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!

A Product Owner is constantly balancing expectations from the business, the team, and users. It’s a tough job. You might feel you are doing all the right things, but your team is just not responding. If you feel you are not getting the best results from your team, or perhaps you sense they just don’t like working with you, you might benefit from improving your emotional EQ.

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.

Scrum Masters need to be willing to engage with an open mind while remaining focused on what they want to accomplish. Here are five tips that you can use to better position yourself to succeed as a new Scrum Master.

Companies embark on their Agile transformations every day, but how do they do it and what are the common agile transformation steps?

As Scrum Masters, we need to help our organizations identify and work through "bottlenecks". We first identify what these blockers are, then prioritize each item and tackle the highest impact items first.

The role of a Scrum Master can be difficult. How do you take your Scrum Master skills to the next level? How do you become a great Scrum Master?