Essential Scrum

I first met Kenny Rubin when I attended his course, Certified Scrum Master Training, in late August, early September of 2011. That course was a fresh start for me. With 30 years of information technology experience under my belt, Scrum resonated deeply with me and provided a new spark of passion and enthusiasm for my IT career that I could have only dreamed of a short time ago. This book is the textbook that I was looking for that course, but it's also much more. Kenny Rubin has, in a 4-part book, given us a roadmap that describes the Land of Scrum, and then shown us all the major highways and byways that traverse the landscape.Based on my recent, personal experience as a Scrum Master, this book has become an indispensable roadmap and companion for my Scrum journey. I've read it from cover-to-cover, and was able to, within a 5-week window, develop and prioritize a product backlog with our product owner and a new development team, plan and execute our first sprint, and begin developing a "potentially shippable product increment" using the Agile framework described in Kenny's book in a timeframe that no other methodology has been capable of. The events unfolded just-in-time and the timing of each step and the parallel support from the book was impeccable.In the Introduction (Chapter 1), Kenny uses the Cynefin complexity model to describe the situations in which Scrum can be applied, and whether or not it makes sense to do so. This is immensely helpful up front to decide where you find yourself, and then, how to apply the material to bring success to your efforts. It's refreshing to read a book that tells you when NOT to use what's being described. When I read, "Scrum is not a silver bullet or a magic cure," I knew that the book would be useful to me and a realistic resource rather than a one-size-fits-all pitch.The book is organized into four parts. Part I, "Core Concepts" (Chapters 2-8), gives the lay of the land. It would be worth buying the book for Kenny's definitions, terminology, and description of the mindset that makes up Scrum. It provides the orientation to the landscape, the major landmarks, and "true north" for the Scrum framework. Part II, "Roles," (Chapters 9-13) describes who you are likely to run into along the way as you travel around in the land of Scrum. Your enjoyment and application of the scrum principles will be more satisfying when you know who should be doing what, and the reasons behind the activity. Part III, "Planning," (Chapters 14-18) is the "trip planning" portion of your time spent touring around Scrum. Part IV, "Sprinting" (Chapters 19-22) is like the daily itinerary for your two-week trip in the Land of Scrum. Both Parts III and IV describe how the people playing the various Scrum roles apply the core concepts to deliver the business value sought by those using this framework.The diagrams in the book are plentiful and clearly (and uniquely) capture the essence of the terms and narrative in a clean, uncluttered, and concise way. (The figures remind me of the Duplo toys my kids grew up playing with.) I have posted several of these in our Scrum team room for reference, and have been able to leverage them to great advantage in our working discussions. They build on themselves throughout the book so that by the time you reach the planning section of the text, you'll have a complete, graphical depiction of a Scrum cycle. I have used the Scrum framework (context) diagram (for example, see Figure 2.3) as the basis for presentations in my organization to not only describe my team's progress, but also to advocate for the adoption of Agile development.If you're new to Scrum and want a birds-eye flyover of the landscape, Chapter Two, "Scrum Framework," is an excellent way to get grounded. Kenny defines and describes all of the key topics in a simple fashion so that the language of Scrum and its mechanics can be understood: the Scrum roles, activities and artifacts. Chapter Three, "Agile Principles," is particularly useful for teams and companies that are in the process of adopting Agile for their development method, and are familiar with the waterfall (plan-driven) style of development.For example, the principles of Agile become clearer when compared to the classic, legacy style of development that so many of us cut our teeth on. One foundational section, "Prediction and Adaptation" (p. 37) is especially useful to understand the Agile mindset of keeping your options open. In the rest of Part I, you'll learn about: sprints and why a good definition of done is so important, user stories and what they have in common with and how they're different from requirements, the product backlog which following the metaphor, is like a fueling station for the vehicle you're driving around in the land of Scrum, estimation and velocity, your compass for your travels in Scrum, and technical debt, the extra weight, disrepair and drag that slows down our trip.In Part II, Chapter 10, "ScrumMaster," what I read was particularly useful to me as a new one of these. Though the responsibilities of this role are a bit daunting, Kenny's description afforded the right perspective. An example of this balance comes in the section in which he describes being an agile coach for the scrum team. If a member faces a problem that they can solve, the ScrumMaster's attitude is, "I'm not here to solve the problems for you; instead, I'm here to help you solve your own problems." (By the way, "If the problem is an impediment that the team can't resolve, the ScrumMaster takes ownership of getting it resolved.")If you're a product owner, member of the development team, or manager, the rest of Part II contains similar gems and pearls of wisdom to understand the part you play on the scrum team and that, to use a Jim Collins construct, you're one of the "right people on the bus."To adopt the mindset of agile planning, I strongly recommend a read of Chapter 14, "Scrum Planning Principles" in Part III. I say this because this is one of the areas in which Scrum practitioners take the most grief from its opponents. The argument goes that agile methodology doesn't, can't or won't fit in to their organization because there's no planning involved. Kenny dispels this rumor by masterfully articulating the Zen of agile planning. I can best sum this up by citing a passage on page 248, "When developing using Scrum, we don't believe we can get it right up front, so we don't try to produce all of the planning artifacts up front." Simply put, this calls out the "elephant in the room belief" held by dogmatists of the waterfall approach that massive Gantt charts can't possibly be wrong because they're so detailed.The rest of Part III is further support that Scrum development leverages the right kind of planning across all levels and timeframes of the product development lifecycle. Figure 15.1 on page 257 is an excellent illustration of these levels (and the description in the following pages). It shows that Scrum planning happens from the point of view of a strategy, a portfolio, a product, a release, a sprint, and down to the daily activities of the development team.One of the areas that I was confused by when first learning about Scrum was where the actually tasks were parked. There didn't seem to be much, if any, discussion about them, and my waterfall bias rendered the expectation that no