Hear Chris Sims on the Agile Weekly Podcast

In the current episode of the Agile Weekly podcast Chris talks to Roy van de Water and Drew LeSeur of Integrum about running Agile Learning Labs as a transparent company with a radical compensation plan, and about writing The Elements of Scrum using scrum, and how our new book, Scrum: A Breathtakingly Brief and Agile [...]
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How to play the Team Estimation Game

The Team Estimation Game is the best technique we have found to get a scrum team up-and-running with useful estimates. It plays like a game, but it accomplishes valuable work: assigning story point estimates to user stories. Teams using this technique are typically able to estimate 20 to 60 stories in an hour. The game [...]
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Scrum Product Owner vs. Product Manager: Is There a Difference?

Question: Chris just did a scrum workshop for us and it was GREAT–I learned a TON. I have a follow-up question about the scrum role of product owner, and how we should implement it in our organization. The way we are doing this, the Product Owner is also the Product Manager. Is this typical? This [...]
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Introducing our new book…Scrum, a Breathtakingly Brief and Agile Introduction

We published this little book very quietly last week, and without so much as a tweet it has already become the #2 bestselling kindle book on software project management, right behind our other book, The Elements of Scrum. The response to Elements has been tremendous over the past year, and a lot of people have [...]
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Scrum Master in a Box! innovation fun and games…

Who knew Innovation Games could be a competitive sport? Our own Director of Biz Dev, Laura Powers, is in a class with Deb Colden called “Innovation Games for Customer Understanding” today, and sent us this pic of her winning entry for “best design and product pitch.” She calls it Scrum Master in a Box: We [...]
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More fun with internet memes: “What does a scrum product owner do?”

We learned earlier what it is a scrum master does. Now it’s time to see what makes a product owner tick: If this makes you want to become a scrum product owner (and we’re certain it does!), you can take one of our product owner certification classes. The next one is February 25-26, and includes [...]
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Fun with internet memes: “What does a scrum master do?”

Inspired by Lesbians and Lawyers. Click the image to see at full size: If this makes you want to become a scrum master, you can take one of our certification classes. The next one is February 27-28, and includes a free Kindle.
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Kindles for all our CSM and CSPO students this month

We hear that the traditional year-one anniversary gift is paper. Does e-ink count? We think so! The Elements of Scrum is a year old, and to celebrate, Agile Learning Labs is giving a Kindle to every student in our Certified ScrumMaster and Certified Scrum Product Owner classes this month. And what a year it has [...]
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No team members were harmed in filming Sh*t Bad Scrum Masters Say

Last Sunday, several Agile Learning Labs team members became actors for a few hours, turning out to help our brilliant colleague Adam Weisbart film the epic drama saga, Sh*t Bad Scrum Masters Say. This small cinematic wonder (it ain’t no video, shot professionally in HD and edited by a master in the real sense of [...]
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Agile Goal Setting with Scrum

At last week’s Agile Manager’s Support Group, our very own Laura Powers, goddess of biz dev here at Agile Learning Labs, wowed us all with an exercise in personal goal-setting adapted from the basic framework of scrum. Laura knows a thing or two about meeting goals, having recently completed her first marathon. She started the [...]
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