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

Introduction

Considering I had read so many books on Scrum, I wasn’t expected to learn that much more? But oh boy was I wrong.

I have never enjoyed any book on Agile more than this one; the reason behind is it is full of real-life example and explains the rationale behind every aspect of Scrum. This book doesn’t just cover the Scrum; it also covers the Agile way of working and the mindset, one this that is mostly missed in books on Scrum.

My favourite bits:

The FBI story:

In brief, After 9/11 the FBI realised that its Information system wasn’t up to the job and if it had a linked up central system then 9/11 could have been prevented. This led to a project to build a Virtual Case File (VCF) system, that was supposed to change everything. Three years on and $170 million in taxpayer money later the project failed to deliver anything.

A new program was started in 2005 called Sentinel, the price tag? A mere $451 million. And it would be fully operational by 2009. March 2010, the FBI abandoned the project as it would take it another eight years to complete the project.

FBI brought in Jeff Sunderland to implement Scrum and delivered this project. Jeff cut the developers from 220 to 40 and delivered the project in 18 months. Read the book to find out how Jeff did this.

Bug fixing:

Jeff recommends that bugs should be fixed immediately as soon as they are found and he uses the Toyota and BMW model to explain this.
In Japan, companies such as Honda, Toyota and Nissan manufacture a luxury car on average 17 hours. Where car Manufautres in Germany, like Audi, BMW and Mercedes take 57 hours. Cars produced by Japanese manufactures on average had only 34 defects in every 100 vehicles whereas German manufacturers were making cars with an average of 78.7 defects per every 100 vehicles. The difference is that when someone in Toyota on production line finds a defect, he will stop the whole production line and everyone together fix that defect, there and then. This also gives direct feedback to the place where that defect was caused, and a process could be put in place for it to not happen again. Whereas in BMW, defects are fixed in cars after they come off the production line at the end. To back up this, Jeff also references research done by Palm which showed that if the bug in software is fixed after six weeks of it be found, it will take 24 times longer to fix then if it got fixed at the moment it is found.

Waste is a crime

In the section of the book, Jeff discusses two types of waste. Time waste through multitasking which I have already covered in following article and waste of unfinished work (in – progress waste)

in – progress waste

One thing we don’t consider in our office environment is the cost of unfinished work. Everything that is sitting there unfinished has used up time, energy and resources but has zero value.

The unfinished work is worthless till it is completed and when you are working on multiple items, and then you have multiple things that are unfinished. Sometimes because it has taken so long to finish sometimes the need for it to be done is gone. The longer something is unfinished, the higher the risk of it not getting completed. But even if the need for the item to be completed is gone, that half-done item has used up precious resource and time.

Scrum used in education

Jeff talks about schools in Netherland that use Scrum and how it has been successful.

Negative reviews:

I have seen many people who have given the negative reviews for this book because of Jeff talking about how successful Scrum is. I find that since Trump became the president and everything related to him seem to be the best in the world. His stupid book (the art of the Deal) he refers to as the most successful business book in the world, all his hotels being the best in the world. His stupid bragging and lies have started put people of genuine, honest reference to success and subconsciously losing trust in people telling us true success stories. I was listening to Tony Robbins, a very successful life coach, some I used to enjoy listening to, but now I get so irritated by his reference to personal success. All the negative review that I have read for this book have been to do with people getting put off by success stories of Jeff, and this is an impact off us being exposed to Trump’s rhetoric.
All the success stories of Scrum and Agile are true, and every single experienced scrum master and scrum teams will tell you amazing stories and experience like this.

Summary

This book is a real inspiration and full of tips for no matter what level of experience you have. I recommend this book to every Scrum Master I meet. seriously, if you haven’t read this book and you are either a Scrum Master of Scrum Product owner, then you must read this immediately.