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