Mike is a founding member of the Scrum Alliance, Inc. and currently serves as secretary on the Board of Directors. He founded and operates Mountain Goat Software, a process and project management consultancy and training firm.

Mike has over twenty years of experience in a variety of environments and specializes in helping companies adopt and improve their use of agile processes and techniques in order to build extremely high performance development organizations. He has previously served as a technology executive in organizations of various sizes, from start ups to Fortune 40 companies. Mike ran his first Scrum project in 1995 and has been a vocal proponent of Scrum ever since. He has helped with the adoption of such processes at numerous companies, including Bioware, Capital One, Electronic Arts, Google, High Moon Studios, Intuit, JDA Software, Lexus Nexus, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Nielsen Media Research, Pearson, Phillips Electronics, Sabre, Siemens, Sun Microsystems, Texas Instruments, Turner Broadcasting, Ultimate Software, and Yahoo.

Mike is a frequent featured conference speaker at industry events and a recognized magazine contributor. He has authored numerous books, including Agile Estimating and Planning and User Stories Applied for Agile Software Development, as well as several books on Java and C++ database programming. In addition to his service with the Scrum Alliance, Inc., Mike was also a founding member of the Agile Alliance and is a member of IEEE Computer Society and the ACM. Mike is a Scrum Alliance Certified Scrum Trainer.

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Upcoming Courses by Mike

Course Title Date Range City
Certified Scrum Product Owner 12-13 May 2008 Boulder
Certified ScrumMaster 19-20 May 2008 Oslo
Certified Scrum Product Owner 21-22 May 2008 Oslo
Certified Scrum Product Owner 26-27 May 2008 Stockholm
Effective User Stories & Agile Estimating and Planning 28-29 May 2008 Stockholm
Certified ScrumMaster 3-4 Jun 2008 Reston
Agile Estimating and Planning 5 Jun 2008 Reston
Certified ScrumMaster 30 Jun - 1 Jul 2008 London
Effective User Stories for Agile Requirements 2 Jul 2008 London
Certified ScrumMaster 3-4 Jul 2008 London
Certified ScrumMaster 29-30 Jul 2008 San Diego
Agile Estimating and Planning 31 Jul 2008 San Diego
Certified ScrumMaster 18-19 Aug 2008 Oslo
Certified Scrum Product Owner 20-21 Aug 2008 Oslo
Effective User Stories for Agile Requirements 22 Aug 2008 Oslo
Effective User Stories for Agile Requirements 7 Oct 2008 London
Certified ScrumMaster 8-9 Oct 2008 London
Agile Estimating and Planning 10 Oct 2008 London
Effective User Stories for Agile Requirements 13 Oct 2008 San Jose
Certified ScrumMaster 14-15 Oct 2008 San Jose
Agile Estimating and Planning 16 Oct 2008 San Jose
Certified ScrumMaster 1-2 Dec 2008 Oslo
Certified Scrum Product Owner 3-4 Dec 2008 Oslo
Agile Estimating and Planning 5 Dec 2008 Oslo

Recent Articles by Mike

Writing the Product Backlog Just Enough and Just In Time 12 Feb 08
How much work should you do in advance of a sprint? Nothing? As little as possible? As much as possible? Find out why doing just enough, just in time might be your best strategy.
Advice on Conducting the Scrum of Scrums Meeting 07 May 07
When scaling Scrum to large projects, the scrum of scrums meeting can be a vital tool for keeping your teams in sync and out of each other's way. Mike Cohn gives some pointers on how to run and coordinate these important Scrum meetings.
Leader of the Band: Six Attributes of a Good ScrumMaster 05 Feb 07
When it comes time to choose a ScrumMaster, who should you choose? A technical guru? A political mastermind? A visionary? In this week’s column, Mike Cohn describes six attributes to look for in a potential ScrumMaster.
ScrumMaster: Appointed or Team-Selected 16 Oct 06
The selection of a new Scrum team's ScrumMaster can impact the success or failure of the team's Scrum adoption. Choose the wrong person and the team could face the uphill struggle of trying to become self-organizing while under the thumb...
Spring Planning: Better Together 10 Jul 06
While teaching a recent Certified ScrumMaster class I was asked what a ScrumMaster should do about a team member who doesn’t want to participate in a sprint planning meeting. In this specific case, the question referred to a team member who ...
Scrum Shouldn't Be a Burden 20 Mar 06
If lightweight processes feel too heavy, it's most likely an implementation problem.

