The Velocity Cult
(A modern corporate fable about rewarding A while hoping for B) Let me tell you about Sophie. She joined bright-eyed, caffeinated, and carrying just enough imposter syndrome ...
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Agile Compass
A growing collection of articles on agility, innovation, leadership, and product management. Practical insights to help you navigate change and build high-performing teams.
Filtered by tag: Scrum — Clear
Beyond Story Points: A Practical Guide for Grown‑Up Agile Teams
Story points aren’t the problem. They were created with good intent. A soft way to guide planning without the stress and politics of time estimates. Ron Jeffries, one of the ...
The Story Point Illusion: Why "Per Person Velocity" is a Corporate Fairy Tale
The first time I heard someone talk about “per person story points,” I laughed. Surely, it was a joke. Like someone suggesting we measure teamwork by how many push-ups each p...
The Story Points Trap: How We Lost Sight of Real Value
“How many story points do you complete per sprint?”“What’s your team’s velocity?”“Why isn’t it improving?” If you’ve heard these questions before, you know they’re usually...
How to Respond When Teams Say Their Work Doesn’t Fit a Fixed Sprint
“Working against hard deadlines—as opposed to continuing until the task feels complete—is the classic engineering approach.”– Mary Poppendieck Scrum Masters and Agile Coa...
5 things a Scrum Master does NOT do
The role of a Scrum Master is often misunderstood. While they are a crucial part of any Scrum team, there’s a lot of confusion about what they should—and shouldn’t—do. Let’s ...
The Surprising Way Daily Stand-Ups Foster Deep Work
In agile environments, the bane of productivity often comes dressed in the guise of constant interruptions. Imagine trying to navigate through a complex coding challenge or w...
Is Scrum anti-agile because it can’t be changed?
No! In fact, the opposite is true—Scrum is a very agile framework, but there are a lot of common misunderstandings that lead people to believe otherwise. If you’ve ...
Unlock Agile Velocity: Boost Your Team and Avoid Costly Mistakes
Understanding and Mastering Agile Velocity 1. Why Velocity Matters in Agile Agility is all about flexibility, adaptability, and delivering value to customers quickly. B...
Why you should know the Ball Point game – and how to facilitate it
Every Agile Coach or Scrum Master should know this game! It’s the standard we use to ease people into the world of iterative development, especially Scrum. You likely played ...
Are your Daily Scrums wasting your team‘s time?
The Daily Scrum is an often loathed Scrum practice. But it certainly wasn’t invented to waste your team’s time – so what are we missing? Why are some teams not getting value ...
Don‘t ignore the hidden preconditions for Scrum
Are you sure you’re using Scrum correctly? Does your Scrum team fulfill the preconditions? Prerequisites of Scrum When it comes to implementing Scrum, people often talk...
How to Improve Your Retrospectives in 7 Steps
Retrospectives are the most important event in all of Scrum. That’s not just me saying this, that’s Ken Schwaber, the co-inventor of Scrum. Yet Retrospectives easily turn int...
Why Your Sprint Retrospectives Fail and How to Make Them Inspire Real Change
Avoid the Pitfalls: Guide to Effective and Efficient Sprint Retrospectives Over two decades of working in agile environments, I’ve witnessed countless sprint retrospectives f...
How To Demo The Backend In An Agile Way?
When it comes to Sprint Reviews or demos, the golden rule is to show a working solution. You want to engage your audience in a way that elicits meaningful feedback. But what ...