Category: Publications

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Re-imagine your Scrum (from The Scrum Caretaker Courier 14)

In 2003 my life of Scrum didn’t actually start with Scrum but with eXtreme Programming that we subsequently wrapped in Scrum. As my professional life in 2025 still revolves around Scrum, can I safely say that I have a ‘career’ of more than two decades of Scrum?

There are a few important milestones that I passed in all those years, although I didn’t plan for them:

  • Virtually moving to the Netherlands in 2011 and working with large organizations,
  • Creating my book “Scrum – A Pocket Guide” in 2013,
  • Partnering with Ken Schwaber and Scrum.org in 2013,
  • Continuing my professional life as an “independent Scrum Caretaker” in 2016,
  • Collecting and curating the views of experts around the world in the book “97 Things Every Scrum Practitioner Should Know” in 2020.

Today, in 2025, it feels like I am passing an important milestone again. Over the past two decades of Scrum I seem to have been gathering many, many pieces without being able to see the puzzle, the overall picture. Over the past 4-5 years however, those pieces did start to fit and form one holistic vision.

In 2019 I described my observations regarding “The illusion of agility” in a paper. But, the plan to write a follow-up paper called “Re-imagine your Scrum” never worked out. That is strange because I had created small recordings on both topics in 2019. After all, they are related in the sense that inspection and adaptation are. Today, I am happy to share that I have-finally-written that follow-up paper.

Still, I feel that I couldn’t have expressed my follow-up views and advice in writing sooner than now. Although it is not the complete story of how I look at the future state of Scrum (that will be the topic of my next book), I strongly believe it is already more than enough to get many people, teams, and leaders to start thinking beyond their (current instances of) Scrum.

Cover of the white paper titled 'Re·Imagine Your Scrum: Firm up Your Agility' by Gunther Verheyen, published in September 2025.

I hope you will enjoy watching and reading my views and ideas on how to “Re-imagine your Scrum (Firm up your agility)” through the recording & (NEW) WHITEPAPER.

If you want the full history, do read what follows…

Warm regards
Gunther
independent Scrum Caretaker

The Complete Saga (2003-now)

Continue reading Re-imagine your Scrum (from The Scrum Caretaker Courier 14)
Posted on by — Leave a comment

De derde druk van de “Scrum Wegwijzer” is nu beschikbaar

Voortdurend op zoek naar nieuwe manieren om Scrum uit te leggen

Zonder het belang van mijn werk met eXtreme Programming verpakt in Scrum in België sinds 2003 te minimaliseren, is Nederland toch wel heel belangrijk geweest tijdens mijn ontdekkingsreis met Scrum. Ik genoot het voorrecht om vanaf 2010 in belangrijke mate in Nederland kennis en inzicht in het Scrum-proces te mogen verspreiden. In 2011 en 2012 bevond ik me, als Global Scrum Leader en Principal Consultant bij Capgemini, geheel onverwachts in het oog van een Scrum-orkaan die stormenderhand Nederland veroverde. Toen ik door mijn werk bij Scrum.org (2013-2016) een goed beeld kreeg van de mondiale verspreiding van Scrum, stelde ik verheugd vast dat Nederland wereldwijd (!) koploper was wat betreft de invoering van Scrum. Dat is het vandaag nog steeds. Dankzij de vele mensen, teams en organisaties waarmee ik sinds 2010 mocht werken, werd Nederland wat Scrum betreft zowat mijn professioneel thuisland. En zo voelt het nog steeds, anno 2025.

In 2013 creëerde ik, quasi op toevallige wijze, een licht en eenvoudig boek over het licht en eenvoudig framework dat Scrum is. Niet toevallig was dat op vraag van en werd dat boek gepubliceerd door Van Haren Publishing, een Nederlandse uitgever van IT-boeken en -publicaties. De eerste, Engelstalige uitgave verscheen in 2013 op de markt als Scrum – A Pocket Guide. In 2016 publiceerden we mijn Nederlandse vertaling ervan als Scrum Wegwijzer. De tweede druk van de Nederlandstalige editie, die in 2022 verscheen, was dan weer gebaseerd op de derde druk van de Engelstalige versie, die in 2021 werd gepubliceerd.

Continue reading De derde druk van de “Scrum Wegwijzer” is nu beschikbaar
Posted on by — Leave a comment

Increasing the Agility of Biotech Companies by Tuning their Scrum (Wisdom from Michal Epstein)

On 6 & 7 June 2024, I joined the Regional Scrum Gathering in Ghent (in my home country Belgium). Besides delivering the closing keynote about “Moving (your) Scrum Downfield” and having many hallway conversations, I also attended a few sessions by fellow speakers.

Continue reading Increasing the Agility of Biotech Companies by Tuning their Scrum (Wisdom from Michal Epstein)
Posted on by — Leave a comment

Teams Are More Than Collections of Technical Skills (Wisdom from Uwe Schirmer)

In the summer of 2019 I got in touch with O’Reilly Media about their ambition to expand their “97 Things” series with a book about Scrum. Drained as I was after an engagement as Scrum Enterprise Coach at a large organization it was a great way to re-energize and practice some writing again. As the title of the series suggests, the idea was to publish 97 essays about Scrum, to be provided by people (‘experts’) from around the world. Having no other plans for that time being, I could completely focus on my work as curator: contacting people, collecting ideas for essays, reviewing potential essays, suggesting potential edits, ordering and categorizing the articles, reviewing the manuscript and the cover.

