Scaled Agile for Scrum Masters

Kick off your SAFe Scrum Master course with a practical introduction to scrum fundamentals, exploring core values, roles, artifacts, and events, and tracing a sprint from planning to delivery.

Explore scrum, a simple framework built on empirical process control with short cycles and feedback, delivering two-week sprints of usable software while inspecting and adapting to reduce risk.

Master scrum values—commitment, focus, openness, respect, courage—and the artifacts: product backlog, sprint backlog, increments, to deliver value through transparency, inspection, and adaptation.

Explore the Scrum sprint lifecycle, delivering a tangible increment of value in 2–4 week sprints, with constant length, planning, execution, review, and feedback loops for agility.

Explore scrum artifacts, including the product backlog, sprint backlog, and increment, and see how prioritization, estimation, and a clear sprint goal deliver user value with adaptability.

Master the five scrum events—sprint, sprint planning, daily scrum, sprint review, and sprint retrospective—and learn how the sprint goal, sprint backlog, three essential questions, and stakeholder feedback drive value.

Connect the product owner, scrum master, and development team to deliver value iteratively. Explore product backlog, backlog refinement, sprint planning, daily scrum, sprint review, increment, INVEST, and the three CS.

Explore scrum benefits such as improved quality and faster time to market through short sprints and frequent reviews, and apply best practices to overcome role ambiguity and scope creep.

Pilot Scrum with a dedicated team to learn, validate, and scale while preserving Scrum's core values, structure for planning, collaboration, and inspection, and a culture of empowerment and continuous improvement.

Promote transparency in process, workflow, and progress by mapping information flows and improving visibility for the team and stakeholders, and coach scrum values with facilitation techniques, visual boards, and metrics.

Dive into business agility by mapping the value stream, mastering seven core competencies, and connecting these to safe configurations and levels for the Scrum Master.

Drive business agility through digital transformation and agile tech like ai, big data, cloud, and DevOps, delivering value quickly while breaking legacy silos to adapt to changing customer needs.

SAFe solves cross-team misalignment in large organizations with agile release trains and lean portfolio management, enabling value streams, cadence-based execution, and decentralized decision making.

Master the business agility value stream to sense opportunities, fund MVPs, organize around value, deliver through cross-functional teams and continuous delivery, and pivot or persevere based on MVP learnings.

Explore how digital transformation, AI, big data, and cloud computing enable rapid sensing and responding through the business agility value stream (BAVS), helping teams deliver value faster and adapt.

Master seven core competencies for business agility in SAFe, including team and technical agility, built-in quality, agile product delivery, DevOps, enterprise solution delivery, lean portfolio management, and organizational agility.

Connect the business agility value stream to the core competencies of business agility, from sensing opportunities to funding MVPs, guided by lean portfolio management and agile product delivery.

Discover how SAFe configurations from essential to full help organizations achieve business agility, align strategy with execution, and coordinate multiple release trains through Pi planning and lean portfolio management.

Connect SAFe essential configuration with scrum elements, showing how features and stories align with roles from product management, system architects, to the release train engineer during pi planning.

Explore how scrum operates within the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) to help agile teams deliver value at scale, with PDCA, built-in quality, the definition of done, and roles, events, artifacts.

Map scrum terms to safe equivalents to scale agile practices across the enterprise, aligning multiple teams through iteration planning, team sync, and agile teams while maintaining value delivery.

Explore how safe scrum scales core agile principles into a rhythm of two-week iterations, PI planning, and continuous delivery of valuable, shippable increments through cross-functional, self-organizing teams.

Agile teams relentlessly improve, connect with customers, plan work, and deliver incremental value through working software while seeking feedback to iterate quickly and sustain customer value.

Establish built-in quality at the agile release train level by embracing continuous learning, automation, and collective ownership to deliver high-value solutions quickly and reliably.

The definition of done is a team-wide agreement on conditions for backlog items, enabling consistent value increments and a scaled DoD across teams, arts, and releases.

Examine your definition of done to improve quality, predictability, and stakeholder trust by evaluating its practical impact, identifying friction, and proposing a concrete, visible improvement for continuous improvement and ownership.

Align teams on a system-wide definition of DUN that integrates functional correctness, automated tests, security, data privacy, and deployment readiness to ensure safe, compliant health tech delivery.

Agile release trains dissolve silos by organizing around value and uniting cross-functional teams to deliver continuous, value-driven releases through a delivery pipeline of exploration, integration, deployment, and release on demand.

Explore four core team topologies, streamlined flow, complicated subsystem, platform, and enabling teams for delivering value within agile release train, with a focus on system teams and end-to-end integration.

