Every Product Owner thinks their team and situations are unique - whether it’s a distributed team, multiple products, or team dynamics, we all feel our circumstances have challenges no other team has faced. The truth is we all have opportunities to learn new ways to solve old problems. Luckily, when we get the chance to share these experiences, we realize we are not alone. After presenting my solution for my “unique” situation, it was requested that I share with a broader audience.

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.

Podcast: Our very own Hemant Om Patel had the opportunity to chat with the team at InTech Ideas about agility and the changes needed to be made in today's workforce.

As knowledge workers we are trained to perform our job roles mainly through academic learning. While this is essential for us to perform our tasks, there is typically no training for supervisors or managers in providing feedback to their team members. Often, performance reviews are treated as something that is required to be done by corporate rules and as such relegated to annual or bi-annual events.

What is it like for you to receive feedback once a year? What is your experience getting feedback from managers? In this blog I will share some tips that will enable you to provide feedback in a meaningful way throughout the year, not just during an official review period. This is even more critical in the VUCA world we live in now.

There's no shortage of reasons why agile transformations fail, but you can avoid many of the pitfalls by educating yourself on common issues and preparing your business for potential problems.

If your organization has decided to utilize an agile scaling technique it is important to understand both how to implement these changes and how to test the implementation.

What is an Agile organization exactly? What are some common characteristics of Agile organizations and how can your company develop those characteristics?

Motivational Interviewing is a goal-oriented way of having a collaborative conversation with a person or group, while paying particular attention to the language of change.

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.

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.

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

Sprint Grooming is an essential part of the Scrum process.  Understanding what Sprint Grooming is all about and how to run sessions routinely and effectively is critical.

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.

A key artifact in Scrum is the Sprint Backlog, also called an iteration backlog. It is highly versatile but is easy to misuse. This guide shares what the Sprint Backlog is, how it fits into Scrum, best practices, and much more.

While some project management professionals may believe that they can easily retool or rebrand themselves from Project Manager to Scrum Master, the truth is that both disciplines seem to take almost diametrically opposed approaches to software development.

The retrospective is my favorite Scrum event as it fosters the ultimate conversation. It allows people to talk!

I think of Scrum Backlog prioritization as if it is a restaurant experience. The backlog itself is a menu arranged to fit the customer’s needs.