By: Ken Schwaber Publisher: Microsoft Press Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Microsoft Press Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 176 Publication Date: June 13, 2007
Product Description: Get the practical guidance you need to apply Scrum enterprise wide--straight from a leader and innovator in the agile process movement. Agile development methods, such as Scrum, have been shown to produce improvements in speed, quality, and cost. However, the practices within Scrum, such as self-managing teams, are often so different from the norm at most enterprises and cause an organizational reaction. The productivity and quality benefits of Scrum pose a compelling reason to make such changes--moving it from the small team to the enterprise level. And as Scrum crosses to the mainstream, executives need to know how to manage the necessary change processes. In addition, managers and employees alike want to know what the change means to them, personally. With case studies and pragmatic approaches, this book shows development managers and developers how to extend Scrum from one or two projects within an engineering organization to the larger enterprise. It also addresses the questions that newcomers have regarding process, interaction, reports, habits, tradeoffs, and more.
The book is more like an informal set of lecture notes written for a presentation I built up a lot of expectation before reading this book because I learned a lot from the author's earlier book "Agile Project Management With Scrum" and not to mention that the author was the cofounder of scrum. But after I read it I was rather disappointed. I feel like the book is more like an informal set of lecture notes written for a presentation in stead of a well written and well thought book.
Before I further comment about that let me first take a guess about why people want to read a technical book. I think most people want to read a technical book because they hope the book can teach them something new. And if the reading process makes readers entertained that will make the book even more valuable. And that was what I got from "Agile Project Management With Scrum". But technical reading mostly does not get that luxury so long as the book is informative (and enlightened) we will say the time and energy spent for it is well worth.
So back to this book, I think before reading it every one will know that running scrum in a traditional waterfall process company is hard. What we want to know is how hard that it is. What kind of (typical) situation we may run into; what kind of specific issue we need to address and what was the author's way or suggestion to tackle them. But the author just kept saying that it is hard but you got to stick with scrum then finally you will make it. The author kept repeating that without even giving a valuable suggestion for it (putting the obstacles into transition backlog can't really be counted as a valuable suggestion). And the examples he gave were also superficial, i.e. repeating that you will make it finally without giving any valuable suggestion about how.
The second part of the book is about the practice using in the enterprise. But except for suggesting the use of scrum of scrum, which again readers will anticipate before reading the book and checking your burn down chart to know your productivity I still do not see any thing new or enlightened, although the example the author gave here were a little bit more impressive than the examples gave in the first part.
The third part of the book was the worst. The third part is about the introduction of scrum, the kind of materials you can find all over the internet. I even found that the author copies pasted some of paragraphs in his previous book "Agile Project Management With Scrum".
I do not mean to be harsh and the author is really some person I look up to. So maybe he was talking about something totally beyond my level and I hope anyone can point that out for me.
Clear, Succinct, and Useful This book contains useful information on how to apply Scrum in large organizations. It provides real world examples of how Scrum was implemented, the problems that were uncovered and the lessons learned.
If you are looking for an intro book on Scrum, this is not it.
If you are familiar with Scrum, you will devour the information in this book.
If you are a seasoned project manager, many of the scenarios will resonate with you.
It is a short book (under 150 pages) but it is chock full of valuable information that you can apply to your practice. I recommend that you read it at least twice to derive full benefit.
scrum in large projects - the guide I recently run a large project (~100 people) under a structure very similar to the organization described by Ken in this book: -one product: a large web site -8 scrum teams: 6 service teams, 1 IT team, 1 CM team -scrum of scrum: team composed of senior engineers from each scrum focused on global code integration, standard / API definitions, run by uber scrum master and uber product owner -meta scrum: team composed of local scrum masters (problem raisers) and executives (problem solvers) focused on organizational issues, run by uber scrum master
The results? -a product delivered within a deadline of 18 weeks (the last product of similar size and complexity was delivered in 18 months and was mostly unsuccessful) -a very happy product owner (financial outcome better than expected, all key features delivered) -best quality software ever written in the company (best as from a technical debt perspective, and great architecture paradigm) -fantastic morale in the team
This book is written for people that understand scrum and are ready to think it to the next level. It clearly outlines a simple and powerful framework to roll out scrum across the enterprise and achieve great coordination in scalable manner in large projects. This is not an "enterprise scrum". It is the same scrum applied to the enterprise. Some might miss details on tactical implementation which the book doesn't try to address. Why? I think because it is scrum and details have been written about over and over. So how do you attack your big impediments? Run Ken's framework and let it to the self-organization of the teams! It is scrum after all.
The next step in Scrum applications... An add-on to the existing two SCRUM books by Schwaber. This book discusses how to evolve an enterprise collectively rather than just parts of it at a time. You'll likely have no context for this book unless having first read the others. Note: this book is, like the others, descriptive in nature and definitively not prescriptive. So if you're looking for someone to tell you exactly `how' to do something, this isn't it.
Concise, Effective, Simple approach for the Management of the Scrum Change Effort I've been involved with the introduction of Agile methods and other process improvements in several large enterprises, and I have learned -that there are no cookbooks -that there is no process or set of practices that will work for everyone -that as hard as it is to influence people to take on new practices, it is even harder to get the rest of the organization to accept the implications of these changes
This book does not prescribe a solution to all problems. The author I expect knows well that there is no such prescriptive solution (in his own words, "We want rules to follow, but life and product development are too complex for a single set of rules to suffice in all circumstances."). The book also does not delve into the depths of systems dynamics and org change- areas that are important in the change effort, but are explored by countless other sources. I believe that this is a strength, as it allows the book to be a focused, easy read without distraction.
This book does provide an implementation framework, plain and simple - a basic, repeatable, evolutionary framework for the introduction of Scrum to an enterprise, including feedback loops that will ensure that the right people know of challenges, and techniques to repeatably adjust the plan so that the effort is continuously improving. Following this, progress is very likely, and if the effort ends, it will be either due to success or to the conscious choice of those involved to stop further improvement.
I've seen many process improvement efforts flounder in large companies- often due to the process that was followed to run them. An approach such as that recommended in this book will at least ensure that the process to effect the improvement is not in the way itself, and is in fact an enabler.
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Trevor
