Definition of a Vision Statement is a future based look at where the team should be heading. It should cover: what the product is, what it will do, and how it will be accomplished.

The Sprint Retrospective, or “Retro,” is a Scrum Event that occurs at the end of every Sprint. During this Event, the Scrum team talks about the previous sprint – what went well and what can be improved – and then adapts their team processes, based on what is uncovered in that discussion. It is this consistent cycle of inspection and adaptation that creates a high-performing team. Unfortunately, this is the one Scrum Event that many teams (or worse, leadership) want to skip. However, I am begging you: Please. Do. Not. Skip. The. Retro. Seriously. Don’t do it!

Scrum Masters, are you a natural Servant Leader, or do you struggle to be the inspiring coach that creates high-performing teams?

The following blog is inspired by the work of Scott Watson, an emotional intelligence speaker and trainer. I hope they will complement what you are already doing well and help you create a tactical plan to improve your own emotional intelligence and the emotional climate in your team. You might find that focusing on how your behavior is impacting others can change the emotional climate in your team – and positively impact your career. (Want more from the Product Owner lens? See my Emotional EQ for Product Owner’s article.)

We gathered together some genius analogies to draw parallels between real life and the Scrum framework. This is a continuation of analogies from Part One.

Have you ever tried to explain how a Scrum concept works in a way that people can relate with? We find the easiest way to simply explain scrum is to use analogies that fit into everyone’s everyday knowledge.

One of the values closely embraced when working in an agile environment is transparency. If we aren’t transparent then we may give obscure answers to questions or act with muddied behavior not clearly understood by anyone.

Value stream mapping is a powerful exercise used to get great results from development teams. However, certain impediments can significantly detract from the value output, slowing the progress of development efforts.

What exactly is the MVP and what is the best path to reach this state?  It is vital to define your MVP as early in the process as possible, but constantly refining it will be pivotal.  Let us dig a bit deeper into exactly what the MVP is all about, how to attain it, and also how to sell it once complete.

How much attention do you give to your team’s velocity?  If the answer is very little or none, it is time to change that.  Velocity is an important metric to track in the Agile and Scrum space.

How do you know how well you are doing against team expectations?  Two mechanisms within Agile that can help are the burndown and burnup charts.

Unless you have been living on a remote island unconnected from civilization for the past few decades, you have no doubt heard the term “servant leadership.” It has a very interesting past and may go back farther than you think.

One of the core principles of Agile is the idea of co-location.  This means the development team is all located in the same office, each day they work.  That reality is not in sync with the way most of us work.

We examine this Sprint to detail how it fits into the Agile puzzle to improve the effectiveness of implementation and execution.

We cover three great facilitated voting techniques. These techniques are dot voting, fist of five, and thumb voting.

The three official three Scrum Artifacts, as outlined in the Scrum Guide, are: Sprint Backlog, Product Backlog, and Product Increment.

User Story Estimation should not on the how to do a task, but instead, the what the task is.

We dive into some of the most common mistakes a Scrum Master makes and discuss ways to prevent them.

When introducing Scrum to your team, you want to bring it to them methodically, specifically, in a way where the team can consume it, learn it, and then begin to make it their own.

Benefits of Scrum will include but are not limited to: Better Product Quality, Faster ROI, More Control, Reduced Risk, and Improved Customer Satisfaction. We dive into the details of each benefit.

Agile Ceremonies is actually not a correct Scrum term anymore; the term has shifted to “Agile Events” or just “Events”.