Scrum For Dummies

by Layton, Mark C.

• ISBN13: 9781119904663
• ISBN10: 1119904668
• Edition: 3rd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2022-11-16
• Publisher: For Dummies

Summary

Learn how scrum can help in every part of your life

Scrum—an organizing approach that exposes work progress and quality —is used all over the place in software development, but it’s not just for coders. Scrum For Dummies shows you how scrum can improve performance regardless of your industry or project. You can even use scrum to get tangible results in your personal projects—prepare for retirement, organize travel, and much more. Plan goals, releases, and sprints for all aspects of business and life. With Dummies, you’ll learn how to work flexibility and collaboration into anything you’re doing. This book is packed with helpful information to empower you to set up your first scrum project, organize the scrum team, integrate scrum into your agile project management strategy, and just make things work better.

• Learn the ins and outs of scrum—updated for the 2020 scrum guide
• Discover how scrum can help you manage projects in any industry and even in your personal life
• Organize your scrum team and set up your first project
• Integrate scrum into your agile project management strategy

This updated edition of Scrum For Dummies is written to make scrum useful for everyone—especially you.

Author Biography

Mark C. Layton is an entrepreneur and certification instructor with 25 years of experience in organizational design.

Steven J Ostermiller is a community builder, certified trainer and mentor helping organizations and people become more agile.

Dean J. Kynaston is a coach, Certified Scrum Professional, and organizational agile transformation leader.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

