In this article, I unravel the secrets of what makes a Scrum Master not just good but amazingly outstanding. From regularly achieving Sprint Goals, delivering value to customers, and building stakeholder rapport easily, discover the traits that set apart successful Scrum Masters.
Moreover, we also shed light on the pitfalls to avoid if you want to keep the respect of your teammates and probably your job.
The purpose of this anonymous Scrum Master salary report is to create a clear, data-backed benchmark that allows everyone in the Agile community to understand whether their compensation is adequate. The report will cover Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches, both employed and freelancing.
The goal is to have at least 1,000 replies by the end of November 2023 to create the report in time for January 2024. Of course, the report will be available for free.
ChatGPT can be an excellent tool for those who know how to create prompts. The simplest form of prompting ChatGPT is to feed it the task and ask for results. However, this approach is unlikely to trigger the best response from the model.
Instead, invest more time in prompt engineering, and provide ChatGPT with a better context of the situation, desired outcomes, data, constraints, etc. The following article offers a primer to creating ChatGPT prompts for Scrum practitioners to get you started running. You will learn:
The Scrum Master Salary Report 2023 is the fourth edition of the industry survey after 2017, 2019, and 2022. This free report is based on the answers of 1,143 participants globally. If you are considering a career decision this year, maybe, whether you should join the industry as a junior Scrum Master or move to a new organization or go independent, you will find the report’s information beneficial.
By the way, the average salary of the participants in the survey is US-$80,995, with a standard deviation of about US-$53,700. In the complete report, you will find more detailed information; download your copy below.
Scrum has proven time and again to be the most popular framework for software development. Given that software is eating the world, a seasoned Scrum Master is nowadays in high demand. And that demand causes the market-entry of new professionals from other project management branches, probably believing that reading one or two Scrum books will be sufficient. Which makes any Scrum Master interview a challenging task.
Suppose you are looking to fill a Scrum Master position in your organization. In that case, you may find the following Scrum Master interview questions helpful to identify the right candidate. They are derived from my sixteen years of practical experience with XP and Scrum, serving both as Product Owner and Scrum Master, and my training experience as a Professional Scrum Trainer with Scrum.org. Also, I have interviewed dozens of Scrum Master candidates on behalf of my clients.
So far, this Scrum Master interview guide has been downloaded more than 25,000 times.
If you are looking to fill a position for a Product Owner in your organization, you may find the following 82 interview questions useful to identify the right candidate. They are derived from my sixteen years of practical experience with XP and Scrum, serving both as Product Owner and Scrum Master and interviewing dozens of Product Owner candidates on behalf of my clients.
So far, this Product Owner interview guide has been downloaded more than 10,000 times.
Age-of-Product.com’s parent company — Berlin Product People GmbH — offers Scrum training classes authorized by Scrum.org, Liberating Structures workshops, and hybrid training of Professional Scrum and Liberating Structures. The training classes are offered both in English and German.
Check out the upcoming timetable of training classes, workshops, meetups, and other events below and join your peers.
Suitable agile metrics reflect either a team’s progress in becoming agile or your organization’s progress in becoming a learning organization.
At the team level, qualitative agile metrics often work better than quantitative metrics. At the organizational level, this is reversed: quantitative agile metrics provide better insights than qualitative ones.
Welcome to the 422nd edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 49,901 peers. This week, Farnam Street highlights the revised edition of Charlie Munger’s “The Psychology of Human Misjudgment,” Nigel Thurlow critiques “Fake Agile,” while John Cutler analyzes Brian Chesky’s leadership insights. Also, Marco Nink identifies key traits of agile companies, and we examine how to miss Sprint Goals consistently.
Then, Jeff Patton offers a framework for assessing Product Managers across seven vital areas. Moreover, Roman Pichler discusses the role of a validated product strategy and the Opportunity Solution Tree in product discovery, and Richard Mironov critiques annual planning, advocating for continuous, inclusive corporate and product strategy.
Lastly, Troy Lightfoot and Andy Cleff discuss with Prateek Singh and Dan Vacanti their book “Scaling Simplified,” focusing on Agile scaling through flow. Mark Ridley investigates Bruce Tuckman’s “Stages of Group Development,” its evolution, and its current relevance. Additionally, Casey Rosengren addresses startup decision-making, underscoring the impact of fear and uncertainty, and Dr. Stuart Woolley critiques the gap between management practices and their effectiveness in software engineering.
Do you excel in the art of setting unattainable, imposed, or plain non-existing Sprint Goals? In other words, are you good at missing Sprint Goals with regularity? If not, don’t worry; help is on the way!
In this article, we’ll explore how to consistently miss the mark. For example, enjoy the thrill of cherry-picking unrelated backlog items and defining success by sheer output, not outcome. Countless Scrum Teams have thoroughly tested all suggestions. They are ideally suited for teams who love the challenge of aimlessly wandering through Sprints!
Welcome to the 421st edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 49,812 peers. This week, we explore Jason Cohen’s Fairytale Planning for strategic simplicity, examine Jim Highsmith’s critique of the waterfall model’s impact on organizational dynamics, and delve into John Cutler’s insights on balancing productivity in product management. Also, we highlight Eiki’s emphasis on the importance of psychology in agile coaching through transformative leadership methods, and we explore the Scrum trap of applying unsuited practices.
Then, we listen to Agile Uprising’s interview with Maarten Dalmijn, discussing his book ‘Driving Value with Sprint Goals,’ while Marty Cagan critiques Brian Chesky’s take on product management. Aatir Abdul Rauf offers insights on crafting product strategies, and Charles Lambdin laments the persistent focus on output over outcomes.
Lastly, Jason Yip discusses lessons from Spotify on autonomy and team building, while Dan Shipper honors Charlie Munger’s legacy in decision-making. Shane Hastie’s podcast with Todd Little delves into Kanban’s advantages, and David Pinsof critically analyzes the nature of opinions in social contexts.
Scrum is a purposefully incomplete framework. Consequently, it needs to be augmented with tools and practices to apply its theoretical foundation to an organization’s business reality: what problems shall be solved for whom in which market? Moreover, there is an organization’s culture to take into account. However, the intentional “gap” is not a free-for-all to accept whatever comes to mind or is convenient. Some tools and practices have proven highly effective in supporting Scrum’s application and reaping its benefits. And then there are others — the Scrum trap.
Let’s look at what practices and tools for collaboration and team building are not helpful when used with Scrum.
Welcome to the 420th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 49,687 peers. This week, Paulo Caroli introduces Triple Track Development, blending Business Strategy, Discovery, and Delivery for digital product evolution. Jacob Kaplan-Moss discusses trust-building in management, emphasizing the need for consistency and transparency. We delve into Wharton research by Peter Cappelli, revealing how excessive comfort impacts workplace performance, and Gergely Orosz examines the evolution of software backend development with insights from Joshua Burgin. Plus, we tackle the feature factory dilemma in large organizations, exploring its effects on Agile principles and strategies to overcome it.
Then, Itamar Gilad proposes a blended roadmap approach for adaptability in planning. Lenny Rachitsky interviews Melissa Perri and Denise Tilles, highlighting the significance of product operations. At the same time, Teresa Torres and Hope Gurion discuss balancing product discovery with delivery, while Marc Abraham emphasizes the importance of prioritization and saying “no” in decision-making.
Lastly, John Cutler explores systems thinking and business efficiency with Leah Tharin, and Jeff Gothelf presents a guide on designing lightweight experiments. Moreover, Christoph Roser examines the impact of overburden in manufacturing on employees and machinery. Finally, Dennis Hambeukers highlights the role of good design in fostering agility and collaboration.
