5 Essential Skills Every Scrum Master Needs

Being a Scrum Master isn’t just about booking meetings and quoting the Scrum Guide. It’s about showing up every day as a change agent — the one who helps people work better together, face complexity with courage, and actually deliver value.

It’s easy to forget that Scrum is fundamentally about people.

Your job as a Scrum Master is to unlock that potential — not by managing them, but by enabling them.

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10 Mistakes Enterprises Make When Scaling Agile — and How to Avoid Them

When I walk into a Fortune 500 boardroom and hear, “We’ve adopted Agile,” I brace myself. Usually, what follows is a whirlwind of rebranded status meetings, overwhelmed middle managers, and teams confused about whether they’re sprinting or slowly marching in circles.

Enterprise Agile transformations are rarely short on ambition. But too often, the reality is a mismatched combination of frameworks, tool obsession, and unclear intent. Over the past decade, I’ve led Agile rollouts in healthcare, finance, and tech. These are the ten recurring mistakes I see — paired with practical remedies rooted in experience.

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If You Want Better Stories, Stop Writing Them All Yourself

I’ve talked to a lot of product owners who are drowning in tickets, trying to “get ahead” by writing every single user story themselves.
I used to be one of them. And every sprint, we’d slip. Morale tanked. The team blamed the process, and I blamed myself.

But after one conversation — and one uncomfortable realization — I found a single thread running through every success story I’ve seen since.

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Velocity = The Most Abused Agile Metric Ever

Welcome to the dark side of velocity — the number that started as a planning aid and ended up as a weaponized performance metric, often wielded by people who’ve never touched a user story in their lives.

In this episode, we’ll break down:

• What velocity is supposed to do
• How it gets misunderstood and misused
• Why chasing it kills team health
• And how to bring it back from the dead

Let’s sprint into it. (Pun 100% intended.)

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A Make-A-Wish That Turned Into a Gift for Others

When Karina’s Make-A-Wish moment arrived, she didn’t ask for a trip or a celebrity meet-and-greet. Instead she asked to create a day for other sick kids — a place where they could forget hospitals and treatments for a while. Make-A-Wish marked Karina’s request as their historic 500,000th wish and worked with partners to turn it into a virtual “camp” experience so many children could participate and feel seen. Karina’s wish became a gift that multiplied: she received her wish, and countless other kids received joy, connection, and a break from illness — a powerful example of gratitude that gives back.

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The Heart of New Leadership is Curiosity

Most of us are drawn to rules and limits. They give us a sense of safety. Structure and predictability offer comfort: we know what to expect, and what’s expected of us. For a while, this feels like stability. But in truth, it often leads to stagnation.

The artist doesn’t value safety and smallness. The artist values discovery. To create something new, you have to step beyond the known.

The same is true for leaders.

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Is your team moving in sync—or spinning in circles? - Mike Cohn

Ever feel like your agile team should be working smoothly—but something’s just a bit off? Handoffs feel clunky. Meetings drag. Even small changes spark big debates.
It’s not that your team isn’t skilled—it’s that you’re not quite in sync.
Rowers have a word for the alignment you’re seeking: swing.
What is swing?
In crew rowing, swing is that near-magical moment when every rower moves in perfect unison—each stroke in sync, each effort amplified. And I do mean perfect unison. This means each rower:

• puts an oar into the water at the exact same time
• pulls for the same time and distance at the same speed
• lifts the oar out of the water at the same time
• slides forward at the same pace

• Team members hand off work frequently, without fanfare, and in small chunks.
• Team members can finish each other’s… (Did you try to finish my sentence for me?) work. They can jump in and pick up tasks if someone is out sick or on vacation.
• Meetings are short, focused and valuable.
• Goals are ambitious, but usually met. When the team falls short, everyone (including leaders) understands that goals are not guarantees.
• A try-it-and-see mindset permeates the team. They’re willing to experiment with new practices (such as user stories vs. job stories or story points vs. time) or frameworks (Scrum, SAFe, Kanban).
• The team is confident in their ability to succeed. As they deliver more and more value, and achieve outcome after outcome, the team feels almost unstoppable. Team members have fun. I sometimes decry that work is called work. I sincerely want work to be fun. I’m not naive: I know that won’t always be the case. But when a team is working together well, it is fun.

Swing is rare. When I rowed, our boat might have gone an entire race without once truly achieving swing. (And yes, it was usually my fault. Thanks for asking.)
But when it happens, it’s effortless. The boat flies.
Agile teams can experience the same kind of swing.
When everything starts to flow
When teams are aligned and in sync you’ll know it:
​​​​​None of this happens by accident
Achieving all of this isn’t easy.
Like rowers chasing swing, agile teams have to practice, reflect, and adjust—over and over again—in their quest to go from good to great.
But take it from me, when it clicks, it’s magic.

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Today we remember Sgt. 1st Class Leroy Petry - Happy Veterans Day

On May 26, 2008, in Paktya Province, Afghanistan, Army Ranger Leroy A. Petry and his team were ambushed. During the firefight an enemy grenade landed near Petry and several fellow Rangers. Without hesitation Petry grabbed the grenade and attempted to throw it away from the group. The grenade detonated as he was throwing it; Petry survived but lost his right hand. His quick action saved the lives of the soldiers beside him. For that act of conspicuous gallantry he was awarded the Medal of Honor — presented by President Obama in 2011.

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