The Scrum Field Guide: Practical Advice for Your First Year

The Scrum Field Guide: Practical Advice for Your First Year

by Mitch Lacey
Released March 2012
Publisher(s): Addison-Wesley Professional
ISBN: None

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Book description

Thousands of IT professionals are being asked to make Scrum succeed in their organizations–including many who weren’t involved in the decision to adopt it. If you’re one of them, The Scrum Field Guide will give you skills and confidence to adopt Scrum more rapidly, more successfully, and with far less pain and fear. Long-time Scrum practitioner Mitch Lacey identifies major challenges associated with early-stage Scrum adoption, as well as deeper issues that emerge after companies have adopted Scrum, and describes how other organizations have overcome them. You’ll learn how to gain “quick wins” that build support, and then use the flexibility of Scrum to maximize value creation across the entire process.

In 30 brief, engaging chapters, Lacey guides you through everything from defining roles to setting priorities to determining team velocity, choosing a sprint length, and conducting customer reviews. Along the way, he explains why Scrum can seem counterintuitive, offers a solid grounding in the core agile concepts that make it work, and shows where it can (and shouldn’t) be modified. Coverage includes

  • Getting teams on board, and bringing new team members aboard after you’ve started

  • Creating a “definition of done” for the team and organization

  • Implementing the strong technical practices that are indispensable for agile success

  • Balancing predictability and adaptability in release planning

  • Keeping defects in check

  • Running productive daily standup meetings

  • Keeping people engaged with pair programming

  • Managing culture clashes on Scrum teams

  • Performing “emergency procedures” to get sprints back on track

  • Establishing a pace your team can truly sustain

  • Accurately costing projects, and measuring the value they deliver

  • Documenting Scrum projects effectively

  • Prioritizing and estimating large backlogs

  • Integrating outsourced and offshored components

    • Packed with real-world examples from Lacey’s own experience, this book is invaluable to everyone transitioning to agile: developers, architects, testers, managers, and project owners alike.

    Table of contents

    1. Title Page
    2. Copyright Page
    3. Dedication Page
    4. Contents
    5. Foreword by Jim Highsmith
    6. Foreword by Jeff Sutherland
    7. Preface
    8. Acknowledgments
    9. About the Author
    10. Chapter 1. Scrum: Simple, Not Easy
    11. Part I: Getting Prepared
      1. Chapter 2. Getting People On Board
      2. Chapter 3. Using Team Consultants to Optimize Team Performance
      3. Chapter 4. Determining Team Velocity
      4. Chapter 5. Implementing the Scrum Roles
      5. Chapter 6. Determining Sprint Length
      6. Chapter 7. How Do We Know When We Are Done?
      7. Chapter 8. The Case for a Full-Time ScrumMaster
    12. Part II: Field Basics
      1. Chapter 9. Why Engineering Practices Are Important in Scrum
      2. Chapter 10. Core Hours
      3. Chapter 11. Release Planning
      4. Chapter 12. Decomposing Stories and Tasks
      5. Chapter 13. Keeping Defects in Check
      6. Chapter 14. Sustained Engineering and Scrum
      7. Chapter 15. The Sprint Review
      8. Chapter 16. Retrospectives
    13. Part III: First Aid
      1. Chapter 17. Running a Productive Daily Standup Meeting
      2. Chapter 18. The Fourth Question in Scrum
      3. Chapter 19. Keeping People Engaged with Pair Programming
      4. Chapter 20. Adding New Team Members
      5. Chapter 21. When Cultures Collide
      6. Chapter 22. Sprint Emergency Procedures
    14. Part IV: Advanced Survival Techniques
      1. Chapter 23. Sustainable Pace
      2. Chapter 24. Delivering Working Software
      3. Chapter 25. Optimizing and Measuring Value
      4. Chapter 26. Up-Front Project Costing
      5. Chapter 27. Documentation in Scrum Projects
      6. Chapter 28. Outsourcing and Offshoring
      7. Chapter 29. Prioritizing and Estimating Large Backlogs
      8. Chapter 30. Writing Contracts
    15. Appendix: Scrum Framework
    16. Index
    17. Footnotes
      1. Chapter 3
      2. Chapter 5
      3. Chapter 9
      4. Chapter 25
      5. Appendix

    Product information

    • Title: The Scrum Field Guide: Practical Advice for Your First Year
    • Author(s): Mitch Lacey
    • Release date: March 2012
    • Publisher(s): Addison-Wesley Professional
    • ISBN: None