Mastering Professional Scrum: A Practitioners Guide to Overcoming Challenges and Maximizing the Benefits of Agility(The Professional Scrum Series)

“Our job as Scrum professionals is to continually improve our ability to use Scrum to deliver products and services that help customers achieve valuable outcomes. This book will help you to improve your ability to apply Scrum.” —From the Foreword by Ken Schwaber, co-author of Scrum Mastering Professional Scrum is for anyone who wants to deliver increased value by using Scrum more effectively. Leading Scrum practitioners Stephanie Ockerman and Simon Reindl draw on years of Scrum training and coaching to help you return to first principles and apply Scrum with the professionalism required to achieve its transformative potential. The authors aim to help you focus on proven Scrum approaches for improving quality, getting and using fast feedback, and becoming more adaptable, instead of “going through the motions” and settling for only modest improvements. Whether you’re a Scrum Master, Development Team member, or Product Owner, you’ll find practical advice for facing challenges with transparency and courage, overcoming a wide array of common challenges, and continually improving your Scrum practice. Realistically assess your current Scrum practice, and identify areas for improvement Recognize what a great Scrum Team looks like and get there Focus on “Done”—not “sort-of-Done” or “almost-Done” Measure and optimize the value delivered by every Product Increment Improve the way you plan, develop, and grow Clear away wider organizational impediments to agility and professionalism Overcome common misconceptions that stand in the way of progress Register your book for convenient access to downloads, updates, and/or corrections as they become available. See inside book for details.

Table of Contents:
Foreword by Ken Schwaber xiii Foreword by Dave West xvii Introduction xxi Acknowledgments xxvii About the Authors xxix Chapter 1: Continuously Improving Your Scrum Practice 1 Focus on Seven Key Areas to Improve Your Scrum Practice 2 Growing Scrum Requires a Team to Improve Other Capabilities 7 A Process for Continuous Improvement 12 Summary 21 Call to Action 22 Chapter 2: Creating a Strong Team Foundation 23 Forming a Team Identity 23 What Makes a Good Team Member? 24 Who Should Be on a Scrum Team? 27 How Do Scrum Teams Form Working Agreements? 29 What Does Self-Organization Look Like? 31 How Do Scrum Teams Collaborate? 36 How Do Teams Progress? 42 Summary 47 Call to Action 48 Chapter 3: Delivering “Done” Product Increments 49 What Is a Definition of “Done”? 50 Using Sprint Goals to Get to “Done” 55 Getting PBIs to “Done” Earlier in the Sprint 58 Limiting Work Items in Progress 62 Building in Quality from the Beginning 64 Quality Metrics 68 Tackling Technical Debt 70 Summary 74 Call to Action 74 Chapter 4: Improving Value Delivered 77 What Is Value? 77 Delivering Faster Is a Good Start, But Not Enough 78 Product Value and the Scrum Team 80 Using the Product Vision to Enliven Team Purpose, Focus, and Identity 81 Measuring Value 83 Inspecting and Adapting Based on Feedback 90 Summary 92 Call to Action 93 Chapter 5: Improving Planning 95 Planning with a Product Mindset 96 Creating Alignment 100 Product Backlog Refinement 101 Planning a Sprint 107 How Far Ahead to Refine 111 Planning Releases 112 Summary 113 Call to Action 114 Chapter 6: Helping Scrum Teams Develop and Improve 115 Using the Sprint Retrospective to Uncover Areas for Improvement 115 Identifying and Removing Impediments 118 Growing Individual and Team Capabilities 124 Being an Accountable Scrum Master 127 Summary 135 Call to Action 135 Chapter 7: Leveraging the Organization to Improve 137 Organizations Need to Evolve to Succeed 137 Developing People and Teams 138 Getting Comfortable with Transparency 144 A Culture of Accountability, Not a Culture of Blame 145 Letting Go of (the Illusion of) Control 146 The Real Power of the Iron Triangle 146 Funding Initiatives 148 “Being Agile” Is Not the Goal 152 Nail It Before You Scale It 153 Summary 154 Call to Action 154 Chapter 8: Conclusion and What’s Next 157 Business Agility Requires Emergent Solutions 157 Call to Action 160 Appendix A: A Self-Assessment for Understanding Where You Are 161 Business Agility 161 Effective Empiricism with Scrum 162 Effective Teamwork with Scrum 167 Analysis of Assessment Answers 168 Appendix B: Common Misconceptions About Scrum 169 Scrum Is Not a Methodology or a Governance Process 169 Index 175

About the Author :
Stephanie Ockerman has more than a decade of experience in both traditional waterfall and agile delivery approaches and has worked with implementations in leading large-scale technology programs, acting as a Scrum Master, and coaching Scrum Teams and organizations. She is also a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) through PMI and a Co-Active Coach trained by the Coach Training Institute. Stephanie is an active blogger and frequently speaks at agile and leadership conferences around the world.   Simon Reindl is an experienced developer, trainer, coach, and technologist. He has more than 20 years’ experience helping organizations in the private and public sectors and all industries adopt new technology and improve the value delivered. He is qualified to lead the full range of Professional Scrum Training courses (PSF, PSD .NET, PSM, PSPO and SPS) as well as coach people at all levels—whether in technical or managerial roles. Simon is a qualified teacher and Certified Agile Coach. He is also an active blogger and speaker at agile and technical conferences around the world.