Ultimately, 69 people delivered one or more essays that made it into the book and O’Reilly published the result in May 2020, when I could proudly announce the availability of “97 Things Every Scrum Practitioner Should Know”.

Uwe Schirmer was so kind to contribute two essays:

  • Thing 5: “Start with the Why of Your Scrum” (Together with Peter Goetz), part of Part I (“Start. Adopt. Repeat.”).
  • Thing 67: “Teams Are More Than Collections of Technical Skills”, part of Part VII (“People, All Too Human”).
Continue reading Teams Are More Than Collections of Technical Skills (Wisdom from Uwe Schirmer)
Posted on by — Leave a comment

Announcing the availability of the 4th edition of “Scrum – A Pocket Guide”

Uncovering better ways of explaining Scrum

In 2013 I ended up writing a book about Scrum for Van Haren Publishing, a publishing house specialized in IT publications based in the Netherlands. They wanted to add a book about Scrum to their portfolio. By that time, I had been applying Scrum for 10 years and in the two years preceding the actual creation of my book, I had been at the heart of the Scrum storm that was sweeping the Netherlands. And survived.

Writing a book about Scrum was anything but a long-lived hope, ambition or dream. Rather, it was an accidental and unplanned endeavor. At the same time, writing a simple book with as few lines of text as possible actually turned out taking a lot more time and energy than I thought it would take. I went through that effort in the time between ending my position as a Principal Consultant at a large international consulting company and embarking on my partnership journey with Ken Schwaber (Scrum co-creator) as the Director of the Professional Scrum Series at Scrum.org.

Imagine my surprise that more than a decade later the 4th edition of my book is now globally available via diverse channels.

A journey in itself

Continue reading Announcing the availability of the 4th edition of “Scrum – A Pocket Guide”
Posted on by — 1 Comment

The 3rd edition of “Scrum – A Pocket Guide” is now available.

A big rock that was moved in 2021.

The updated, third edition of my book “Scrum – A Pocket Guide” is now available worldwide, as a digital and as a paperback edition. Still small enough to fit in your pocket and carry it with you anywhere, anytime. Still a smart travel companion.

I accidentally created the first edition of my book “Scrum – A Pocket Guide” in 2013. I consider how I described the Scrum Values in that first edition. In July 2016 they were added to the Scrum Guide. I consider how I already described the traditional three questions of the Daily Scrum as a good but optional tactic in that first version. These questions being optional was added to the Scrum Guide in November 2017 and their description was even completely removed from the November 2020 edition; taking away all doubt that they are indeed optional. In 2018 I deliberately evolved my Scrum travel companion into a second edition (available 2019).

Rather than repeating the rules of the game, in my pocket guide to Scrum I focus on the purpose of those rules while clearly distinguishing them from tactics to play the game. Tactics are not described in the Scrum Guide because they ‘vary widely and are described elsewhere’. Given its size (small) and volume (only about 100 pages) I hope my book lives up to what its subtitle says: a smart travel companion. Creating and updating my book, accidentally or otherwise, had many unanticipated (mostly positive) consequences, for which I am very grateful. I could not hope for, nor aspired, continual appreciation for being such a comprehensive description of the Scrum framework seven+ years later.

In the meantime, more and bigger challenges keep surfacing. The balance of society keeps drastically and rapidly shifting from industrial (often physical) labor to digital (often virtual) work. More and different people ask for guidance and insights on their journey of Scrum in domains beyond software and new product development. Organizations look for clear insights in the simple rules of Scrum as they envision re-emerging their structures and their way of working around Scrum. Without rendering them overly vague I believe that the third edition of “Scrum – A Pocket Guide” holds more generic, yet still appropriate and complete descriptions of the rules of Scrum; using different words and other angles to the known set of rules without creating or leaving holes. Rather than omitting them all, terms and examples from Scrum in software and new product development environments now serve more as examples for other industries where Scrum is adopted.

I believe that this third edition offers the more than ever needed, foundational insights for people and their organizations to properly shape their Scrum, regardless of their domain or business. The focus is still more on the intent and purpose of the rules and roles in the framework, while clarifying some changes in terminology from the 2020 update of the Scrum Guide. Helping people understand the purpose of the rules and the roles of Scrum remains at the heart of all my work and actions as an independent Scrum Caretaker–training, coaching, consulting and speaking. It helps me drive forward an evolution towards more humanized workplaces.

Following are some of the more popular channels to acquire the third edition of “Scrum – A Pocket Guide”:

For readers in the wider India region:

For readers in Belgium and the Netherlands:

I thank Bhuvan Misra for his much-appreciated, critical feedback on this third edition. I thank all translators for their past and on-going efforts to spread my words in different languages. Translations of this updated, third edition in Russian, Polish, French and traditional Chinese are in progress. I thank all at Van Haren Publishing, and especially Ivo van Haren, for giving me the chance to express my views on Scrum.

Enjoy reading!

Gunther
independent Scrum Caretaker