Agile Project Management With Scrum

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book! Learn Scrum by reading stories of its use
Review: Agile Project Management with Scrum is a wonderful book. The author, Ken Schwaber (one of the originators of the Scrum process), informs us through case studies and anecdotes. If you like learning by example, this book is for you. Scrum is quite likely the best starting point for most companies interested in pursuing an agile development process. The readability and excellent anecdotes in this book make it a fantastic starting point for any journey into agile development.

I loved seeing how Schwaber applied Scrum in many varying situations. Rather than introducing each case study one at a time, the book is organized around key areas. Multiple anecdotes are given for each key area. Throughout each chapter, Schwaber brings the anecdotes together in Lessons Learned sections and the chapters conclude by helping point out the conclusions we learn to draw from the anecdotes.

I appreciated that Schwaber was not shy about mentioning projects that didn't go perfectly-including one he got fired from for being too zealous in his role of sheepdog guarding his flock of developers.

Although this book is ostensibly about software development, Scrum has its roots in general new product development and can (and has been) applied to a wide variety of development projects. A problem with a process like Scrum is that it is best learned by "feeling it" rather than being told about it. There are many subtle differences between Scrum and a more command-and-control management process. Learning Scrum by reading a book filled with examples like this is the best way to get the feel for how to use it on your own projects.

Rating:
Summary: Dale Carnegie revisited
Review: If you have read any of Dale Carnegie's books you will see that all you are getting is a series of anecdotes. It takes a while to get to the essence of the book, where a few pages could have done that in the upfront chapters, then the gumpf could have filled the rest. If you think about it, you are a manager with little time who wants to implement the system, analogous to the scrum master holding the 15 minute daily meeting: I feel the book should have been written like that - have the chapter overview, have the introductory facts ie rules then do the work.

Rating:
Summary: Agile PM through case studies
Review: Ken Schwaber, the co-founder of Scrum, presents a text of case studies based on his experience helping teams implement Scrum.

Each case is a mini-retrospective focusing on topics such as planning a scrum project, project reporting, team formation, and team member responsibilites. Ken presents the situation, the application of a scrum practice, the lessons learned, and a conclusion. The chapters can be browsed and read out of order.

For those not familiar with Scrum, there is a useful appendix which covers the rules and practices of Scrum.

For those who learn through case studies, I highly recommend this book.

Rating:
Summary: Real world guide to implementing Scrum correctly.
Review: Our organization recently implemented Scrum, and although the
Beedle/Schwaber book was great to get us off the ground on Scrum
theory, we immediately had many questions once we actually tried to implement it in real life projects. I agree with the notion that Scrum is conceptually easy to understand, but actually quite complex to implement correctly. The scrum forum has been helpful, but we really needed a cohesive reference of situational problems. The APMWS book really hit the nail on the head and delivered what we needed the most: a practical guide to Scrum with anecdotes and "what happens if..." situations from real world Scrum implementations. This came just in time for us, and we are feeling more confident for our upcoming certification class.

The appendices in the back are also very helpful. The "Rules"
appendix is perfect as a quick introduction to Scrum for new Team
members and Product Owners. It's actually quite detailed for being such a short appendix.

Also, for newbies the three main Roles are very nicely explained. We had some misconceptions that were immediately addressed by this book.

Anyway, from a Scrum newbie that is faced with implementation issues, thanks to Ken for putting together a real world implementation guide.