The Scrum Fieldbook

Based on years of work in the field with scores of companies, including Bosch, 3M, Schlumberger, and Rio Tinto, The Scrum Fieldbook delivers a hands-on, practical approach to rapidly delivering value for companies and organizations. Scrum is the secret weapon behind some of today’s most successful companies. Businesses like Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple use Scrum to drive incredibly fast innovation, laser focus on customers, and continuous improvement, and to decrease decision times in order to reshape the world. Scrum is the most utilized Agile framework. In recent years, its use has exploded across the corporate world, far beyond its software and technology roots. J. J. Sutherland and the team at Scrum Inc. have dramatically improved performance at global banks, utility providers, medical device manufacturers, mining giants, and firms on the cutting edge of genetic science. Scrum has helped companies large and small thrive in the age of disruption. In Sutherland’s first book, the national bestseller Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time, coauthored with his father, Jeff, the co-creator of Scrum, he laid out the Scrum framework used by almost all of today’s leading technology companies. In The Scrum Fieldbook, he draws on his firm’s extensive experience in the field to take leaders, managers, and employees deeper into the specific challenges and new opportunities organizations face in an Agile transformation. He shows how the Scrum framework can be successfully applied to any project in any industry, from automobile manufacturers in the U.S. and Europe to nonprofits in Africa, from home renovation contractors in Minnesota to gas exploration companies in South America, from fighter plane builders in Sweden to U.S. Navy Special Forces teams in regions of the world we can’t mention.

Thousands of organizations are adopting Scrum to transform the way they execute complex projects, in software and beyond. This guide will give you the skills and confidence needed to deploy Scrum, resulting in high-performing teams and satisfied customers. Drawing on years of hands-on experience helping companies succeed, Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) Mitch Lacey helps you overcome the major challenges of Scrum adoption and the deeper issues that emerge later. Extensively revised to reflect improved Scrum practices and tools, this edition adds an all-new section of tips from the field. Lacey covers many new topics, including immersive interviewing, collaborative estimation, and deepening business alignment. In 35 engaging chapters, you’ll learn how to build support and maximize value across your company. Now part of the renowned Mike Cohn Signature Series on agile development, this pragmatic guide addresses everything from establishing roles and priorities to determining team velocity, setting sprint length, and conducting customer reviews. Coverage includes Bringing teams and new team members on board Creating a workable definition of “done” Planning for short-term wins, and removing impediments to success Balancing predictability and adaptability in release planning Running productive daily scrums Fixing failing sprints Accurately costing projects, and measuring the value they deliver Managing risks in dynamic Scrum projects Prioritizing and estimating backlogs Working with distributed and offshore teams Institutionalizing improvements, and extending agility throughout the organization Packed with real-world examples straight from Lacey’s experience, this book will be invaluable to anyone transitioning to Scrum, seeking to improve their early results, or trying to get back on track.

Building a successful product usually involves teams of people, and many choose the Scrum approach to aid in creating products that deliver the highest possible value. Implementing Scrum gives teams a collection of powerful ideas they can assemble to fit their needs and meet their goals. The ninety-four patterns contained within are elaborated nuggets of insight into Scrum’s building blocks, how they work, and how to use them. They offer novices a roadmap for starting from scratch, yet they help intermediate practitioners fine-tune or fortify their Scrum implementations. Experienced practitioners can use the patterns and supporting explanations to get a better understanding of how the parts of Scrum complement each other to solve common problems in product development. The patterns are written in the well-known Alexandrian form, whose roots in architecture and design have enjoyed broad application in the software world. The form organizes each pattern so you can navigate directly to organizational design tradeoffs or jump to the solution or rationale that makes the solution work. The patterns flow together naturally through the context sections at their beginning and end. Learn everything you need to know to master and implement Scrum one step at a time—the agile way.

Thousands of IT professionals are being asked to make Scrum succeed in their organizations-including many who weren't involved in the decision to adopt it. If you're one of them, The Scrum Field Guide will give you skills and confidence to adopt Scrum more rapidly, more successfully, and with far less pain and fear. Long-time Scrum practitioner Mitch Lacey identifies major challenges associated with early-stage Scrum adoption, as well as deeper issues that emerge after companies have adopted Scrum, and describes how other organizations have overcome them. You'll learn how to gain "quick wins" that build support, and then use the flexibility of Scrum to maximize value creation across the entire process. In 30 brief, engaging chapters, Lacey guides you through everything from defining roles to setting priorities to determining team velocity, choosing a sprint length, and conducting customer reviews. Along the way, he explains why Scrum can seem counterintuitive, offers a solid grounding in the core agile concepts that make it work, and shows where it can (and shouldn't) be modified. Coverage includes Getting teams on board, and bringing new team members aboard after you've started Creating a "definition of done" for the team and organization Implementing the strong technical practices that are indispensable for agile success Balancing predictability and adaptability in release planning Keeping defects in check Running productive daily standup meetings Keeping people engaged with pair programming Managing culture clashes on Scrum teams Performing "emergency procedures" to get sprints back on track Establishing a pace your team can truly sustain Accurately costing projects, and measuring the value they deliver Documenting Scrum projects effectively Prioritizing and estimating large backlogs Integrating outsourced and offshored components Packed with real-world examples from Lacey's own experience, this book is invaluable to everyone transitioning to agile: developers, architects, testers, managers, and project owners alike.

