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.
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
The Leanpub 60-day 100% Happiness Guarantee
Within 60 days of purchase you can get a 100% refund on any Leanpub purchase, in two clicks.
See full terms
Do Well. Do Good.
Authors have earned$11,714,583writing, publishing and selling on Leanpub, earning 80% royalties while saving up to 25 million pounds of CO2 and up to 46,000 trees.
Learn more about writing on Leanpub
Free Updates. DRM Free.
If you buy a Leanpub book, you get free updates for as long as the author updates the book! Many authors use Leanpub to publish their books in-progress, while they are writing them. All readers get free updates, regardless of when they bought the book or how much they paid (including free).
Most Leanpub books are available in PDF (for computers), EPUB (for phones and tablets) and MOBI (for Kindle). The formats that a book includes are shown at the top right corner of this page.
Finally, Leanpub books don't have any DRM copy-protection nonsense, so you can easily read them on any supported device.
Learn more about Leanpub's ebook formats and where to read them
Top Books
Recipes for Decoupling
Matthias NobackWrite software that survives
OpenIntro Statistics
David Diez, Christopher Barr, Mine Cetinkaya-Rundel, and OpenIntroA complete foundation for Statistics, also serving as a foundation for Data Science.
Leanpub revenue supports OpenIntro (US-based nonprofit) so we can provide free desk copies to teachers interested in using OpenIntro Statistics in the classroom and expand the project to support free textbooks in other subjects.
More resources: openintro.org.
C++20 - The Complete Guide
Nicolai M. JosuttisAll new language and library features of C++20 (for those who know previous C++ versions).
The book presents all new language and library features of C++20. Learn how this impacts day-to-day programming, to benefit in practice, to combine new features, and to avoid all new traps.
Buy early, pay less, free updates.
Other books:
CQRS by Example
Carlos Buenosvinos, Christian Soronellas, and Keyvan Akbary- Leverage your Software Architecture skills by learning everything about CQRS in detail with lots of examples
- Develop faster applications by applying CQRS and fostering Read Models and Projections
- Learn how to apply CQRS into a brownfield project from a pragmatic approach
Ansible for DevOps
Jeff GeerlingAnsible is a simple, but powerful, server and configuration management tool. Learn to use Ansible effectively, whether you manage one server—or thousands.
Maîtriser Apache JMeter
Philippe Mouawad, Bruno Demion (Milamber), and Antonio Gomes RodriguesToute la puissance d'Apache JMeter expliquée par ses commiteurs et utilisateurs experts. De l'intégration continue en passant par le Cloud, vous découvrirez comment intégrer JMeter à vos processus "Agile" et Devops.
If you're looking for the newer english version of this book, go to Master JMeter : From load testing to DevOps
Jetpack Compose internals
Jorge CastilloJetpack Compose is the future of Android UI. Master how it works internally and become a more efficient developer with it. You'll also find it valuable if you are not an Android dev. This book provides all the details to understand how the Compose compiler & runtime work, and how to create a client library using them.
The PowerShell Scripting and Toolmaking Book
Don Jones and Jeff HicksLearn the patterns, practices, and details of PowerShell Scripting and Toolmaking from the industry's two most recognized experts on the subject.
Mastering STM32 - Second Edition
Carmine NovielloWith more than 1200 microcontrollers, STM32 is probably the most complete ARM Cortex-M platform on the market. This book aims to be the most complete guide around introducing the reader to this exciting MCU portfolio from ST Microelectronics and its official CubeHAL and STM32CubeIDE development environment.
Introduction to Data Science
Rafael A IrizarryThe demand for skilled data science practitioners in industry, academia, and government is rapidly growing. This book introduces concepts from probability, statistical inference, linear regression and machine learning and R programming skills. Throughout the book we demonstrate how these can help you tackle real-world data analysis challenges.
Top Bundles
- #1
Software Architecture
2 Books
"Software Architecture for Developers" is a practical and pragmatic guide to modern, lightweight software architecture, specifically aimed at developers. You'll learn:The essence of software architecture.Why the software architecture role should include coding, coaching and collaboration.The things that you really need to think about before... - #2
CCIE Service Provider Ultimate Study Bundle
2 Books
Piotr Jablonski, Lukasz Bromirski, and Nick Russo have joined forces to deliver the only CCIE Service Provider training resource you'll ever need. This bundle contains a detailed and challenging collection of workbook labs, plus an extensively detailed technical reference guide. All of us have earned the CCIE Service Provider certification... - #4
Pattern-Oriented Memory Forensics and Malware Detection
2 Books
This training bundle for security engineers and researchers, malware and memory forensics analysts includes two accelerated training courses for Windows memory dump analysis using WinDbg. It is also useful for technical support and escalation engineers who analyze memory dumps from complex software environments and need to check for possible... - #6
All the Books of The Medical Futurist
6 Books
We put together the most popular books from The Medical Futurist to provide a clear picture about the major trends shaping the future of medicine and healthcare. Digital health technologies, artificial intelligence, the future of 20 medical specialties, big pharma, data privacy, digital health investments and how technology giants such as Amazon...