hardScrum Blog

Repetitive and fixed length iterations in hardware development

November 4, 2025November 4, 2025 Oliver Schönfeld

The following statements and questions come up very often when introducing agility and Scrum in hardware development: Every work package is different in length and that cannot be predicted! We have so many dependencies on suppliers and cannot predict delivery times. Our work packages are much larger than 4 weeks. If anything, our iterations would…

Openess vs Psychological Safety

October 24, 2025October 24, 2025 Oliver Schönfeld

To encourage openness during a retrospective, the so-called “Las Vegas principle” is often applied. This means promising that statements made during the retrospective will not be shared outside the group. However, this can be problematic if the improvements require the cooperation of managers or other teams. And what does the Scrum Guide actually say about…

Solution Design – The lost discipline in Agile Product Development

October 11, 2025October 11, 2025 Oliver Schönfeld

Agile teams deliver fast—but often at the expense of solution design. Why conceptual work between user story and implementation needs more space, and how agile principles and systems thinking can be balanced effectively.

P4 Modelling Game

June 8, 2025October 11, 2025 Oliver Schönfeld Leave a comment

Das P4-Modelling-Game eignet sich hervorragend in Schulungen und zu Ausbildung, um die Begriffe klarer zu machen. Dazu bekommt ein Teilnehmer oder eine Gruppe eine Frage, die dann mit einem Kartenmodell zu beantworten ist. Hier ein paar Beispiele: Wer gehört zum Team? Der Team-Scrum-Master, der Team-Product-Owner und das Working-Team sind Teil des Teams. Welche (Team-)Product…

Management teams: The better alternative?!

June 11, 2023June 12, 2023 Oliver Schönfeld 1 Comment

The P4-Dev framework provides a comprehensive approach to product development, particularly one that leverages pragmatic, lean, and agile practices. The three key roles within this framework are the Product Owner, the Scrum Master, and the System Engineer, each of which has distinct responsibilities but also have to work in harmony to ensure the successful execution…

Is there an agile milestone process?

November 22, 2022June 10, 2023 Oliver Schönfeld 4 Comments

Since the use of agile practices in physical product development, the question has arisen as to whether classic product development methods can or should be completely replaced, used alongside one another, or combined. Behind this is primarily the desire of organizations to retain processes that have already been introduced for the most part, or not…

A culture change is a change of management behavior

June 19, 2022August 4, 2024 Oliver Schönfeld Leave a comment

The change of an organization only works if the organizational culture is suitable for it or if the cultural change is part of the change. But, what actually is organizational culture? Here is my definition: Organizational culture is the behavior of people within the organization that is considered normal and how the rest of the…

Misconception of Agility #2: We don’t plan

February 20, 2022June 6, 2024 Oliver Schönfeld Leave a comment

There are many misconceptions about agility in product development. There are those who think they can leave out everything except implementation: We don’t document, we don’t test, everything is changeable at any time. In addition, there are many people who think that there is no planning in agile product development. “Today we are really agile…

Modern interdisciplinary organizational setups

November 7, 2021May 18, 2022 Oliver Schönfeld Leave a comment

In organization theory, a distinction is made between the organizational structure and the process organization. In classical organizations the department structure corresponds to the organizational line structure, whereby these form usually functional units and summarize thus specialized coworkers (e.g. sales, production)*. The classical expiration organization is regulated thereby either over work processes, which regulate the…

Misconception of Agility #1: Total flexibility

September 26, 2021October 4, 2021 Oliver Schönfeld Leave a comment

There are many misconceptions about how to understand agility in product development. There are those who think they can leave out everything except implementation: We don’t document, we don’t test, we don’t plan. There are also a lot of people who have unrealistic hopes for the adoption of Agility, e.g.: “We can change anything at…