Do Better Scrum

Certified Scrum Trainer and Coach Jim York says: Scrum is Simple. Doing Scrum is Hard. Many people I meet in organizations say that they find it hard to know how to get started with Scrum. Others have teams that are following some Agile practices, yet are far from becoming what Jeff Sutherland terms hyper-productive.
In the four years since I wrote the first edition of this little guide many new and excellent books on Scrum have been published. A few examples that I have read and recommend to my students are Succeeding with Agile [Cohn 2009], Agile Product Management with Scrum [Pichler 2010], Coaching Agile Teams [Adkins 2010], and Essential Scrum [Rubin 2012]. Yet the fact is that most simply don’t read them and so there still seems to be demand for brief guides such as this one. My first aim with this new edition has been to provide a more rounded and complete reference to the world of Agile and Scrum, while still sticking to the essence. A second aim has been to update the practices described to match what I teach and coach today. Agile is an emergent set of patterns and practices that will, by design, change over time. The third and final aim has been to keep it as to-the-point as possible with no ‘fluff’. For those who do like to read further, the reference section has been expanded significantly.
In the first version I wrote: “I hope this little booklet may be a source of inspiration to help you do Scrum and Agile a little better each day. More importantly I hope it might encourage you to drag yourself, your team and your whole organization away from the old ways of working that simply don’t, well, work and find new ways that lead to greater quality, faster delivery and above all, more fun.” This is still its primary purpose. One more thing remains certain: you will never become better at doing Scrum (or any Agile method) without practicing. So what are you waiting for? Just go and do it!

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