real work could be done in a scrum until the tasks were defined and assigned. I discovered, by reading in Chapter 19, "Sprint Planning" that task planning in Scrum terms defined by Kenny is called, "Acquiring Confidence." Because the development team is empowered to commit to the goal of a sprint, it's imperative that they do so with a high degree of confidence.Often, in plan-driven development, a pile of tasks are assigned to (unloaded on) a developer without much discussion of the precision of the estimates of how long someone thinks it might take to complete the task, or with minimal regard to their current capacity. In Scrum (described on page 344), the development team breaks down "the product backlog items down into the tasks that are required to complete them to the Scrum team's agreed-upon definition of done." Because of the development team's participation in the definition and sizing of the User Stories (see "Planning Poker," Chapter 7, page 129), the work to be done, a developer's commitment to an estimate of a task's duration is much stronger, even if the estimate is wrong. Kenny paints this value quite well.Chapters 20, "Sprint Execution," 21, "Sprint Review," and 22, "Sprint Retrospective," round out Part IV of the book. These chapters, respectively, are analogous (if you stretch the landscape metaphor) to the current Interstate being traveled, a new car showroom, and a rest area for motorists along the way. Kenny provides the key signposts to watch for along the way to ensure that your sprints go as much according to plan as possible, and avoid unnecessary hazards and detours.In Chapter 23, "The Path Forward," Kenny concludes the book with some gourmet food for thought. Our desire when adopting something new is usually to find a pattern or template that we can copy and follow thus avoiding known hazards. We try to find those "best practices" like wild game, and shoot it, dress it and can it for later consumption. Kenny points out the latitude that exists when undertaking to use Scrum eliminates that need. On page 396 he writes, "Throughout this book I have used the term practice to mean a core or essential aspect of Scrum. An approach is a particular implementation of a Scrum practice. When people ask me about best practices, I take that to mean best approaches." Later he writes, "Approaches, therefore, are unique to each team..."I highly recommend this book! I read the Kindle version from Amazon on my iPad using the Kindle app, and made extensive use of the digital highlighter, and captured several notes. It won't make you a seasoned expert on Scrum: that comes with time and experience. What it will do is provide a well thought out and insightful map with which you can start your journey in the Land of Scrum.

This book arrived at the perfect time. Although Scrum began as a simple framework, over the last ten years it has evolved and morphed. As a ScrumMaster, Scrum Coach and Trainer, I've seen an increasing number of teams practicing Scrum differently (especially lately). These differences include teams that no longer practice some parts of the original framework (or practice these original elements differently), as well as teams that have incorporated practices into their Scrum implementations that were not part of the original framework. For example practices from other disciplines have found their way into Scrum, complimenting it well. Examples would include adoption of "user stories" and "test-driven development" (TDD) from eXtreme Programming (XP), neither of which occupied the original Scrum framework but are commonly practiced as part of Scrum today.To make things more complicated, Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland (the original "co-inventors" of Scrum) have published "The Scrum Guide", which they call the "official body of Scrum knowledge". They also modify this guide from time to time, maintaining that it is the source document that defines the "official rules" of Scrum (i.e., if you aren't following these rules, you are not doing Scrum). In July 2011, "The Scrum Guide" was revised to make significant changes to the original Scrum framework. For example, "release planning" and the "burndown charts" for product and backlog are no longer part of Scrum. One of the more significant changes was eliminating the "commit to scope" that traditionally results from sprint planning, replacing the former "commitment" with a "forecast". Other significant changes were made (and continue to be made) as well.In Mike Cohn's blog on 6/28/12 ("The Rules vs. The Generally Accepted Practices of Scrum"), Mike completely justities continuing the practices eliminated in "The Scrum Guide" (without specifically referring to the guide) if the those practices fulfill the definition of a "GASP" (Mike's term):"A Generally Accepted Scrum Practice (GASP) is an activity performed by many, but not necessarily all, Scrum teams. A team that does not perform the practice can still be considered to be doing Scrum...In contrast to a GASP, a rule is an inviolable thing that if a team isn't doing, they aren't doing Scrum."Here's where Kenny's book really comes through...Kenny covers every element of the Scrum framework (from the early days through "The Scrum Guide" changes) that provide value to Scrum and should continue to be practiced. Kenny's discussion of a "forecast" vs. "commitment", for example, makes sense of both concepts by describing how teams can benefit from having the forecast drive a commitment (which further drives the sprint "goal", especially if the goal includes specific sprint backlog items as part of the team commitment).In addition to covering the core elements of the Scrum framework (from its inception), he also covers certain elements of Scrum adopted from other practices (e.g., "user stories" and "TDD" from XP, etc.). Kenny also describes some Scrum practices occurring today for the first time in sufficient detail. For instance, his description (with examples) of "cross-cluster collaboration" (where multiple teams resolve issues without the need for outside coordination by project managers or others) helped me to finally complete an article that was just accepted for publication by the Scrum Alliance. Kenny's book is also completely consistent with the "Learning Objectives" published by the Scrum Alliance for Certified Scrum Trainers for use in their curriculum for the Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) course. That is to say that Kenny's book covers all of the parts of the Scrum framework required to be taught by a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) in a Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) class. This alone is good validation.I now refer to "Essential Scrum" so often that it has become the most dog-eared book I own (although it's almost the newest). If only as a source of Scrum "best practices", this book is a must for anyone in an organization practicing Scrum (especially for ScrumMasters, Product Owners and the Development Team). Scrum Coaches will really benefit from this book as well (for example when dealing with teams that are not staying the course with Scrum this book serves as the perfect "official" referee on points of Scrum procedure).I pity anyone that intends to publish a book on Scrum in the near future (this act will be impossible to follow for a very long time!).