Explore the safe essential roles that drive agile release trains, including cross-functional teams delivering features and the collaboration among release train engineers, product management, system architects, business owners, and customers.

Explore SAFe essential events that drive value in an agile release train, from team-level rituals like iteration planning and daily standups to art-level ceremonies like PI planning and system demo.

Discover the safe scrum master as a change agent and servant leader guiding the agile release train through core responsibilities: Pi planning, iteration execution, flow, high-performing teams, and system improvement.

Discover the scrum master's pivotal role in a SAFe enterprise, coordinating with the release train engineer, aligning teams across Pi planning, and guiding forecasting, governance, and system demos.

Lead as a servant leader by serving as the Scrum Master, fostering growth, trust, and collaboration through listening, empathy, and facilitation.

Explore Tuckman’s model of team development, detailing the forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning stages and how leaders facilitate goals, trust, and continuous feedback toward high performance.

Reflect on past team experiences to identify high-performing traits. Describe how a Scrum Master facilitates communication, decision making, psychological safety, and sustainable continuous improvement.

Facilitate backlog refinement, iteration planning, daily syncs, reviews, and retrospectives to enable team alignment, ownership, and continuous improvement, while shifting from control to empowerment and collaboration.

Coaching with powerful questions unlocks potential, removes blockers, and drives high performance by asking the right questions at the right time, creating ownership, engagement, and movement toward solutions.

Learn how cross-train collaboration and proactive alignment across the release train drives enterprise agility, through early integration, automated tests, coordinated events, and strong ties with the system architect.

Explore how trust, healthy conflict, commitment, accountability, and shared results drive high performing teams in SAFe environments, guided by the five dysfunctions framework.

Identify team dysfunction patterns, such as lack of trust, avoidance of conflict, silos, miscommitments, and disengagement, and coach through facilitation and conversations to build capability rather than dependency.

Learn how servant leaders prevent and resolve team conflicts by building trust and a shared vision. Practice consensus building, open dialogue, and clear working agreements to transform tension into collaboration.

Reflect on your scrum master traits, identify gaps, and apply facilitation, coaching stances, feedback practices, visualization tools, and resources to coach your Agile team with concrete actions.

Discover two SAFe pathways for leading enterprise change—the SPC and RT—covering agile release trains, PI planning, and actionable roadmaps to scale agility beyond teams.

Discover how the Pi cycle runs from vision to execution, enabling ideas to flow through the agile release train and deliver continuous value through Pi planning and ART workflow.

Learn the full Pi cycle on a SAFe release train, from Pi planning to IP iteration, with cadence, roles, and system demo.

Articulate a customer-centric product vision, translate ideas into epics, features, and stories, and manage them through portfolio backlog, pi planning, and agile release trains to deliver value.

Discover how features and enablers drive value on the agile release train by aligning the product vision with outcomes, defining acceptance criteria, and sustaining the architectural runway through Pi planning.

Identify three real features from your project, select one to define its benefit hypothesis, and outline measurable acceptance criteria to prove customer value and strategy alignment.

Explore pi planning as the heartbeat of Safe, a cadence-based, face-to-face event that aligns the agile release train on the next pi with direct communication and early dependency discovery.

Explore day one of Pi planning, where business context, vision, architecture, and team breakouts align, framing draft objectives, risks, and dependencies for the agile release train.

Day 2 pi planning updates priorities, capacity, and scope, guiding breakout teams to finalize pie plans with business value; review risks, conduct a confidence vote, and commit to execution.

Explore the SAFe 6.0 features flow, from idea or epic through funnel, review, analysis, implementation, and in-use validation to deliver high-value solutions.

Visualize the flow of work with an art kanban board, using explicit policies and wip limits to reveal bottlenecks and continuously improve pi readiness and pi execution.

Assume the RTE role and design an ART kanban board, using columns and WIP limits to reveal bottlenecks and flow of features from concept to delivery in regulated healthcare.

Learn how the architectural runway in SAFe 6.0 links the team, art, and portfolio levels to balance features, enablers, and emergent design for fast, sustainable delivery.

Define a capacity allocation policy that makes priorities visible and sustains flow by balancing new features and enablers at the art level, with stakeholder conversations.

Deliberate capacity allocation splits time between features improving clinical outcomes and user experience and work on technical health, defects, and regulatory needs to ensure sustainable delivery and trust.

Prioritize features to maximize ROI and customer value by sequencing work based on cost of delay and time to implement, balancing urgency and effort to deliver outcomes.

Master weighted shortest job first (WSJF) to prioritize work by cost of delay and job size, aligning portfolio, ART backlog, and team plans with lean-agile value delivery.