The revolutionary “Red Book” that helped a generation work smarter, better, and faster—now expanded and updated with new stories, new ideas, and new methods to radically improve the way you and your company deliver results If you’ve ever been startled by how fast the world is changing, the Scrum framework is one of the reasons why. Productivity gains in workflow of as much as 1,200 percent have been recorded, and there’s no more lucid—or compelling—explainer of Scrum and its bright promise than Jeff Sutherland. The thorny problem that Sutherland began tackling back then boils down to this: People are spectacularly bad at doing things with agility and efficiency. Best-laid plans go up in smoke. Teams often work at cross-purposes to one another. And when the pressure rises, unhappiness soars. Woven with insights from martial arts, judicial decision making, advanced aerial combat, robotics, and Sutherland’s experience as a West Point–educated fighter pilot, a biometrics expert, a medical researcher, an early innovator of ATM technology, and a C-level executive at eleven different technology companies, this book will take you to Scrum’s front lines, where Sutherland’s system has brought the FBI into the twenty-first century, helped support John Deere’s supply chain amid a global pandemic and supply chain shortage, reduced poverty in the Third World, and even planned weddings and accomplished weekend chores. The way we work has changed dramatically since Sutherland first introduced Scrum a decade ago. This urgent update shares new insights and provides new tools to take advantage of the radical productivity that Scrum delivers. Sutherland will show you how to optimize working with artificial intelligence and share the latest cognitive science research on culture, psychological safety, diversity, and happiness, and how these factors drive performance, innovation, and overall organizational health. This new edition contains a decade of lessons learned. Whether it’s ten years ago, now, or ten years into the future, the Scrum framework is guaranteed to help you deliver results. But the most important reason to read this book is that it may just help you achieve what others consider unachievable.

Practical, Step-by-Step Scrum Techniques for Improving Processes, Actions, and Outcomes The widespread adoption and success of Scrum can be attributed in large part to its perceived intuitiveness and simplicity. But when new Scrum practitioners attempt to apply Scrum theory and high-level approaches in actual projects, they often find it surprisingly difficult. In Scrum Shortcuts without Cutting Corners, Scrum expert Ilan Goldstein helps you translate the Scrum framework into reality to meet the Scrum challenges your formal training never warned you about. Drawing on his extensive agile experience in a wide range of projects and environments, Goldstein presents thirty proven, flexible shortcuts for optimizing Scrum processes, actions, and outcomes. Each shortcut walks you through applying a Scrum approach to achieve a tangible output. These easy-to-digest, actionable patterns address a broad range of topics including getting started, quality and metrics, team members and roles, managing stakeholders, estimation, continuous improvement and much more. Whatever your role, Scrum Shortcuts without Cutting Corners will help you take your Scrum skills to the next level and achieve better results in any project you participate in.

Proven, 100% Practical Guidance for Making Scrum and Agile Work in Any Organization This is the definitive, realistic, actionable guide to starting fast with Scrum and agile–and then succeeding over the long haul. Leading agile consultant and practitioner Mike Cohn presents detailed recommendations, powerful tips, and real-world case studies drawn from his unparalleled experience helping hundreds of software organizations make Scrum and agile work. Succeeding with Agile is for pragmatic software professionals who want real answers to the most difficult challenges they face in implementing Scrum. Cohn covers every facet of the transition: getting started, helping individuals transition to new roles, structuring teams, scaling up, working with a distributed team, and finally, implementing effective metrics and continuous improvement. Throughout, Cohn presents “Things to Try Now” sections based on his most successful advice. Complementary “Objection” sections reproduce typical conversations with those resisting change and offer practical guidance for addressing their concerns. Coverage includes Practical ways to get started immediately–and “get good” fast Overcoming individual resistance to the changes Scrum requires Staffing Scrum projects and building effective teams Establishing “improvement communities” of people who are passionate about driving change Choosing which agile technical practices to use or experiment with Leading self-organizing teams Making the most of Scrum sprints, planning, and quality techniques Scaling Scrum to distributed, multiteam projects Using Scrum on projects with complex sequential processes or challenging compliance and governance requirements Understanding Scrum’s impact on HR, facilities, and project management Whether you've completed a few sprints or multiple agile projects and whatever your role–manager, developer, coach, ScrumMaster, product owner, analyst, team lead, or project lead–this book will help you succeed with your very next project. Then, it will help you go much further: It will help you transform your entire development organization.

This is a comprehensive guide to Scrum for all (team members, managers, and executives). If you want to use Scrum to develop innovative products and services that delight your customers, this is the complete, single-source reference you've been searching for. This book provides a common understanding of Scrum, a shared vocabulary that can be used in applying it, and practical knowledge for deriving maximum value from it.