Preface

We’re passionate about Scrum. In fact, we’ve both dedicated our lives to improving the profession of software delivery through training, coaching, and mentoring Scrum teams. In the pages that follow, you’ll find strong opinions, new ideas, and a solid grounding in good Scrum practices. Some of the words might sting a bit. You may find an anti-pattern or two that your team is currently performing. Embrace empiricism—be transparent and honestly inspect what you are doing today. Then make the adaptations needed to get back to good Scrum practices. Don’t worry, this book will help you. We’ve loaded it with tips, tricks, and techniques to get your Scrum teams moving forward again.

We’re aware that Scrum is no longer the new and trendy framework that it used to be. In fact after over 20 years of doing Scrum, teams all over the world, companies of many sizes, and developers in particular have become jaded—and perhaps rightly so.

Bad Scrum is rampant in the software world. In many organizations, velocity is used as weapon, not a planning tool. Scope is still committed to, not managed. Product visions are unclear and value is not the center of conversations. Delivery seems like a magical event where the outcome of putting features in front of customers feels like a game of chance, not a strategic decision. Scrum masters preach self-organization, but then assign the work to the development team. Throughout this book, you’ll find info about combating these anti-patterns and many others.

Worse is when companies rename their old practices with shiny new Scrum labels and immediately expect twice the work in half the time. Yet, the old patterns persist, and the empowerment promise made to developers and the commitment to quality turn out to be lies. In these circumstances, Scrum is just a bait-and-switch tactic.

So we get why some teams are upset.

Many organizations aren’t getting the full benefits that Scrum—executed well—can offer. They may check a box after each Scrum event and go through the motions of Scrum. But this kind of “mechanical” Scrum is Scrum in name only, where teams use the Scrum framework without truly embodying its principles and values. Mechanical Scrum quickly degrades and becomes obsolete. Trust us, we’ve seen it happen.

You can rise above this by truly embracing Scrum. When you embrace self-organization, live the Scrum principles and values, and emphasize technical excellence, you empower your team to get products into the hands of customers sooner, and confirm that what the team is building is what the market actually wants. Isn’t it better to invest in building products that people actually want to use?

If you want to use this wonderful framework to deliver valuable, high-quality features every sprint, read on.