The Elements of Scrum Paperback – February 1, 2011

I am new to project management, and I am also a college programmer. This is a well-organized recipe for team-building and finding project priority. Hope the project will go well./fingercrossed

I thought Elements of Scrum was a really good overview of agile techniques with a focus on pragmatics: the authors want to give you tools so you can improve your work. It doesn't get dragged into whether something is "really agile" or not. It presents a lot of agile development stuff as things that can each improve your work, though may work even better when combined.The tone of the book was friendly and approachable. The general philosophy was "find what works for you and your team, and do more of that. find what isn't working and try something else instead." In itself, an agile approach - be more aware and iterate on how you do work.There were a couple formatting issues with the Kindle first-edition (list numbering sometimes got reset mid-list), which was unfortunate.Disclaimer: Once upon a time, I took an Agile Development training class given by author Chris Sims, and have gotten very brief coaching after the class about running an "Agile Retrospective". I think Chris is a great educator.I would have personally preferred if they had chosen a term other than "scrum". "Elements of Agile Development" or something like that would have worked better for me. There's much more in the book than just "scrum".

I picked up the Kindle edition of this tome last week and given my busy schedule, I'm only halfway done with it...but I cannot put it down whenever I do get a minute to read. I'm pretty impressed with how thusly this topic is broken down. I've gone from knowing NOTHING about scrum or agile to knowing enough to influence a scrum team as a product owner, which is precisely what I needed.The examples are succinct and articulated fairly informally and I've found that the informal style of writing relates well to the overall point and theme of scrum; out with the haughty waterfall methodology and all its bloated language and in with the bare bones, no-nonsensical elegance of scrum. When studying agile methodologies, you have to wonder just how many organizations are still committed to the outmoded waterfall methodology since agile commits completely to an incremental approach, which is PERFECT for OOP-based projects. I forget in which chapter the comparison/contrast appears, but an anecdote for a software project using both methodologies is related to us and it illustrates the velocity achieved towards the BE point of a project. Even though it might have been a tad on the fantasy side, it still got the point across.You might even begin to realize that scrum applies very well to initiatives in other parts of an enterprise architecture and not just the development team. "Agility" is an attractive buzzword for the head honchos at your company, and for good reason. Businesses need to be able to respond to change quickly and to develop the capabilities that allow them to seize upon new opportunities when they appear. How do you do this? Cut the bloat and establish a sound base.Sorry for the tangent, but agile excites me. This book is a must have.

If you want to understand the essentials of Agile development and Scrum, The Elements of Scrum by Chris Sims and Hillary Louise Johnson is a must read. The book itself doesn't talk about Agile development in pure theoretical terms, it provides insight on how Scrum teams function by using examples and clear explanations.The Elements of Scrum walks you through a Scrum team's inner workings, including planning and executing a sprint, daily scrum (stand-up) meetings, sprint reviews, and the retrospective. The book provides in-depth coverage of key Scrum artifacts such as the product and sprint backlogs, information radiators like the sprint and release charts, the task board, the definition of done, user stories and acceptance criteria. Chris and Hillary even cover a topic you don't read much about: terminating a sprint.The Elements of Scrum really shines as it walks you through the ins and outs of estimating and planning. I particularly enjoyed the example of "Agile Islands," as it provides an excellent basis for understanding Scrum's use of relative sizing versus time estimates. Chris and Hillary explain why relative sizing works, pointing out that, "While we are bad at absolute sizing, we are good at relative sizing."They follow up to explain how relative sizing is applied:"The trick is to use a two-step process. First, assign relative sizes to all of the work items. The size indicates how much work there is to do. Second, do a couple of work items and measure how long they actually take. Armed with this measured amount, the relative sizes assigned to all of the other items can now be used to provide the desired predictability of schedule."And if you've ever wondered why Agile development uses sizing numbers in the Fibonacci sequence, The Elements of Scrum explains this as well: "...the Fibonacci sequence, when used to represent `sizes,' increase at about the same rate at which humans are able to easily perceive differences. Just as anyone can tell a one-story house from a two-story house at a glance, anyone can tell 21 story building from a 34 story building."Since the book relies on examples of actual experiences to illustrate how Scrum works in practice, it naturally gives an inside look at The Team Estimation Game and using techniques such as planning poker. The book closes discussing a variety of supporting practices, such as release planning, the use of personas, story mapping, refactoring, pair programming and test-driven development.If you are looking for a book that provides an "inside look" at how Scrum teams plan and operate, I highly recommend The Elements of Scrum .

Excelente livro, leitura leve e rápida.

The book goes with theory of agile that you should most important feature in minimum time by prioritising and estimating. :)Good crisp book to introduce elements of scrum

Il libro si apre con una efficace comparazione tra "waterfall" e sviluppo "agile". Poi passa ad un'esposizione molto interessante dei valori e dei principi agili (individui e interazioni al di sopra di processi e strumenti e così via). Dopodiché arriva la parte centrale del libro con la spiegazione dei ruoli (Product Owner, Scrum Master, Membro del team), delle cerimonie (Sprint Planning, Daily Standup, Sprint Review, Sprint Retrospective, Backlog Grooming, Story Time) e artefatti (Product Backlog , Sprint Backlog, Burn Charts, Task Board, Definition Of Done) che sono gli elementi portanti di Scrum. All'interno della parte centrale del libro c'è una buona spiegazione di cosa sono e come organizzare le User Story con suggerimenti pratici per crearle al meglio. A chiusura di questa parte centrale si trova una discussione su alcune strategie che aiutano a stimare le User Story.Un libro bene organizzato e facilmente leggibile per chi si vuole approcciare a Scrum.

I got this book after reading the abridged version by the same authors. Like the abridged version this book is well written and the concepts well explained. The book opens with a good comparison of "waterfall" vs "agile" development. Following this is a very enjoyable exposition of the agile values and principles (individuals and interactions over processes and tools etc etc). Following this is the core part of the book: explanations of the roles (product owner, scrum master, team member), ceremonies (sprint planning, daily standup, sprint review, sprint retrospective, backlog grooming, story time) and artifacts (product backlog, sprint backlog, burn charts, task board, definition of done) that make up scrum. Within the core part of the book is a good explanation of what user stories are and how they help with understanding what needs to be built, for who and, importantly, why. And closing out the core part of the book is a discussion on some tried and tested strategies for estimating stories.I've not read any other books on scrum so I can't compare but I'd be very very amazed to find a better one out there than this one. This book covered absolutely lots of ground whilst remaining compact and, most importantly, very readable.

This is a good handbook for team members. Whenever I am building a new team I buy a bunch of these and spread them around in the office for people to peruse if they are not that familiar with Scrum or haven't used it in a while.