Book Review: Scrum by Jeff Sutherland.
The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time
Background
Ken Schwaber & Jeff Sutherland first co-presented a paper, “The SCRUM Development Process”, in 1995 at the Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages & Applications (OOPSLA) Conference ’95 in Austin, Texas. This was its first public appearance.
After its first full implementation at the Easel Corporation in 1993 by Jeff Sutherland, John Scumniotales, and Jeff McKenna. The paper essentially documented the learning that they gained over the previous few years.
The scrum guide documents Scrum, as developed, evolved, and sustained for 30+ years by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland. Other sources provide patterns, processes, and insights that complement the Scrum framework.
The Book
Title: Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time.
Author: Jeff Sutherland (Goodreads Author)
Publication Date: September 30th 2014
Publication house: Crown Business (first published 2014)
Pages: 237 pages
Book Genre: Self-help.
Goodreads rating: 4.16.
Introduction
This Book Review is mostly made up of book extracts and summary notes I made while listening to audiobooks: Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time — Jeff Sutherland and The Scrum Guide-November 2020: A Definitive Guide to Scrum by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland. I believe It’s good practice to make notes while learning or researching something new.
I was inspired to write this Scrum book review because not only does It helps to know how beneficial & useful this framework is but also appreciate how it can influence any sector and accelerate every human endeavour or organization’s objectives.
What and why scrum?!
According to scrum.org; — “ Scrum is a framework within which people can address complex adaptive problems, while productively and creatively delivering products of the highest possible value.”
Scrum empowers professionals to make decisions when addressing adaptive complex problems and also do their jobs the right way.
A summary breakdown of key Scrum points to remember.
A good Scrum typically has;-
- A Product Owner who maximizes the value of the product and also manages the product backlog.
- A Scrum Master guides the Scrum team and makes sure everything in the sprints is done right and on schedule.
- A Scrum Team with 5–9 members. In Software Development, the team will mostly consist of Developers, Designers, Testers, and QAs/SQA Engineers. Less than 5 members would be “not enough skill”, and more than 9 members would be “communication overhead and other issues therein”.
For more information visit the scrum Website.
Timeboxing in the Scrum practice.
It’s important to develop sprints that are not more than 30 days. In essence, you should be able to deliver progress or increments within 30 days or less to avoid getting feature creep.
- A Sprint Review event for a 30-day scrum event should be less than 4hrs or less depending on the days e.g., 30 days, 3 weeks, 2 weeks, and 1 week.
- A Daily Scrum should realistically be 15 minutes.
- Sprint retrospectives in a 30-day scrum event should be 3hrs or fewer based on the day’s timeline.
These timebox examples should act as a point of reference for you to improve timeboxing for your Scrums, depending on tasks, teams, and the size of projects or company standards.
Further Recommendations
The other books I think will be helpful to Software Developers, Project Managers, Product Managers, and other Technology Enthusiasts are;-
- Ask Your Developer: How to Harness the Power of Software Developers and Win in the 21st Century by Jeff Lawson.
- The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries.
I have personally found them to be very instrumental in my professional development as an IT consultant, Project Manager, and Software Developer.
Conclusion
Today more than ever, we need Scrum, a framework championed through the values; of courage, focus, commitment, respect, and openness to achieve success.
Between reading Technology books and putting into practice what I’ve learned, I’ve been able to see continuous improvement in my professional career. I do hope sharing my Scrum Book Review helps whoever is reading this.
Originally published at https://tealfeed.com.
