| Information | Details |
|---|---|
| Title of the Book | Essential Scrum |
| Subtitle of the Book | A Practical Guide to the Most Popular Agile Process |
| Author of the Book | KENNETH S. RUBIN |
| Publishing House | Addison-Wesley |
| Number of Pages | 498 pages |
| ISBN of the Book | 978-0-13-704329-3 |
| Date of Publication | July 2012 |
« Essential Scrum » by Kenny Rubin focuses on the principles and practices of the Scrum framework, offering insights into how it addresses complexities in software development. The book highlights the key roles involved, the management of technical debt, the planning process across different levels, and the execution and review of sprints.
Scrum Framework and Its Principles
The book starts by introducing the Scrum framework, emphasizing its simplicity and adaptability. The Scrum framework is presented as a flexible structure, much like the foundation and walls of a building, within which organizations can customize their processes while staying true to the core values and principles. The book stresses that embracing Scrum doesn’t mean adhering to a rigid formula, but rather, adapting it to suit specific organizational needs.
« Essential Scrum » emphasizes that Scrum is rooted in the values of honesty, openness, courage, respect, focus, trust, empowerment, and collaboration. It contrasts the underlying principles of Scrum with traditional, plan-driven, sequential development, highlighting how Scrum leverages the variability and uncertainty inherent in product development. This comparison aims to demonstrate the suitability of each approach for different types of problems, encouraging readers to evaluate their own organizational context to choose the most appropriate tool.
Here are some of the core principles of Scrum highlighted in the book:
Embrace Variability and Uncertainty: Scrum acknowledges that product development is unpredictable and encourages iterative and incremental development to improve the product throughout the process and validate assumptions quickly.
Focus on Value Delivery: The product owner is responsible for ensuring that the most valuable work is always prioritized, as represented in the product backlog7. This principle is reinforced throughout the discussion of release planning, sprint planning, and daily scrums.
Promote Transparency and Collaboration: Transparency is emphasized in communication within the development team and with stakeholders8. The ScrumMaster plays a crucial role in fostering collaboration and removing impediments.
Continuous Improvement: The sprint retrospective is presented as a key practice for reflecting on the team’s performance and identifying opportunities for improvement.
Managing Technical Debt
The book dedicate a chapter to explaining the concept of technical debt, categorizing it into naive, unavoidable, and strategic debt. The book emphasizes the importance of actively managing technical debt to prevent it from hindering future development.
The authors provide practical advice for managing technical debt:
Managing the Accrual of Technical Debt: This involves using good technical practices to prevent naive debt, and carefully considering the implications of taking on strategic or unavoidable debt.
Making Technical Debt Visible: Techniques for visualizing technical debt, such as using defect tracking systems, product backlog items, or dedicated technical debt backlogs, are presented.
Servicing Technical Debt: The book suggests various strategies for repaying technical debt, including applying the Boy Scout rule (fixing issues as they are encountered), addressing high-interest debt first, and repaying debt incrementally while working on customer-valuable features.
Planning at Multiple Levels
The book advocates for planning at multiple levels – portfolio, product, release, sprint, and daily planning – to cater to different time horizons and decision-making needs. It emphasizes the importance of doing a sufficient amount of upfront planning while remaining flexible to adapt as more information becomes available.
The excerpts provide a comprehensive overview of the planning process:
Portfolio Planning: This involves prioritizing products based on their lifecycle profits, cost of delay, and strategic alignment20. The book discusses various scheduling, release, product development, and capacity allocation strategies for effective portfolio management.
Product Planning (Envisioning): The focus here is on creating a shared product vision, a high-level product backlog, and a preliminary product roadmap21. The authors use a fictitious product example, SmartReview4U, to illustrate the envisioning process and emphasize the need to target a realistic confidence threshold for making funding decisions.
Release Planning: Release planning aims to answer questions regarding feature delivery timelines and costs. It involves grooming the product backlog, estimating and prioritizing product backlog items, and mapping them to sprints. The book distinguishes between fixed-date releases and fixed-scope releases and provides guidance on managing scope and schedule constraints.
Sprint Planning: This activity involves selecting product backlog items for the sprint, creating a sprint goal, and developing a sprint backlog . The authors discuss different approaches to sprint planning, emphasizing the need for collaboration and the creation of a realistic plan that the team can commit to.
Sprint Execution and Review
The book emphasizes that sprint execution is guided by flow management principles rather than rigid upfront plans, allowing for adaptation based on evolving circumstances. The daily scrum is presented as a vital tool for monitoring progress, identifying impediments, and adjusting the work plan. The sprint review serves as a forum for demonstrating the potentially shippable product increment, gathering feedback from stakeholders, and adapting the product backlog and release plan
Evaluation of the Sources and Conclusion
« Essential Scrum » provide a comprehensive overview of the framework, its principles, and its practices. The book’s strength lies in its clear explanations, practical examples, and focus on the underlying values and principles that drive successful Scrum implementations. The author, an experienced agile coach and trainer, offers valuable insights based on his experience, making the book a useful resource for both novice and experienced Scrum practitioners.
However, the books don’t address all aspects of Scrum implementation. For instance, while the book mentions scaling Scrum to the organizational level, it lacks a detailed discussion of the challenges and approaches for scaling Scrum across multiple teams and departments. The book also doesn’t cover the specific technical practices in depth, instead referring readers to other resources.
Despite these limitations, it provide a valuable introduction to the essentials of Scrum and lay a solid foundation for further exploration. The insights into managing technical debt and planning at multiple levels are particularly relevant for organizations seeking to adopt or improve their Scrum implementations.
Further Research and Emerging Questions
To complement the knowledge presented in « Essential Scrum », further research could be conducted on:
Scaling Scrum in Large Organizations: Exploring different scaling frameworks and identifying best practices for managing dependencies, communication, and alignment across multiple teams.
Integrating Scrum with Other Methodologies: Investigating how Scrum can be effectively combined with other agile or lean approaches, such as Kanban or DevOps, to address specific organizational needs.
Measuring the Impact of Scrum: Developing robust metrics to assess the effectiveness of Scrum implementations in terms of value delivery, quality improvement, and team performance.
The Evolution of Scrum: Studying how the Scrum framework is adapting to the changing landscape of software development, particularly with the rise of new technologies and methodologies.
Understanding the principles, practices, and planning aspects of Scrum is crucial for organizations aiming to navigate the complexities of software development and deliver valuable products. By continuously learning, adapting, and improving their Scrum implementations, organizations can unlock the full potential of this powerful framework.