TL; DR: Scrum’s Essence, the New New Scrum Master—Food for Agile Thought #241
Welcome to the 241st edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 26,408 peers. This week, we brush up our understanding of Scrum’s essence; we indulge ourselves in collective wisdom regarding Scrum’s first principles, and we embrace a state that nowadays is more important than ever—trust, leading to psychological safety.
We also analyze Product Owner roles—there are six of them—; we enjoy an inside view at Amazon’s culture, and we reflect about roadmaps, design problems, and testing assumptions within the Jobs-to-be-done framework.
Lastly, we come back to the Scrum Master role and learn how working with distributed teams requires to rethink it.
Did you miss last week’s Food for Agile Thought’s issue #240?
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🏆 The Tip of the Week: Scrum’s Essence
(via LeSS): The Essence of Scrum
In this article, requiring a minute of reading time, Bas Vodde summarizes the nature of Scrum: pursuing satisfied customers.
Agile & Scrum
: 📺 A Few Things Every Scrum Practitioner Should Know
In this video, Gunther Verheyen reads from his book ‘97 Things Every Scrum Practitioner Should Know.’
(via The Liberators): Experiments, Practices, and Strategies for being a Remote Scrum Master
Barry Overeem suggests how to rethink your role as a Scrum Master in these days.
(via InfoQ): 📺 Make It Safe! Psychological Safety for You and Your Teams
Steven Limmer discusses the common issues with ‘Agile,’ and how this has led to failure and mistrust.
📅 🖥 Online Professional Scrum Master Training PSM I: May 25-28, 2020
This guaranteed online Professional Scrum Master training is an official Scrum.org class that leads to and includes the industry-recognized PSM I certification. The training is designed as a live virtual class of 4 hours per day and will be offered in German.
Additional services for this online Professional Scrum Master training:
- Part of this virtual PSM training is also the free participation in the Distributed Agile Masterclass for Scrum Masters, Product Owners, and agile coaches by appointment.
- On request and for an additional charge of € 299 incl. 19% VAT, it is also possible to take part in a classic PSM training class.
Learn more: 📅 🖥 Professional Scrum Master Training PSM I — Online: May 25-28, 2020.
Product & Lean
: Six Types of Product Owners
Roman Pichler describes six typical PO roles, how they related to each other, and how you can effectively apply them.
: 🎙 Customer experience, innovation, artificial intelligence, culture….a look inside Amazon
Adrian Swinscoe interviews Claire Whitaker for an inside look at Amazon’s culture.
(via A List Apart): Jobs To Be Done
Jim Kalbach shares the ‘Designing Value’ chapter from ‘The Jobs To Be Done Playbook:’ Roadmaps, design problems, and testing assumptions.
📯 Remote Agile (Part 8): Daily Scrum with Distributed Teams
We started this series on remote agile with looking into practices and tools; we explored virtual Liberating Structures, and how to master Zoom. We had a look at common remote agile anti-patterns; we analyzed remote Retrospectives, Sprint Plannings as well as remote Sprint Reviews based on Liberating Structures. This eighth article now looks into supporting a distributed Development Team organizing a remote Daily Scrum.
Read more: Remote Agile (Part 8): Daily Scrum with Distributed Teams.
📅 Scrum Training & Event Schedule
You can secure your seat for Scrum training classes, workshops, and meetups directly by following the corresponding link in the table below:
| Date | Class and Language | City | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 February 3, 2026 | Guaranteed: Hands-on Agile #71: A3 Framework — Assist, Automate, Avoid — Let’s Build a Playbook! (English; Live Virtual Meetup) | Meetup | FREE |
| 🖥 💯 🇩🇪 February 10-11, 2026 | Guaranteed: Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German; Live Virtual Class) | Live Virtual Class | €1,299 incl. 19% VAT |
| 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 February 19, 2026 | Guaranteed: Hands-on Agile #72: Become Your Organization's AI Champion: A Crowdsourced Playbook (English; Live Virtual Meetup) | Meetup | FREE |
| 🖥 🇬🇧 March 10-11, 2026 | Professional Scrum Master—Advanced Training (PSM II; English; Live Virtual Class) | Live Virtual Class | €1,299 incl. 19% VAT |
| 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 March 19 to April 16, 2026 | Guaranteed: AI4Agile BootCamp #6 (English; Live Virtual Cohort) | Live Virtual Cohort | €499 incl. 19% VAT |
| 🖥 🇩🇪 March 24-25, 2026 | Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German; Live Virtual Class) | Live Virtual Class | €1,299 incl. 19% VAT |
See all upcoming classes here.
You can book your seat for the training directly by following the corresponding links to the ticket shop. If the procurement process of your organization requires a different purchasing process, please contact Berlin Product People GmbH directly.
📺 Join 2,200-plus Agile Peers on Youtube
Now available on the Age-of-Product Youtube channel:
- 🆕 Remote Agile (1) Replay: Practices and Tools for Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches, and Product Owners.
- Scrum Sprint Retrospective Anti-Patterns.
- Scrum Master Anti-Patterns.
✋ Do Not Miss Out and Learn about Scrum’s Essence: Join the 7,575-plus Strong ‘Hands-on Agile’ Slack Community
I invite you to join the “Hands-on Agile” Slack Community and enjoy the benefits of a fast-growing, vibrant community of agile practitioners from around the world.
If you like to join all you have to do now is provide your credentials via this Google form, and I will sign you up. By the way, it’s free.
