Book Review: Software in 30 Days.

Has it really been more than two months since my last post??? What a slacker!

I just finished Software in 30 Days by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland (the Godfather's of Scrum). Late last year, we shifted to an Agile software development framework. We went through some initial training and I was dubbed "Scrum Master".

Since then, I have decided to get certified by the above-mentioned Godfather's as a Scrum Master. This book was recommended as a good primer on Agile/Scrum. I completely agree. I wish we were given this book first. It was very helpful in clearing many things up that we were taught in training.

I started a hackpad of "notes" from the book. You can check it out here. My notes are a lot of direct pulls right from the text. Sometimes I have some of my own thoughts in there. One of the biggest learnings for me was the following:

p.105 Scrum is not an approach or process that can be modified to fit the existing organizational culture; the culture must change to enable Scrum.

We are trying to modify it. The rollout was a shotgunned. So we adopted what we could. We are pulling the rest in as we go in most cases. In one team that I am Scrum Master of - I shouldn't even really use the term "team" because it is not a team in the Agile sense.

One of the roles of Scrum Master is to mentor and coach and support the Agile framework. I am doing that for my teams. At least I hope that I am.

A great tool from the book is a lengthy "Definition of Done" table. Go to the hackpad and you will see it there. Our company was a start-up. We were bought by another start-up. Then we were bought by a mature company. This all happened within the span of one year by the way. But we were a "good enough" development team. Agile is a quality focused framework and we are trying to adopt it completely. Our definition of done versus the suggested is no where near as comprehensive. We have work to do.

Slowly. Slowly.