Team self-organization is one of the key principles [1] of Scrum and its introduction to an organization raises a number of interesting questions around decisions and decision making. Specifically, the introduction of Scrum leads to consensus-based decisions by the team.

Is your team having difficulty forecasting when a project will be completed? Do you have a large number of un-estimated Stories in your product backlog? Are your planning meetings several days long and full of confrontation? If so, it could be that you're forgetting to "groom" your product backlog.

Munich proved to be one of the friendliest places I’ve been to.

I’ve always thought of it as a small central European country … which it is, but this has not always been the case. It was once the heart of one of the most powerful (if not the most powerful) empires in Europe and today Vienna contains many of the majestic artifacts and buildings from that time. Here are a few things that I didn’t know about Austria:

Copenhagen is a nice small city with a great deal of history, many beautify buildings and friendly, funny, crazy people! I’d been to Copenhagen many, many years ago, but I’m always looking for new and interesting facts. Here are some things I never knew about Denmark:

Stockholm is a truly beautify city with graceful old buildings looking out over the water and an picturesque old city center. The Swedish are open, friendly and incredibly polite! While I was training there they gave me an overview of their culture and language. Here are a few things I never knew about Sweden:

• Santa Claus comes from Sweden!

The CSM training course in Helsinki went exceptionally well. Everyone made me very welcome and there were some great conversations about what happens when you don’t focus on delivering high quality software.

Personal Comment: I started this article about 5 months ago and it’s just been sitting in my queue. I’ve been undecided about publishing because I’m not especially fond of it. But rather than let the bits rot, I thought I’d share it in the hope that someone will get some benefit out of it. If you find this interesting or helpful please leave a comment. Thanks.