Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time Hardcover – Illustrated, 30 Sept. 2014

Jeff Sutherland was one of the 17 founding fathers who signed the Agile Manifesto in 2001. Six years previously in 1995, Sutherland had, along with Ken Schwaber, presented the framework to OOPSLA. The origins go back before that to Takeuchi and Nonaka and their 1986 HBR article, ‘The New New Product Development Game.’. Reading this article again, I wonder what value Sutherland and Schwaber feel they added, as he writes: ‘I first created Scrum, with Ken Schwaber, twenty years ago…” I am reminded of the old Jasper Carrot joke ‘Here is a song I wrote. Unfortunately Bob Dylan wrote it first.” By the same token, what added value does Sutherland think Eisenhower added to the concept of the detrimental impact of first contact with the enemy on military plans that allows either/both of them to strike von Moltke from the record. It left me wondering what it is they teach at West Point. Nonetheless, due to his prominence in the agile folklore, Sutherland is a perfectly valid early subject of study for anyone interested in learning about Agile. I would actually advise you start with The Scrum Guide on the grounds that it is free and only 19 pages, and sets you up perfectly do separate what is the relatively thin ‘content’ of this book from the broader and somewhat autobiographical ‘context’. The other reviews of this book rightly pick up on the Sutherland’s tone ‘I flew fast jets in ‘Nam and I am going to tell you all about it’. One wonders whether ‘Genghis’ John Boyd was a role model as well as a source as he recounts successive stories of how he rescued successive multi-million dollar projects from the brink with his self-managing teams – some of course went off the cliff again the moment he left. I found the contrast between the finger in the chest, aggressive, ‘don’t suck’ approach and the ‘Happiness is Success’ chapter somewhat difficult to reconcile – happiness is shipping on time in Jeff-world. The book is useful for identifying one end of the spectrum of the perceived, if perhaps largely anecdotal, value of Scrum and its redemptive effects on the human psyche. The other end might be seen as Michael O Church’s blog from 2015. Everybody else is somewhere in the middle, but it is useful to have the boundaries defined early on. At 5.99 (Kindle) and a medium flight or train ride (258 pages) to make a bus-ride's worth of points, this book is probably reasonably on the list.

I couldn't finish reading this book, it was not what I expected. I thought I would learn more about the Scrum and it seemed to me as a guy bragging on how great he was. (It may sounds harsh, but that were me thoughts when i read it).

I have only read the first 3 chapters to date.You need to be clear about where this book comes from, and it’s reason for being written. Jeff Sutherland was one of The authors of the Agile Manifesto. This book talks about his experiences, and what he has learnt from them. He then goes on to explain how Scrum and Agile can change things for the better. This book won’t teach you how to to start Scrum or Agile practices directly, but if you need some inspiration and motivation to do so, then it will help.The book is an easy read, and I have found myself marking pages every few minutes with nuggets of ideas and inspiration that I will use to drive change where I work.

Some really good examples of agility. Some great insight on some great companies. Well worth investing the time to read this book.Only one thing that wore me down a little. Jeff Sutherland's ego was a bit of a distraction. It felt a bit like - 'I couldn't believe that when I invented agile, I would be saving the world.'

This book reads like a list of boasts. If you're running waterfall projects there may be some value in reading this if you need convincing of the benefits of working using agile. But if you're already convinced there is no useful advice in here.It's just a list of reasons Jeff Sutherland is amazing, military, and sports anecdotes.

Invaluable aide-memoire for delivering I.T. development projects using Scrum Agile techniques. Agile is a documented reimagining of successful techniques used decades ago - no doubt someone will reinvent all the terminology again in years to come, call it something else, develop courses and make a new fortune, but for the moment Agile is what you need and Scrum is as good as flavour as any other. For non-Agile Project Managers, the conversion to Agile Delivery Manager takes about 2 days - you know most of it but don't realise it yet, and you also realise that there is probably no such thing as a pure Agile project in any mature organisation.

In 1972 I was lab technician in a University Biochemistry Lab. A new PhD student was introduced to me by my boss, a Senior Lecturer.the new guy was to use a classic analytical method to measure a biochemical in rat urine. I said to them, "You know this doesn't actually work don't you?" My boss cynically said, "Well fix it then!" Two months later a method that previously took 1.5 days to process 24 samples with occasional negative results now took 5 hours to do 48 samples with no negatives.In my next job, mid-1970s, steel wire manufacture, the same thinking, co-opting whatever believers were available solved one "impossible" problem after another.I now recognise this as SCRUM thinking.

Useful book packed with ideas. I have 10+ years in project management. I agree Gantt charts are a WW1 invention. Other ideas are useful but there is an inherent danger that the book assumes that the three elements of the project management triangle are equally flexible to achieve quicker results. Reality is applying this to highly complex projects is a challenge.