Lately, I’ve seen a recurring anti-pattern across several different scrum teams. The pattern works likes this: a team forecasts a certain number of points per sprint and regularly completes that same number. If…

Quick…what was the killer feature in your last big release? If your release is like most then you’ll probably have trouble answering that question. In fact, if your release is like most…

Most teams are familiar with the morning standup, or the classic scrum ritual that gives teams the opportunity to sync up and plan their work for the day. For many…

I recently received a question by email wondering if large user stories should be split across teams. The question was so interesting that I thought I would summarize my response here. Sometimes large…

Splitting large stories into smaller stories is one of the best things a team can do to improve their workflow. But how do we split these stories?

Choosing the best Scrum Master for your team is an important decision. But how do you know who is the best fit? Luckily there’s a way.

One of the first hurdles you will run into when scaling beyond a single Scrum team is staying in sync. Luckily there’s a solution: the Scrum of Scrums.

The difference between themes and epics are a common sticking point for many teams first diving in to user stories. Not only can descriptions of both topics often be vague, but the difference is often muddled further by many project management tools that use the two terms interchangeably. However, the difference doesn’t have to be so hard.

The most common question that teams face when first working with spikes is whether or not to estimate these stories. Luckily the answer is simple...don't.

The whole point of spikes is to help us learn more about stories that we don't yet know enough about to estimate well. This very unknown nature means that estimating the spike itself would be fruitless. Instead, our goal is to learn enough during the spike that we can estimate the associated story in an upcoming sprint.

The daily standup is one of the most powerful tools in the scrum toolbox, so powerful in fact that when teams move beyond scrum they often still retain the standup as one of their core practices. But, there's still room for improvement.