Ta da da dum !!!
Just finished reading my first book on Scrum. Boy do I feel better now!!!
We started using Scrum @ work few months ago. Before then I was familiar with Agile Practices but had never used Scrum before . So I did what everyone else did- went along with the flow , read few pages off the wiki picking up things as we go along. That worked for a while, but not for long – it was now time to dive right in.
The title
Scrum and XP from the Trenches
How we do Scrum
How to get the book
I downloaded the free electronic copy from infoQ but if you prefer the traditional style- you can get it from here.
The author
Henrik Kniberg is an Agile coach and based out of Sweden. I think he runs some IT company as well.
You can also check out his blog
The book
Like the title says – it is the author’s view of the Scrum from the trenches. The book is a collection of his experiences over the time as they experimented with Scrum. So it is not about how you should do scrum. It is about how they did scrum.
Each chapter title starts with “How we do…”
The chapters are
How we do product backlogs
How we prepare for sprint planning
How we do sprint planning
How we do communicate sprints
How we do sprint backlogs
How we arrange team rooms
How we do daily scrums
How we do sprint demos
How we do sprint retrospectives
Slack time between sprints
How we do release planning and fixed price contracts
How we combine scrum with XP
How we do testing
How we handle multiple scrum teams
How we handle geographically distributed team
Scrum master checklist
The good.
The whole book is written in first person, with the author narrating his direct experiences with Scrum. Henrik talks not only about what worked for them but also about what other options you have in doing the same thing , in a different manner. He then also compares the options pointing out why those didn’t work for them.
It is an excellent reminder that all projects are different and so is the context for those projects. There can be no single good answer for all situations. You have to find your own unique way of handling things.
The best part of this book is- it is full of practical advice- you can start using what you learn immediately!!!
It is also a very thin book- you can probably finish this in couple of hours.
The not so good
The one thing I was most curious about Scrum was, how does the testing happen in a sprint. How do we churn out a shippable product at the end of the sprint. But I didn’t get a very good picture of that. Or maybe I didn’t get to read what I was hoping to read- But then it was the Author’s view point – not the way it has to be.
Secondly, there wasn’t much on XP, – just one chapter . So that was a disappointment. The title led me to believe the book would be evenly distributed between Scrum and XP- but it was not
Do I recommend this book?
Yes. Specially if you are new to Scrum like I am . This was exactly what I needed to get introduced to Scrum. I am now ready for more heavy reading now.
However, if you have been using Scrum already, you will learn lot lesser new things than I did. But nevertheless it will still be interesting to read the narrative and learn how the author and his team practiced scrum.
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