John Ragozzine

Rejecting Master for Main

We all know that words carry power. A person’s word choice can make or break a conversation, a motto, or even a simple salutation. Seeing GitHub taking action with word choice, I decided to replace the default branch of this website’s repo from master to main.

Velocity in Scrum is a Means, Not an End

Being a scrum master, I often worry if velocity looms too large for me. From project forecasting to sprint planning to team retrospectives, velocity metrics are up in my grill more than bratwurst at a Green Bay Packers tailgate. Even from a “book learnin’” standpoint, velocity is front and center: “The Scrum Master is accountable for the Velocity … of the Team.” That big V Velocity is really intimidating! But does velocity warrant such verbal (and mental) emphasis?

Woman working in a home office, using an iMac

Team Norms for Distributed Scrum Teams

If you’ve suddenly found yourself working remotely due to COVID-19 precautions, how do you handle all the normal day-to-day things like meetings, tracking tasks, and basic communication? Team norms don’t need to be complicated just because everyone’s remote. Being a fully distributed company ourselves, we have learned a lot over the years that helps us keep our teams running smoothly.

Rule of Scrum

As a scrum master and coach, I see the phrase “doing scrum wrong” thrown around a lot. But Scrum rules are made to be broken.