Book Summary — Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time

🚀 The Book in 3 Sentences

1. Guideline to implement Scrum
2. Several Scrum case studies
3. Same as the Lean process

🎨 Impressions

This book describes Scrum elaborately. I have learned about the Lean process quite a lot. However, this is the first book that illustrates the Lean or Scrum process really well with procedures that are ready to implement.

🙍‍♂️Who Should Read It?

Anyone who works as a team especially product owner or manager.

☘️ How the Book Changed Me

• I try to find waste in any process
• Find an opportunity to implement in my job

✍️ My Top 3 Quotes

• Blame is stupid
• Waste is a crime
• Working too hard makes more work

📒 Summary + Notes

Why using Scrum?

• The waterfall method which uses the Gantt chart is not accurate, can’t adapt to change
• Scrum allows the possibility to fail fast and fix fast

Origin of Scrum

• Observe, Orient, Decide, Act
• Plan, Do, Check, Act Loop

Team

Best component

1. Transcendent: Big goal
2. Autonomous: the freedom to make a decision
3. Cross-Functional: have every skill need

• The number of team member should be 5–9 people
• Don’t blame people. Look for a bad system instead
• No position within a team

Time

Sprint: Work cycle period (1 week — 1 month)

⏳ Each sprint must have a demo that can be used

15-minute daily stand-up meeting with 3 questions

1. What did you do yesterday to help the team finish the Sprint?
2. What will you do to help the team finish the Sprint?
3. What obstacles are getting in the way?

Waste is a crime

• Do only one thing at a time
• Half-done isn’t done at all
• Fix mistake as soon as a mistake is observed
• The optimum working hour should not be too short or too long
• The scrum master will take responsibility to eliminate waste

Plan

• Don’t plan everything for years long. Plan only need during this period.
• Estimate each task size relatively by Fibonacci sequence (1,2,3,5,8,13,21,…) to make it easy to compare task (Don’t estimate in an absolute term like week)
• Each member estimate task size if min and max estimated size is difference more than 2 Fibonacci order, the explanation is required before estimating size again.
• Work with story → state clearly who will get the value “As a [person], I want [objective]”
• Measure velocity in each Sprint bt summation of all task size done
• Estimate delivery date by velocity

Happiness

• Happiness found in the process not result
• Happy team yields a great result
• Measure team happiness by asking these questions

1. On a scale of 1 to 5, how do you feel about your role in company?
2. On the same scale, how do you feel about the company as a whole?
3. Why do you feel that way?
4. What one thing would make you happier in the next Sprint?

• Nothing should be secret
• Make all work visible on board
• Happiness is autonomy, mastery and purpose
• Complacency (not doing work) is not happiness)

Priority

• Prioritize to-do list (backlog)
• The product owner, who understands business, market and customer, will take care of the backlog
• The product owner set out “what” needs to be done. The team decides how and who.
• When doing a project, consider “change for free”. During working, plan usually change.