Agile Master Principles encompass the foundational values and beliefs that guide Agile Masters in their roles as facilitators and leaders within Agile teams. These principles are rooted in the Agile Manifesto and emphasize customer collaboration, responding to change, and delivering working software iteratively.

Agile Scrum is a project management framework emphasizing flexibility and iterative development. It divides work into short iterations called Sprints, where cross-functional teams collaborate to deliver potentially shippable increments of the product. Daily standup meetings, sprint planning, reviews, and retrospectives are key practices ensuring continuous improvement and customer satisfaction.

Scrum principles form the foundation of the Scrum framework, guiding teams in delivering high-quality products through iterative and incremental practices.

The principles of Scrum can be applied to any type of project or organization, and they must be adhered to in order to ensure appropriate application of Scrum.

The aspects and processes of Scrum can be modified to meet the requirements of the project, or the organization using it, but Scrum principles are non-negotiable and must be applied as described in the framework presented in A Guide to the Scrum Body of Knowledge (SBOK™ Guide). Keeping the principles intact and using them appropriately instills confidence to the user of the Scrum framework with regard to attaining the objectives of the project. 

• Empirical Process Control—This principle emphasizes the core philosophy of Scrum based on the three main ideas of transparency, inspection, and adaptation.
• Self-organization—This principle focuses on today’s workers, who deliver significantly greater value when self-organized and this results in better team buy-in and shared ownership; and an innovative and creative environment which is more conducive for growth.
• Collaboration—This principle focuses on the three core dimensions related to collaborative work: awareness, articulation, and appropriation. It also advocates project management as a shared value-creation process with teams working and interacting together to deliver the greatest value.
• Value-based Prioritization—This principle highlights the focus of Scrum to deliver maximum business value, from early in the project and continuing throughout.
• Time-boxing—This principle describes how time is considered a limiting constraint in Scrum, and used to help effectively manage project planning and execution. Time-boxed elements in Scrum include Sprints, Daily Standup Meetings, Sprint Planning Meetings, and Sprint Review Meetings.
• Iterative Development—This principle defines iterative development and emphasizes how to better manage changes and build products that satisfy customer needs. It also delineates the Product Owner’s and organization’s responsibilities related to iterative development.

Scrum principles are the core guidelines for applying the Scrum framework and should mandatorily be used in all Scrum projects. The Scrum aspects and processes, however, can be modified to meet the requirements of the project or the organization.

The Agile Master Principles course is an advanced training program designed for individuals seeking to deepen their understanding of Agile methodologies and excel in leading Agile transformations. This course delves into the fundamental principles that underpin Agile practices, such as customer collaboration, adaptive planning, continuous improvement, and delivering incremental value. Participants explore advanced concepts like Lean thinking, systems thinking, and the theory of constraints.

One of the Agile principles is, “The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.” This is taken by most practitioners as the rationale for collocated teams. There have been several debates around the possibility of teams which are distributed and how that would work in an Agile specifically Scrum environment. You can read some very strong opinions on both sides of the divide. Agile manifesto makes it very clear that, it values “responding to change over following a plan” and probably that is what should be done. The way teams work, has been changing constantly and distributed teams are a reality in a globalized world. You have Scrum Masters in the US managing development teams working out of China or India on a daily basis. It cannot be avoided. What can be done is to follow the spirit of the Agile Manifesto which takes “face-to-face” conversation to be the most effective. Now a days, there are so many tools at our disposal that could give the same experience of face-to-face conversation even when the teams are thousands of miles away. Apart from the tools being used, there are few pointers that could help distributed teams coordinate work effectively.

1. Scrum Meetings – Once the team is set to function virtually, it is essential that all the meetings recommended by Scrum framework (refer to Scrum Body of Knowledge SBOK™ Guide)  actually happen as scheduled. This would include for example, a Daily Stand-up but conducted virtually. One could use tools such as Skype or other web-conferencing tools (Webex or GotoMeeting) to attend these meetings. These meetings can also function as team-building sessions within a multicultural and multilingual team. Scrum master is required to take pro-active steps to ensure all team members attend these meetings and participate as required.
2. Communication – Distributed Scrum teams working from around the world might vary in terms of work ethics, office culture and language. So a common platform and language is required to deal with the differences. Factors such as different time zones, work timings and mode of communication should be clearly laid out to help establish clear and transparent communication channels.
3. Colocation – Sometimes as the work nears completion or if the project requires one or more teams to closely work together, the teams might need to be present at the same location temporarily. This will help in increasing team building efforts as the team members get to know each other and in turn will increase efficiency in delivering the project.
4. With globalization, evolution of distributed Scrum teams working in a virtual environment is an expected change and addition to how we deliver Scrum projects.