following question, asking about how to account for the story points of stories that are started in one sprint but completed in a later sprint. There are some interesting things...
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