Scrum for Dummies 1st Edition

I was able to attend one of Mark's Certified Scrum Master classes through his company, Platinum Edge, and it was such a great course I had to buy this Scrum for Dummies book to follow. Similar to Mark's in-person teaching style, this book was extremely informative and easy to understand. I also bought Agile Project Management for Dummies and am excited to read that too.

Layton tends to oversell Scrum, but Scrum is a good system so read the book for the clear explanation and take Layton's cheerleading with a grain of salt. Sometimes Layton seems like Scrum is his new found religion. Yet he does provide a good overview so you should be able to implement Scrum skills after reading this book.

Most Dummies books are good but this one refers to templates that can be downloaded from their web site. Apparently the only way you get access is if you buy it from THEIR web site at a higher price. Also, once you hit the web site you can never un-register and you get a barrage of email ads. The product line has fallen significantly from their earlier glory.

The book's content is not very much for beginners, but is written in a very easy-to-read manner.

Extremely Easy to follow for Beginners or Intermediate Scrum Dummies :)

GREAT resource for learning Scrums! It is better than the training I took.

This item met all expectations.

Couldn’t open all of book

Nicely written and lot of knowledge….you won’t need anything else to master Scrum

Creo que me está ayudando a aprender SCRUM. es claro y fácil de entender.

Great book!

Scrum for Dummies is far far far from a beginners book, it is a fairly comprehensive in-the-field reference guide covering a range of eventualities - some surprisingly mundane - to suit the "intellectually curious contributor type" who "respects the burning embers of positivity", embraces change and rails against "bureaucracy as the luxury of the financially bloated!"For this is Agility with the 'velocity' (units of work completed in a given timeframe) that celebrates 'failing fast' (and cheap!), tackling the highest risks at the start of the project and facilitates an incremental (not up-front) funding model. Scrum is a standard framework that is scalable upwards, i.e. LeSS (Large Scale Scrum) or SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) for running a startup team in a multi-million dollar business; or is scalable downwards i.e. even helping to choose a life partner (!), get a place into the right university and plan a family holiday - all covered in the book.A big reason for the success of Scrum as the most popular of the Agile suite of project management practices is primarily its simple structure, incredible focus and radical transparency that, tactically, provides a flexible and strategically stable platform to prevent getting lost in the complexity of the potential outcomes of any decision. Further, by holding fast to the simple directive "inspect and adapt at the last responsible moment" the taking action early and often concept demonstrates to stakeholders product at the end of each sprint and thereby risks are minimised. Scrum works on the basis you don't have to define and rigorously plan all the projects upfront to get started since the roadmap and even the vision is in constant refinement and it is at the beginning of the project when you know least.This simple structure is mirrored in the dyadic relationship between the Product Owner (PO) and Scrum Master (SM). The PO acts like an Agile Visionary/Sponsor or Champion all rolled into one and provides continual access and prioritisation to the business value objectives through the sprint goals of roadmap alignment. These goals are decomposed into Product 'Backlog ' Items or themes (PBIs) - critical features - Epics (a series of actions related to Feature), User Stories and Tasks (internal steps needed to implement user stories and requirements). The PO is decisive and needs to be in the thick of the action as having a set of expert skills (not a title) within the broader skill sets of the project, thereby obviating ranking. An SM has clout and leads the Development Team by removing impediments and practising chunking (breaking down), promoting 'swarming' and cross-functionality. These are activities of shadowing and pairing that maximises the number of eyeballs on a project to eliminate single points of failure.Waterfall by definition plans all, develops all, and has an upfront design, fixed scope and schedules, and mentioned in the book, works on the basis that 64 per cent of features are rarely used (which I admit I had to question). Its phased gate approach is noted for low customer interaction until the first round of testing or delivery, and low visibility (inspection by customer) - a major contributor to delays and soaring project costs. The traditional PM role is a generalist, who is often the lynchpin 'thrashing' diverse and disparate strands that often don't match or link up and might be only one step away from a Nokia 'death spiral': "fragmented organization, cluttered flow, confused leadership and narrow learning" - the root causes of what has been called Coordination Chaos.For the true Finance-meisters, Scrum comes into its own by harnessing the power of flexibility in maintaining tight controls on budgets especially in avoiding the twin evils of sunk-cost fallacy and cognitive consistency. Pilot projects involving stakeholders in product development positively promote early product increments of the minimal viable product (MVP) at a time when it is prudent to sprint backlog items with the highest risk, thereby allowing the opportunity for early termination and reassignment. Continuous capital deployment may be a possibility by moving budget from one project to another against the formula AC+OC>V and since most of a Sprint is spent doing value-added activities (whereas a traditional model has much time in planning analysis) the SOP (Statements of Position), i.e. the point project costs are expensed (capitalised), can potentially be retrieved from an abandoned release.The courage to challenge fiefdoms, test rules, and break routines is all part and parcel of working in a united team, but the science stacks up too. It has been shown that there is a 30 per cent loss of time in 'cognitive mobilization-demobilization' associated with task switching which requires 15 mins to get to peak productivity but reduces 'thrashing' (doing more than one task at a time) is an intended aim of Scrum. Also meeting a tight deadline fulfils both the Expectancy Theory of Motivation and Need Theory (McClelland) through a shared sense of responsibility (team-centric compensation) based on the balance between positive network performance v individual performance.Though I would heartily recommend this book I would also advise if you are new to project management to read a primer on the subject first. Mark Layton seems to have taken the direction that it is best to be forearmed with as many examples as possible before the quasi-mystical philosophies of 'emergence' and 'flow' hit you. You can never know the future however much it is planned for, but by developing a Shuhari mind to embrace Rumsfeld's infamous 'unknown unknowns that only ever appear when a project is "hot", Scrum can be rightly said to be a quasi-mystical journey worthy at times of the title 'clairsentient creation' not managing processes that overbalance an organisation into bloat - and for this reason alone Scrum will not work well where 'C' players dominate an organisational structure with low energy, execution and edge.

Good Book.