Preface

Technical projects are like an old horse I had when I was a kid; they'll flip you when you least expect it! Yet the element of surprise is actually a surety in our technical world. Agile methods, with their focus on helping teams deliver quality features and products quickly and flexibly, have drawn me in as a way to help tame the bucking horse, the element of surprise in technical projects, and Scrum, in particular, as a gateway to discover which day-to-day processes and working styles fit best for a particular team in a particular setting.

A ScrumMaster, like a good rider, must know when to go easy on the horse, when to use the spur, when to pull the reins, and when to just hang up the bridle and put the saddle away for the day. There are nearly a quarter million CSMs now, and many more to follow. While this is great news and represents a steady interest in Agile methods, we are in the soup. There is rampant misuse and misunderstanding of Scrum, which diminishes and possibly eliminates the amazing possibilities that people discover by using it correctly. I've observed too many examples of good Scrum gone bad—times in which tough, courageous, persistent ScrumMasters could have really made a difference, but didn't; times when product owners could have been a bit more involved; times when teams hid poor quality and shouldn't have. Additionally, with the advent of several newer methods, the terms Iteration Manager and Agile Master are floating around and representing an increasingly watered-down, dangerous version of what the true ScrumMaster was meant to do. That sucks, and makes me sad—and spurs me to action. I don't want the original vision for ScrumMaster to become lost in the methodology/certification wagon train; I want people to reach their full potential and believe that Scrum is one way to facilitate that.

Scrum is a simple process and it will not fail; you'll become extremely knowledgeable about this by the end of the book. Yet it becomes the butt of the failure because it's just too hard sometimes for people to accept responsibility. In other words, the horse bucked, so it's easiest to just blame the horse! But maybe it was a rock in the hoof, or a burr under the saddle—maybe there was another explanation or reason for the undesirable behavior. A good ScrumMaster pokes and prods to find the real source for organizational saddle burrs—and works diligently to pluck them out to make things more comfortable.

My utopia is a world in which everyone in technology has the ScrumMaster mind-set—whether they are team members, the named role of ScrumMaster, a line manager, or an executive. That's probably not realistic, at least for now, so luckily we have this very special role called the ScrumMaster to help others along. A professional ScrumMaster willingly accepts the role, realizes that he/she must help create an eager trial-and-error mind-set within the team and beyond, keep bad habits in check, and let the best working patterns and styles emerge. This is an extremely challenging, uphill both ways, in the snow, knee-deep journey. Sharp ScrumMastering is so much more than running a daily Scrum meeting with a team; using Scrum the right way can help a company do the right things and do them quickly (which is the definition of Agile, after all).

Scrum is not something to transition TO; rather, it is something to transition THROUGH. Through to what, exactly? Well, you will discover the answer when you do it. Some teams realize that they like to throw in some Extreme Programming practices, others find Kanban concepts to really help them out. Over time, you want to help the team and organization create a process that works for them, and not the other way around. As you become more aware of the wonderful ideas from other Agile/Lean methods, you'll realize that what you call it—the names of methods or frameworks—don't matter nearly as much as results. Keep your eye on helping your team deliver in a fast, focused, yet flexible manner, and you're well on your way. Scrum can help you get a nice running start.

I want you to become the Olympic-dressage-rider-on-a-Friesian kind of ScrumMaster, not atop-a-Shetland-pony-being-led-around-a ring version (henceforth known as a ScrumPuppet). You should know that you have more power than you probably give yourself credit for. One person—you—can make a difference, and creating just one successful Scrum team can change your organization. If you choose to accept this mission, get ready for the ride of your life.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Scrum – A Brief Review of the Basics (and a Few Interesting Tidbits), provides you with the history, philosophies, and practices of Scrum. If you're new to Scrum, you must read this chapter; and if you're experienced, read it anyway. This chapter contains the underlying reasons why this Scrum thing works. This and subsequent chapters also have a Recommended Reading section with some of my favorite websites and books for you to check out.

Chapter 2, Release Planning – Tuning Product Development, will help you help your product owner prepare the product backlog for various planning uses, while we focus on release planning specifically at this point. This chapter provides you with preparation and facilitation tips to have you up and running a release planning session in no time.

Chapter 3, Sprint Planning – Fine-tune the Sprint Commitment, suggests ways for you to envision, prepare, and facilitate sprint planning meetings, but more importantly, how to set your team up for success in a sprint.

Chapter 4, Sprint! Visible, Collaborative, and Meaningful Work, gets into the heart of the sprint—what happens day to day, how team members should work together, and how you can clear the path for team productivity. And what about that pesky daily Scrum? Yep, we get into that too!

Chapter 5, The End? Improving Product and Process One Bite at a Time, suggests that what you consider the end of a sprint is really only a pause that sets up the beginning of the next. Learn how sprint reviews and retrospectives help teams build trust with business stakeholders, and learn how retrospectives build a team.

Chapter 6, The Criticality of Real-time Information, presents ideas for giving visibility to your team's work so that the product owner and other business stakeholders can make smart decisions. You'll learn how to help the right people look through the lenses of the Scrum microscope so that they may make smart and timely decisions.

Chapter 7, Scrum Values Expose Fear, Dysfunction, and Waste, walks you through the five core values of Scrum and the top five responses of reluctant teams and organizations.

Chapter 8, Everyday Leadership for the ScrumMaster and Team, gives ideas and tips for you to hone your personal skills in order to make your team as strong as it can be. This is preparation for Chapter 9, Shaping the Agile Organization.

Chapter 9, Shaping the Agile Organization, expands on Chapter 8, Everyday Leadership for the ScrumMaster and Team, by turning your attention to the organization outside the team. We'll explore motivation for knowledge workers, HR carrots and sticks, Agile organizational structures, and the like.

Chapter 10, Scrum – Large and Small, gives you some ideas for scaling the Scrum framework to accommodate larger multi-team programs. We'll also delve a little into distributed teams.

Chapter 11, Scrum and the Future, will take you on a journey to the future world of knowledge work, what organizations will look like, and how, if done with serious professionalism, ScrumMasters can make that happen sooner rather than later.

Appendix A, ScrumMaster's Responsibilities, provides a run-down of ScrumMaster responsibilities and duties. You can use this list as a quick way to stock your Impediment Backlog.

Appendix B, ScrumMaster's Workshop, is full of thought-provoking questions, scenarios, and exercises—broken out by chapter—for you to work through and think about while reading the book. This appendix is also available online for download at http://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/AppendixB_scrum_master_workshop.pdf.

I created a companion website, www.helloscrum.com, to provide you with more ideas, tips, and tricks to help you along your way.

Note

A few images used in this book have been purchased from iStockPhoto.

What you need for this book

This is not a technical book with code snippets and scripts and such. But you still need to bring some things to the table while reading it: courage, open-mindedness, honesty, and a willingness to take a hard look at yourself and your organization with the goal of identifying room for improvement. Please leave the vanity at home.

Who this book is for

This book is primarily for practicing ScrumMasters, who need help and new ideas to bring their teams and organizations to the next level.

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