Apply the WSJF formula by dividing cost of delay (user business value, time criticality, risk reduction or opportunity enablement) by job size, and prioritize features with the highest WSJF score.

Apply lean economics with WSJF to prioritize features by balancing cost of delay, job size, and impact, turning prioritization from opinion-driven to value-driven.

Act as the pulse of momentum by bringing in the right people, starting a draft plan, surfacing risks and dependencies, and coordinating experts to prevent anti-patterns during Pi planning.

Lead the team from draft to commitment in the second pi planning breakout by finalizing the plan, surfacing risks and dependencies, and refining objectives to build confidence and value.

Facilitate collaboration across distributed PI planning by coordinating overlapping hours, boosting intra- and inter-team checkpoints, and promoting visibility of dependencies with a centralized art planning board.

Develop a proactive PI planning plan for a scrum master, covering backlog readiness, dependencies, capacity, and definition of done alignment, while guiding feature breakdown into stories for learning and flow.

Explore essential practices enabling high-performing iteration execution in Safe Scrum by writing features as stories in a value-driven format and using acceptance criteria and story maps to capture workflow.

Explore how features flow from the art backlog into team backlogs through stories, with patterns to split features into actionable user and enabler stories that fit a PI.

Learn to write effective user and enabler stories using the 3cs framework and the INVEST principle, grounded in personas like Janelle to improve telehealth access and value.

Split features into user stories that deliver value in slices, keeping the user and outcome front and center, and craft clear, small stories in a workbook in about 10 minutes.

Split the feature into value-driven stories that unify patient data for clinicians into one trusted view, delivering incremental, fast, reliable, and usable insights in Ethereum Health Tech.

Clarify when a story is complete using the team's definition of done (DOD), acceptance criteria, and product owner acceptance, guided by behavior-driven development and given-when-then tests.

Turn user stories into testable acceptance criteria using given-when-then to reveal assumptions, edge cases, and missing details, ensuring tester, developer, and product owner agree on done through observable outcomes.

The lecture demonstrates turning user stories into testable acceptance criteria using given-when-then, clarifying authentication, visibility, feedback, freshness, and transparency in a healthcare context.

Explore how story maps capture workflows and guide backlog management by visualizing the user journey, linking activities to stories, and prioritizing by user value for iterative, design-thinking delivery.

Drive iteration planning in safe Scrum by turning alignment into action. Establish capacity, allocate capacity, estimate stories, set iteration goals, and commit to a time‑boxed plan for sustainable value.

Learn how to use relative story points, Fibonacci sizing, and estimation poker to plan with precision and speed by assessing work amount, complexity, familiarity, and uncertainty.

Estimate work with story points as a relative measure of effort, comparing stories by work, complexity, familiarity, and uncertainty. Scrum Masters foster participation and use Fibonacci planning poker for estimates.

Learn how iteration goals provide clarity, alignment, and visibility, guiding teams to a common mission, communicating outcomes over outputs, and balancing commitment with adaptability across the art and with stakeholders.

Lead the team through disciplined iteration planning by safeguarding time boxes, protecting from overcommitment, aligning with PI objectives, and addressing technical debt to enable meaningful improvements.

The team sync acts as the heartbeat of alignment, with a brief daily update and a meet after to surface impediments, promoting ownership, collaboration, and value delivery by product owners.

Use the visual board to diagnose flow, bottlenecks, and risk, coaching teams to limit work in progress and finish current work. Inspect blockers, adapt, and improve velocity through continuous learning.

Explore why iteration burndown charts mislead by tracking tasks, not completed stories or value. Learn to use burn up charts and cumulative flow diagrams to reveal scope changes and progress.

Track iteration progress by detecting friction early and maintaining transparency, empowering the team to adapt in real time. Facilitate mid-pitch replanning and build quality to sustain momentum.

Examine how the scrum master's presence or absence affects team progress, and how to prepare for a two-week absence with clarifications, obstacle removal, and connection that preserves continuity and trust.

Facilitate a timeboxed backlog refinement to surface dependencies, clarify acceptance criteria, estimate and align the agile team for focused iteration planning, guided by the scrum master or product owner.

Drive effective backlog refinement by maintaining a short, frequent timeboxed session, ensuring full team participation and right subject matter experts, to shape near-term stories with clarity and predictability.

The iteration review is a transparent, team-driven demo of completed increments, including spikes, refactors, and non-functional work, to inspect progress, gather stakeholder feedback, and guide backlog planning for next cycle.

Scale the definition of done across levels to ensure items are complete and tested, and when unfinished, split, continue, delay, or abandon work while reflecting to tighten wip and estimation.

A Scrum Master guides value-driven iteration reviews and system demos by planning what to demo, coordinating team members, stakeholders, product owners, SMEs, and rotating presenters to build readiness and alignment.

