Agile Software Development with Scrum: Book Review

The Book


Agile Software Development with Scrum by Ken Schwaber and Mike Beedle.


The Review

As part of the efforts to keep our projects on the right track, our teams are trying to apply Scrum. As a result, this book was bought by my manager as an alternative to a Scrum training that could not be taken in Timisoara.

After some research of his own on various books on the Scrum topic, he decided that this book practically is the foundation of Scrum and the first book that must be read on the topic.

It was a very wise decision. I'm also against 2-3 days trainings with no-name topic experts: they can only provide an initial image, for an in depth study of a topic, books and lots of research are needed. After reading it, I must say the book is a perfect starting point on Scrum methodology.

What did I want to learn?

• A confirmation that my view on the Scrum methodology formed from various blogs & articles that I read was right. (I have a lot of experience in XP, RUP, CMMI, PMI - I know a lot about agile and I read a lot of material stating that XP - Scrum - Lean are very much overlapping.)
• How various Scrum practices must be adopted? What do they mean?
• How can Scrum be adopted in our very large and chaotic project?
• Are there any more practices than Sprint Meetings, Daily Meetings, Backlog Burn-down charts and Sprint Retrospectives?

What did I learn?

• Compared to XP, Scrum seems to be more focused on management, control and various forms of organization - If Extreme Programming Explained lists a lot of Engineering practices, this book focuses on process and project management practices.
  
• Understood what is expected in Scrum from the various roles and why.(Scrum Master - removes impediments, takes decisions "any decision is better than no decision", mentor)
• Liked a lot "the art of possible" idea: What can be done in the current (poor) circumstances to reach the sprint's goal. It's not only Scrum master's responsibility to remove impediments, but creativity and adaptability is encouraged to all scrum team members - they must be aware that by themselves can remove impediments.
• Backlogs and Sprints - learned and understood why when adopting Scrum, Scrum practices need to be adopted by the book. Backlog - should be visible to every stakeholder and should contain all identified pieces of work (not only pure programming tasks). Sprints - very important to have a defined goal. Sprints - shelter against the chaotic needs from an application.
• Understood the scientific justification of Scrum practices and learned a lot about defined and empirical processes.
  
• Understood how large(multiple team) projects can be managed efficiently in Scrum.
  
• Scrum values
  

In Summary

The first step of Scrum adoption in any form of organization should be the reading of this book.
The book helped me gain deep understanding on this software development approach as opposed to various blogs & articles I have read which only presented me semantic diffusion.