Resources by Mike

Scrum Smells: An Initial Catalog
by Mike Cohn This article was written for the Scrum Alliance soapbox. It presents an initial collection of Scrum smells or indicators that things may be amiss on a Scrum project.
Prioritizing Product Backlog_Cohn
Fall 2007 Scrum Gathering: London  Wednesday, 14 November, 10.45-12.15 “Prioritizing Your Product Backlog” Presenter: Mike Cohn, CST, Mountain Goat Software, USA The biggest risk to most projects is building the wr...
Guide to Transitioning_Cohn
Fall 2007 Scrum Gathering: London Wednesday, 14 November, 15.30-17.00 “Succeeding with Agile: A Guide to Transitioning” Presenter: Mike Cohn, CST, Mountain Goat Software, USA Transitioning to an agile development proces...
User Stories
Prioritizing Your Backlog

Recent Comments by Mike

On Language for Discussing Releases
There are some great ideas in here, Dan. Thanks for sharing them with us. You are very right that it is hard to give a project stakeholder a message like "We'll be late." We should probably all practice saying that 100 times in the mirror each mor...
On Advice on Conducting the Scrum of Scrums Meeting
Hi Matt--I'm not sure if I understand what you mean about the Scrum of Scrum being used for individual team planning to ensure requirements and roadblocks are addressed. A lone team on a desert island wouldn't have a need for a Scrum of Scrums mee...
On Advice on Conducting the Scrum of Scrums Meeting
Replying to the two previous comments: First, if two different participants disagree they need to work it out with the help of other participants. This is part of becoming a self-organizing team. Second, Yes, the Scrum of Scrum participants will...
On Advice on Conducting the Scrum of Scrums Meeting
Thanks, anonymous. Your constrained-but-leave-time-after approach is essentially what I do. We try to get a quick update from everyone, go over some basic sharing and then dive into specific issues to be resolved. Some people will opt out if they ...
On Leader of the Band
Since a ScrumMaster is a part of the team, he or she is held accountable for the success of the project but only to the extent that every team member is. The ScrumMaster should not be singled out for any special recognition or blame in the event o...
On Perfect Planning
Guy--Nice article. It should be pointed out, though, that the Kanban approach of Anderson and Garber was used for sustaining engineering (aka "maintenance") efforts. I've worked with many teams who plan sprints in the typical agile manner but also...
On Scrum Alliance Certifications
Hi Plamen--There is indeed a Certified Scrum Product Owner. A couple of sessions are scheduled for Europe over the next few months. In fact, there's more in Europe than in the US between now and the end of the year. Within the next month or two th...
On Case Study: October 2007
One of the things I like to suggest when a team has to drop items from a sprint is that they plan sufficiently fewer hours in the next sprint so that they are nearly certain to be able to finish the work of that sprint without dropping work. I don...
On Writing the Product Backlog Just Enough and Just In Time
Hi Haim- I'm glad you found this article helpful. I have teams estimate with the sequence of values 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40 and 100 (story points or ideal days). I ask them to think of those numbers as buckets. A 13-liter bucket cannot hold a 1...
On Writing the Product Backlog Just Enough and Just In Time
Hi Geir--It sounds like you've discovered some great subtle ways to improve things for your team. That's fantastic.
On Writing the Product Backlog Just Enough and Just In Time
Hi Mike--It is amazing how even a little bit of visibility (e.g., upcoming cards posted to a nearby wall) can really help the team.
On Writing the Product Backlog Just Enough and Just In Time
Hi Cindy-- I don't exactly follow what you do. From the above it sounds to me that you are doing something similar to what I advise, which is (a) writing product backlog items at different levels of detail based on things such as priority, risk, ...
On Scrum Shouldn't Be a Burden
Hi James-- You are absolutely correct. I've been working on a new book and in it I describe five steps or phases that I've noticed occur in successful transitions. The final phase is what I call "Transfer." It refers to the need to transfer the...
On Writing the Product Backlog Just Enough and Just In Time
Hi Anthony-- Usually when a team puts a "?" as the estimate on a story it means they don't know enough about it at the time to estimate it. The solution is usually to get more information from the PO about what to build or to develop more technica...