Conduct a 30–60 minute, timeboxed iteration retrospective to identify 1–2 concrete improvements for the next backlog, reinforcing learning, transparency, and collaboration.

Scrum masters accelerate continuous team improvement by coaching root-cause analysis with five whys and fishbone diagrams, encouraging improvement between retrospectives, safeguarding psychological safety, and turning concerns into actionable, trackable outcomes.

Discover how DevOps unites development and operations to maximize speed and stability, with culture, automation, lean flow, measurement, and recovery at the core.

Execute iterations through disciplined story preparation, team alignment, and rapid feedback beyond PI planning. Use story mapping and intentional participation in planning, review, and retrospective to improve flow.

Guide scrum masters and release train engineer through the IP iteration to reflect, measure, and solve problems, fueling continuous improvement, sustainability, and innovation at the end of each program increment.

Orchestrate sustainable delivery by innovating and planning, refining the backlog, addressing technical debt, and preparing for pi planning through learning, inspect and adapt, and a culture of experimentation.

Inspect and Adapt drives continuous improvement across the agile release train by evaluating progress and planning improvements through the Pi System Demo, measurement review, and problem solving workshop.

Learn how the Pi system demo unites stakeholders to showcase the complete solution, align to business outcomes, gather feedback, and celebrate value delivered across the Pi.

Assess Pi outcomes with quantitative and qualitative measurements, using velocity, deployment frequency, customer feedback, and team reflections, and applying timeliness, content, and production readiness criteria to drive business value improvements.

Explore a business agility value stream model that measures progress by outcomes, flow, and competency, enabling rapid sensing of market changes and supporting a continuous learning culture in delivery.

Measure outcomes to confirm we meet customer and business needs by delivering real value and impact. Leverage KPIs and OKRs to clarify performance and guide future improvement.

Measure competency by using seven core competency assessments organized around key dimensions. Ratings provide quantifiable data to track progress and guide improvements in business agility and team and technical agility.

Discover Mick Kersten’s flow framework to measure value delivery with velocity, time, load, and efficiency within Safe, and use flow predictability and value stream mapping to improve delivery.

Measure and report art predictability by linking Pi objectives to business value scores and distinguishing committed from uncommitted work, then inspect, adapt, and demo the Pi system.

Shift from measuring activity to measuring flow by evaluating current metrics, identifying gaps, applying flow metrics to reveal bottlenecks and delays in value, and examining the art kanban.

Apply flow metrics to measure how long features move from concept to done, in-progress work, and value delivery, using the art kanban to reveal bottlenecks, capacity, and guide WIP limits.

Discover critical success factors for measurement by merging metrics with discovery tools and direct observation to reveal context and guide decisions toward business agility.

Apply metrics as a learning tool to reveal bottlenecks, delays, and value flow, and assess whether outcome metrics deliver real impact rather than just output.

Apply the eight flow accelerators to optimize flow across value streams and accelerate value delivery. Visualize and limit work in progress to reduce delays, identify bottlenecks, and improve feedback.

Lead a problem-solving workshop that moves from retrospective insights to root-cause analysis using five whys, fishbone diagrams, and Pareto analysis to drive high-impact improvements in the ART.

Define a well defined problem by detailing what, when, where, and impact, using a mobile app order delay during peak times, causing up to 30 minutes and $50k revenue loss.

Lead the inspect and adapt event by coaching the team, ensuring the Pi System demo tells a data-driven story and drives continuous improvement across the agile release train.

Guide end-of-PI activities as a scrum master by leveraging IP iteration for innovation and debt repayment, delivering a meaningful PI system demo, and facilitating data-driven problem solving for continuous improvement.

Discover two pathways to scale agile across the enterprise: Safe Practice Consultant (SPC) for leading safe implementations and Safe Release Train Engineer (RT) for orchestrating agile release trains.

Wraps up by connecting scrum fundamentals to coaching teams with psychological safety, empathy, relentless improvement, flow, and a DevOps culture that breaks silos to empower teams and accelerate delivery.

Explore the foundations of agile software development, including the Agile Manifesto and the guiding principles for value delivery, plus the Stacy Complexity model for uncertain environments.

Adopt agile software development as a flexible mindset that embraces changing requirements, prioritizes delivering working software, and collaborates with stakeholders to create real customer value.

Adopt the agile manifesto as a mindset. Valuing individuals and interactions, working software, customer collaboration, and responsiveness to change guides agile teams.

Explore the Stacey model to assess project noise, uncertainty, and stakeholder agreement, then choose a suitable approach. In low-noise settings, apply plan-driven methods; in high-noise, embrace agile and continuous learning.