Improve your understanding of Scrum through the proven experience and collected wisdom of experts around the world. Based on real-life experiences, the 97 essays in this unique book provide a wealth of knowledge and expertise from established practitioners who have dealt with specific problems and challenges with Scrum.

You'll find out more about the rules and roles of this framework, as well as tactics, strategies, specific patterns to use with Scrum, and stories from the trenches. You'll also gain insights on how to apply, tune, and tweak Scrum for your work. This guide is an ideal resource for people new to Scrum and those who want to assess and improve their understanding of this framework.

• "Scrum Is Simple. Just Use It As Is.," Ken Schwaber
• "The 'Standing Meeting,'" Bob Warfield
• "Specialization Is for Insects," James O. Coplien
• "Scrum Events Are Rituals to Ensure Good Harvest," Jasper Lamers
• "Servant Leadership Starts from Within," Bob Galen
• "Agile Is More than Sprinting," James W. Grenning

Table of Contents

Part I. Start, Adopt, Repeat

Chapter 1. Five Things Nobody Tells You About Scrum

Chapter 2. Mindset Matters Much More Than Practices

Chapter 3. Actually, It's Not Really About Scrum

Chapter 4. Scrum Is Simple. Just Use It As Is.

Chapter 5. Start with the Why of Your Scrum

Chapter 6. Adopt Before You Adapt

Chapter 7. Regularly Revert to the Simplest Thing That Might Work

Chapter 8. Will Scrum Work for Multi-Location Development?

Chapter 9. Know the Difference Between Multiple Scrum Teams and Multi-Team Scrum

Chapter 10. What Will You Define as "Done"?

Chapter 11. How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Start Using Scrum

Part II. Products Deliver Value

Chapter 12. Successful Projects That...Fail

Chapter 13. Answer This Question: "What Is Your Product?"

Chapter 14. Scrum: Giving the Steering Wheel Back to Business

Chapter 15. Beware the Product Management Vacuum

Chapter 16. Scaling Scrum to the Entire Organization with the Flow Framework

Chapter 17. Put Business Value Front and Center

Chapter 18. Product Owner, Not an Information Barrier

Chapter 19. Mastering the Art of "No" to Maximize Value

Chapter 20. Communicating Prioritized Requirements Through the Product Backlog

Chapter 21. Why There Are No User Stories at the Top of Your Product Backlog

Chapter 22. Mind Your Outcomes. Pay Attention to Value.

Part Ill. Collaboration Is Key

Chapter 23. Is There Anything to Learn from Football Hooligans?

Chapter 24. And Then a Miracle Occurs

Chapter 25. Put Customer Focus at the Top of Your Decision-Making Stack

Chapter 26. Is Your Team Working as a Team?

Chapter 27. "That's Not My Job!"

Chapter 28. Specialization Is for Insects

Chapter 29. Digital Tools Considered Harmful: Sprint Backlog

Chapter 30. Digital Tools Considered Harmful: Jira

Chapter 31. The Vicious Effects of Managing for Utilization

Chapter 32. Becoming a Radiating Team

Part IV. Development Is Multifaceted Work

Chapter 33. Agile Is More Than Sprinting

Chapter 34. Patricia's Product Management Predicament

Chapter 35. The Five Stages of Product Backlog Item Sizing

Chapter 36. Three Common Misconceptions About User Stories

Chapter 37. Introducing Abuser Stories

Chapter 38. What's in Your Sprint Plan?

