Scrum Framework

A Quick Overview of My History with Scrum

I first learned about Scrum in 2007 while at InfoSpace. During this time, I was both the "Technical" Product Manager and Development Manager for the team that managed the company's data services. I had to take on the role of Scrum Master and Scrum Product Owner and besides my official Scrum Master training, there just wasn't that much guidance available publicly to guide me through this.

I'm one of those people who just need to understand how things work and not having that understanding is like a constant itch that must be scratched. Over the years I took on more and more advanced efforts with Scrum, such as creating and leading an Agile PMO for Motricity, training, hiring, and managing Scrum Masters and Scrum Product Owners, and eventually leading the "Agile Transformations" for Nordstrom's e-commerce division and for Concur.

While at Nordstrom, I also became certified as a SAFe Program Consultant, but that's a story for another page.

During my career, I've created dozens of training classes for Scrum Masters, Scrum Product Owners, and Scrum Development teams, and I've trained thousands of people across all organizational levels, and coached hundreds of people on the adoption, use, and improvement of Scrum.

I've studied all the original Scrum papers, subsequent Scrum papers by Jeff Sutherland, the Scrum patterns, and most of Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber's books (the creators of Scrum), and I've applied, taught, and coached all facets of Scrum in many different types of settings, not just software development.

Today, I can honestly and unabashedly say that I have mastered Scrum and that I have moved beyond it in ways that few people have accomplished.

My Work on Scrum

You can find a list of the training classes and coaching workshops I've created and delivered on my training and coaching page.

I've given many public talks on Scrum. One of my favorite talks is titled Agile Project Management, Not A Silver Bullet, wherein I demonstrate how Scrum and SAFe only address the work management aspects of software development while either completely ignoring product management, capability/ability management, and implementation management, or only paying lip-service to it, and even then only does so from a project-management perspective.

I created a matrix of objectives for Scrum, based on The Scrum Guide, in which I describe the objectives of all the roles, events, artifacts, and practices in Scrum. You can view it here.