Save Our Scrum
Save Our Scrum
About the Book
Scrum may have won the brand-war as the most popular of Agile Methods – but is it working? Or, at least, could it work better?
An opportunity to improve is one way to put it, and that is what Matt Heusser and Markus Gärtner typically see with thier clients.
It's common to see a world where standups become boring status meetings, planning and commitments become command-and-control wishing followed by overtime. Testing stretches past the sprint boundary … and that’s just the beginning.
So let's start over from the beginning - with the current state of Scrum in mind.
Matt and Markus begin with what Scrum is from their point of view, including the problems it tends to solve. They quickly pivot to talk about the forces that conspire to restrict, compromise, and challenge organizations moving toward Scrum, and some solutions.
After that, in part II, the two talk about specific situations they have seen and solutions, in context of real organizations. They call these "nuggets", hopefully gold, or at least coal - consistent, clear and useful.
Part III explores real case studies of organizations trying to use something like Scrum to deliver working software. These are real case studies, not just fluff, talking about what went wrong, what went right, and why those things were a fit for those organizations.
At least, that's the idea. Right now Part I and Part II are all that is ready - and the graphics need a lot of work. Instead of trying to plan everything up front, the two decided to release this to the world and gather feedback. So please, get the book, then pressure Matt and Markus to finish it.
You'd be doing them a favor.
About the Authors
Table of Contents
-
Preface
- A Brief Timeline
- Scrum In the Wild
- Above My Pay Grade
-
How To Use This Book
- Problem of Audience
- Part One - Simply Scrum
- Part Two - Scrum Nuggets
- Part Three - Case Studies
- Part Four - The Back Matter
-
Scrum as a Framework for improvement… and that’s it
- Scrum Roles
- Scrum Rituals
- The Secret Sauce of Scrum
-
Why Scrum?
- Limiting Work in Progress
- Prioritizing Work
- Restricting Changes in a Sprint
- Building It and Communicate about It
- Discussing about What Went Right and Wrong, and What to Change
- What is the Value of Scrum?
-
Common Problems
- The Whirlwind
- The Compression Problem
- The Tailoring Problem
- The Assumptions Problem
- From Problems to Solutions
- A Few Solutions
- Review: New Terms
-
Scrum Nuggets
- The Nuggets Enumerated
-
Mechanics of Scrum Adoption (or failure to adopt Scrum)
- Avoid Scrum As Waterfall
- Avoid Scrum As Mini-Waterfall
- What about done criteria? Team has done criteria but does not stick to nor change them.
- Daily Standup: It’s not about status
- Command and Control, Go Away. Come back to our competitors on another day.
- Changes in Priority Even During a Sprint
- Everything is urgent - not time to learn. Or even think.
- Dealing with True Scrum Impediments
- Beware Shallow Agreement
- The value, and need, for a Scrum Master
- The Scrum Master Course
-
Attitude
- “We can’t do that”
- Notice and Overcome Work Avoidance
- Don’t Say “Demotivated”
- “That’s not my job”
- Don’t be a Victim
- Everything is negotiable
- There is no ‘They’
- Scrum Master
-
Product Owner
- Stories are too big
- Slice Stories More Thinley To Create Predictability
- Stories are not well defined
- Stories with acceptance criteria that are technical = describing how the team has to implement
- Stories with no big picture = stories are not grouped in epics, no context
- Too many stories stuck in “waiting”, blocked outside the team
- The Product Owner as Team Member
- The product owner as architect
- Product Ownership can be lonely
-
Code and Design
- Developing a prototype
- The risks of prototyping
- Spikes and Prototypes
- Technical Spikes
- Use Tracer Bullets through your system
- Dev/Tester Programming
- Mobbing as a coaching method
- One more call for Pair Programming
-
Testing
- No Test Team
- No Test Role
- Testers Embedded on the Team
- Whole Team Testing
- Test Tooling as a Product Requirement
- Test Tooling Below The GUI
- System Integration Test Environment: It’s a Trap!
-
Engineering and Process (in the TPS sense)
- Developing time to go faster
- Limit Work In Progress (WIP)
- Consider Touch Time
- Multitasking
- Find and Elevate the Bottleneck
- Silos in teams get their own stories each sprint.
-
Environment
- What Are Sprints For?
- When The Official Process Process Gets In Your Way
- Try Having a Physical Scrum Board
- One Backlog of Work
- Tasks Are Harmful
- No, Seriously, Tasks are Bad, Don’t Do Them
-
Management Science
- Things, Process, and Money
- Big Teams Hurt. So Why Do That?
- We need coordination between teams — no really.
- Standardize Communication Interfaces, Not the How Of The Work
- Streams of Work Teams, Not Portfolios of Projects
- The Entire Role of Line Management Is Different
- The line manager as Product Owner
- Even better the line manager as Product Owner and team member
- Impediment Remover or enabler of victim-mentality?
-
Change Management
- “Process” is Superficial
- Are you judged by feelings or results?
- How is your transference rate?
- Your Reality Bubble
- Understand the risks involved in a change
- Priority Whiplash
- The Tailoring Problem
- Communities of Practice, Not Centers of Excellence
- Many people are faking it
- People Hate Change
- Notes
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