Chapter 39. Sprint Backlogs Deserve a Life Beyond Your Electronic Tool

Chapter 40. Testing Is a Team Sport

Chapter 41. Rethinking Bugs

Chapter 42. Product Backlog Refinement Is an Important Team Activity

Chapter 43. Automating Agility

Chapter 44. The Evergreen Tree

Part V. Events, Not Meetings

Chapter 45. Sprints Are for Progress, Not to Become the New Treadmill

Chapter 46. How to Have an Effective Sprint Planning

Chapter 47. Sprint Goals Provide Purpose (Beyond Merely Completing Work Lists)

Chapter 48. Sprint Goals: The Forgotten Keys of Scrum

Chapter 49. The Daily Scrum Is the Developers' Agile Heartbeat

Chapter 50. The Sprint Review Is Not a Phase-Gate

Chapter 51. The Purpose of Sprint Review Is to Gather Feedback-Period

Chapter 52. A Demo Is Not Enough- Go and Deploy for Better Feed back

Chapter 53. Have Sprint Retrospectives and Structure Them

Chapter 54. The Most Important Thing Isn't What You Think It Is

Part VI. Mastery Does Matter

Chapter 55. Understanding the Scrum Master Role

Chapter 56. How I Learned That It's Not About Me, the Scrum Master

Chapter 57. Servant-Leadership Starts from Within

Chapter 58. The Court Jester at the Touchline

Chapter 59. The Scrum Master as Coach

Chapter 60. The Scrum Master as a Technical Coach

Chapter 61. Scrum Master, Not Impediment Hunter

Chapter 62. Anatomy of an Impediment

Chapter 63. The Scrum Master's Most Important Tool

Chapter 64. When in Trouble ... Break Glass!

Chapter 65. Actively Doing Nothing (Is Actually Hard Work)

Chapter 66. Guiding Scrum Masters on Their Never-Ending Journey with the #ScrumMasterWay Concept

Part VII. People, All Too Human

Chapter 67. Teams Are More Than Collections of Technical Skills

Chapter 68. Are People Impediments?

Chapter 69. How Human Nature Overcomplicates What Is Already Complex

Chapter 70. How to Design Your Scrum for A-ha! Moments

Chapter 71. Use Brain Science to Make Your Scrum Events Stick

Chapter 72. The Power of Standing Up

Chapter 73. The Effects of Working from Home

Chapter 74. The Gentle Way of Change

Part VIII. Values Drive Behavior

Chapter 75. Scrum Is More About Behavior Than It Is About Process

Chapter 76. What It Means to Self-Organize

Chapter 77. Treating Defects as Treasures (the Value of Openness)

Chapter 78. "That Won't Work Here1"

Chapter 79. Five Sublime Aspects for Being a More Humane Scrum Master

Chapter 80. The Sixth Scrum Value

Part IX. Organizational Design

Chapter 81. Agile Leadership and Culture Design

Chapter 82. Scrum Is "Agile Leadership"

Chapter 83. Scrum Is Also About Improving the Organization

Chapter 84. Networks and Respect

Chapter 85. The Power of Play in a Safe (but Not Too Safe) Environment

Chapter 86. The Trinity of Agile Leadership

Chapter 87. The "MetaScrum" Pattern to Drive Agile Transformation

Chapter 88. Scrum and Organizational Design in Practice

Chapter 89. Thinking Big

About the Author

Gunther Verheyen is a seasoned Scrum practitioner. For more than fifteen years he has been helping numerous individuals, teams and organizations understand Scrum better and increase the benefits they realize through Scrum.

Gunther embarked on his Agile journey with eXtreme Programming and Scrum in 2003. Many years of practice and dedication followed, years in which Gunther employed Scrum in diverse circumstances, various domains and with many teams. It shaped Gunther’s mastery in Scrum as a profound base to guide some large-scale enterprise transformations. Gunther founded his own company Ullizee-Inc and created the first edition of his acclaimed book “Scrum – A Pocket Guide” in 2013. Until 2016 he exclusively partnered with Ken Schwaber, Scrum co-creator.

In 2016 Gunther became an independent Scrum Caretaker. He is still exploring a variety of ways to deliver value; through classes, writing, speaking at events, and consulting with organizations. In January 2019, Gunther released a second edition of his acclaimed book, “Scrum – A Pocket Guide”. Throughout 2019, Gunther is working on several publishing initiatives.