About This Book 1

Foolish Assumptions 2

Conventions Used in This Book 3

Icons Used in This Book 3

Beyond the Book 4

Where to Go from Here 4

Part 1: Getting Started with Scrum 5

Chapter 1: The Basics of Scrum 7

The Bird’s-Eye Basics 8

Roadmap to value 8

Scrum overview 10

Scrum teams 11

Governance 12

Scrum framework 13

The Feedback Feast 16

Agile Roots 16

Three pillars of improvement 17

One Agile Manifesto 18

Twelve Agile principles 19

Three Platinum Principles 21

The Five Scrum Values 23

Commitment 24

Focus 24

Openness 24

Respect 24

Courage 25

Chapter 2: The First Steps 27

Getting Your Scrum On 28

Show me the money 28

I want it now 30

I’m not sure what I want 31

Is that defect a problem? 31

Your company’s culture 32

The Power in the Product Owner 32

Why Product Owners Love Scrum 34

The Company Goal and Strategy: Part 1 35

Structuring your goal 36

Finding the crosshair 37

The Scrum Master 38

Scrum master traits 38

Scrum master as a true leader 40

Why scrum masters love scrum 40

Common Roles Outside Scrum 42

Stakeholders 42

Scrum mentors 43

Part 2: Scrum Product Development 45

Chapter 3: Planning Your Work 47

The Product Roadmap 47

Take the long view 48

Use simple tools 49

Create your product roadmap 50

Set your time frame 51

Breaking Down Requirements 52

Prioritization of requirements 53

Levels of decomposition 54

Seven keys for product development 54

Your Product Backlog 56

The dynamic to-do list 58

Product backlog refinement 58

Other possible backlog items 61

Product Backlog Common Practices 62

User stories 62

Personas 63

Further refinement 65

Chapter 4: The Talent and the Timing 67

The Developers 68

The uniqueness of scrum developers 69

Dedicated teams and cross-functionality 69

Ownership 72

Team collaboration 73

Getting the Edge on Backlog Estimation 77

Your Definition of Done 77

Common Practices for Estimating 79

Fibonacci numbers and story points 80

Velocity 85

Chapter 5: Release and Sprint Planning 89

Lean Startup 90

Release Plan Basics 92

Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize 95

Release goals 96

Release sprints 97

Release plan in practice 98

Sprinting to Your Goals 100

Defining sprints 100

Planning sprint length 101

Following the sprint life cycle 104

Planning Your Sprints 105

Sprint goals 105

Topic one 107

Topic two 107

Topic three 108

Your Sprint Backlog 108

The burndown chart benefit 109

Setting backlog capacity 111

Working the sprint backlog 112

Prioritizing sprints 114

Chapter 6: Getting the Most Out of Sprints 117

The Daily Scrum 118

Defining the daily scrum 118

Scheduling a daily scrum 120

Conducting a daily scrum 120

Making daily scrums more effective 120

Team Task Board 122

Swarming 124

Dealing with rejection 125

Handling unfinished requirements 126

The Sprint Review 127

The sprint review process 128

Stakeholder feedback 129

Product increments 129

The Sprint Retrospective 130

The sprint retrospective in a nutshell 132

Engaging sprint retrospectives 133

Inspection and adaptation 135

Chapter 7: Inspect and Adapt: How to Correct Your Course 137

Need for Certainty 137

The Feedback Loop 138

Transparency 140

Antipatterns 141

External Forces 142

In-Flight Course Correction 142

Testing in the Feedback Loop 143

Culture of Innovation 144

Part 3: Scrum for Any Industry 147

Chapter 8: Software Development 149

Scrum and Software Development: A Natural Fit 150

Software Flexibility and Refactoring 152

Release often and on demand 153

Customize your release sizes 153

Inspect and adapt as you release 154

Embracing Change 154

Developer challenges 155

Business alignment with technology 155

Upfront engineering 157

Emergent architecture 158

Scrum Applications in Software 160

Video-game development 160

Services 163

Customization products 167

Chapter 9: Tangible Goods Production 169

The Fall of Waterfall 170

Construction 171

The best in bids 172

Scrum roles in construction 173

Customer involvement 174

The subcontractor dilemma 175

Worker safety 176

Scrum in Home Building 178

Manufacturing 180

Survival of the fastest to market 180

Shareholder value 181

Strategic capacity management 182

Hardware Development 184

Early identification of high-risk requirements 184

Live hardware development 185

Chapter 10: Services 189

Health Care and Scrum 189

Speed to market 191

Reduced mistakes, increased quality 192

Cost cutting 194

Adhering to regulations 195

Medical device manufacturing and safety 197

A Worldwide Pandemic 199

Patient care 199

Ventilators 200

Dutch government responds to COVID-19 pandemic using scrum 200

Education and Scrum 203

Challenges in education 203

Preparing students for the future 204

Scrum in the classroom 206

Military and Law Enforcement 211

Turning the ship around 212

Special forces 213

Scrum and the FBI 213

Chapter 11: Publishing: A Shifting Landscape 215

A Changing Landscape in Publishing 216

Inspecting, adapting, and refactoring 216

Applying scrum 218

News Media and Scrum 220

Defining done for content 222

The news-media scrum team 223

Sprint flexibility 224

Part 4: Scrum for Business Agility 225

Chapter 12: IT Management and Operations 227

Big Data and Large-Scale Migration 228

Data warehouse management 230

Enterprise resource planning 232

Commercial-Off-the-Shelf (COTS) Implementations 234

Oracle Primavera Unifier 234

ServiceNow 236

Broadcom’s Clarity 236

DevOps and Beyond 237

Security challenges 238

Maintenance 239

Kanban within a scrum structure 240

Profit-and-Loss Potential 244

Innovation versus Stability 245

Chapter 13: Portfolio Management 247

Portfolio Management Challenges 248

People allocation and prioritization 248

Dependencies and fragmentation 250

Disconnect between projects and business objectives 251

Displaced accountability 251

Scrum solutions 252

De-scaling Scrum for Large Portfolios 253

A Vertical Slicing Overview 254

Scrum of Scrums 256

Developer scrum of scrums 256

Scrum master scrum of scrums 257

Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS) 258

LeSS framework 259

LeSS Huge framework 260

Scrum@Scale 262

The scrum master cycle 263

The product owner cycle 264

Synchronizing in one hour a day 265

Nexus 265

Nexus integration team 266

Nexus artifacts 267

Nexus events 268

Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) 269

ARTs 270

PI planning 270

Empowerment 271

Complexity 271

Chapter 14: Human Resources and Finance 273

Human Resources and Scrum 274

Creating the Right Culture 275

HR and existing organization structures 276

HR and scrum in hiring 278

Performance reviews 279

Finance 285

Incremental funding 286

Scrum and budgets 289

CapEx and OpEx 289

Chapter 15: Business Development 293

Marketing Evolution 294

Scrum for Marketing 295

Determining the roadmap to value 297

Setting goals 297

Marketing Tools 299

Product canvas 299

Customer map 302

Personas 303

Scrum in Action (Marketing) 304

CA Technologies 304

The Gap Between Marketing and Sales 305

Scrum for Sales 306

The scrum sales process 307

Determining Roadmap to Value (Sales) 308

Scrum in Action (Sales) 309

Chapter 16: Customer Service 313

Customers: The Most Crucial Stakeholders 314

The service conundrum 315

Information overload 316

Scrum and Customer Service 317

Inspect and adapt through feedback 317

Customer service product backlog 318

Customer service definition of done 319

Look inward 320

Scrum in Action in Customer Service 321

Part 5: Scrum for Everyday Life 323

Chapter 17: Dating and Family Life 325

Finding Love with Scrum 326

Setting an end goal 328

Dating in layers 328

Discovering companionship and scrum 329

Dating with scrum 330

Winning as a team 331

Focusing versus multitasking 332

Planning your wedding with scrum 333

Families and Scrum 334

Setting family strategy and goals 335

Planning and setting priorities 337

Communicating with scrum 339

Inspecting and adapting for families 341

Making chores fun and easy 343

Chapter 18: Scrum for Life Goals 345

Getting to Retirement 345

Saving for emergencies 346

Building retirement 347

Securing financial freedom 348

Reducing debt 350

A holistic approach to your financial goal 350

Achieving Fitness and Weight Goals 351

Keeping Life Balance 353

Planning Travel 356

Studying 358

Learning early 359

Graduating from high school 360

Achieving in college 362

Part 6: The Part of Tens 367

Chapter 19: Ten Key Benefits of Scrum 369

Higher Customer Satisfaction 369

Better Product Quality 370

Reduced Risk 371

Improved Performance Visibility 371

Increased Investment Control 372

Increased Collaboration and Ownership 373

More Relevant Metrics 374

Improved Predictability 375

Optimized Team Structures 375

Higher Team Morale 376

Chapter 20: Ten Key Factors for Enabling Scrum 377

Dedicated Team Members 377

Collaborative Environment 378

Done Means Releasable 378

Empowered Product Owner 379

Don’t Ignore Reality 379

Clear Product Goal and Roadmap 380

Developer Versatility 380

Scrum Master Clout 381

Leadership Support for Learning 381

Leverage Industry Experts 382

Chapter 21: Ten Key Resources for Scrum 383

Scrum For Dummies Cheat Sheet 383

The Scrum Guide 384

Scrum Alliance 384

Agile Alliance 385

Business Agility Institute 385

State of Agile Report 385

ScrumPLoP 386

Certification Resources 386

Scaling Scrum Resources 386

Platinum Edge 387

Index 389