By popular request, here are some resources (books, sites etc) to learn (more) about Scrum:
Books:
- Agile retrospectices: Making Good Teams Great – Esther Derby & Diana Larson | Amazon | The most-read book on retrospectives
- Agile Product Mangement with Scrum – Roman Picher | Amazon | The (only) book about being a PO.
- Managing for happiness: Games, Tools and Practices to motivate any team – Jurgen Appelo | Amazon | A book filled with easy to use excercises and games (an earlier version was called #Workout). Interesting for both Scrum Masters and managers (and anyone else really).
- Scrum and XP from the trenches – Henrik Kniberg | Download this book for free here
- Kanban and Scrum: Making the best of both – Henrik Kniberg & Mattias Skarin | Download this book for free here
Videos:
- Agile Product Ownership in a nutshell – Henrik Kniberg | Probably the most informative and information dense 15 min video there is on being a Product Owner
- Spotify Engineering culture part 1 and part 2 – the famous videos from Spotify detailing their culture and engineering setup. If you haven’t see them yet: enjoy! 🙂
- What is refinement? A short explainer video on the role of refinement in the Scrum framework.
More details about the roles of Scrum Master and Product Owner:
There is a recurring question I get asked at a lot by clients: Are the roles of Scrum Master and Product Owner really fulltime roles? A lot of this confusion seems to come from a lack of understanding of what those people really do all day. Fair enough. 🙂
The lists below are not complete (nor do I necessarily agree with every item on there,) but they do a great job of giving an impresssion of how much different things Scrum Masters and Product Owners can (and should) do in order to do their job in the best way possibe:
Some recomended reading for Scrum Masters;
- Toolbox for the Agile Coach: 96 Visualization Examples – a great book by Jimmy Janlén (Crisp) full with examples of visual management, to directly copy or be inspired.
- Negotiating the Impossible: How to break deadlocks and Resolve Ugly conflicts (without money or muscle) by Deepak Malhotra. I would recommend this book to any Scrum Master or Agile Coach looking for a way to improve her ‘soft power’.
- Behind Closed Doors: Secret of Great Management. Yes, I know I know… Scrum Masters are not managers. Still this classic by Esther Derby and Rothman is a great resource on how to build a team, do 1-1s with team members etc.
Sites:
Agile scaling:
- Large Scale Scrum site (LeSS)
- A good introductionary video from Craig Larman on organisation issues when scaling and the origins of LeSS
- Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)
- Nexus: guide
Surveys about trends in the Agile world:
- State of Agile reports (VersionOne)
- State of Scrum 2015 (Scrum Alliance)
How to get certified:
Retrospectives:
If you are looking for resources on how to get better at running retrospectives, have a look at this blogpost.
by Jasper Verdooren

Jasper Verdooren
Agile Coach | Senior Scrum Master | Scrum trainer