Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time - 1mproves

By Jeff Sutherland & JJ Sutherland.

This post summarize the book SCRUM: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland & JJ Sutherland. Is it really possible?

You can find the full size MindMap here.

SCRUM values : Courage, Focus, Commitment, Respect, Openness

Chapter 1: The Way the World Works is Broken

Planning is Useful. Blindly following plans is stupid.
Inspect and Adapt.
Bring Teams together with the same Goal.
Change or Die.
Fail Fast so you Can Fix Early.
Identify and correct what slow the team.
Working product in short cycles allows early user feedback and eliminate what is obviously wasteful effort.
The 80/20 rule.

OODA: Observe, Orient, Decide, Act.
Waterfall and methodologies supported by lots of Gantt Chart are useless.
Measure what exactly is being done, and how well, and to strive for ‘continuous improvement.
Management should not dictate but FACILITATE.
SHU-HA-RI – First, learn the rules and the forms, and once you’ve mastered them, make innovations. Finally, in a heightened state of mastery, discard the forms.
Prioritize Quality.
Hesitation is Death.

Questions to ask :

Team size: 7 persons ideal, 3 persons minimum. Anything greater than 9 will slow down the team’s velocity. Everyone in the team should know what everybody is doing.
Instead of looking for blame, rewards positive behaviour and working together.
Don’t look for bad people, look for bad systems.

Daily Stand-Up:

The greater the communication situation, the more everyone knows everything–the faster the team.
People shouldn’t have a special TITLE.
Meet every single day & get everyone together in a ROOM.
People should discuss who does what and choose the tasks he wants to do.
Each SPRINT is the opportunity to do something totally NEW.

Do one thing at a time.
Ban stupid policies.
Do not give ABSURD goals. Work = Discipline + Flow.
Problem: STOP everything and meet all the team to solve it. Solve immediately.
MULTITASKING wastes your time & make you stupid.
Jobs that aren’t done & Products that aren’t used is just WASTE.
Working LATE is not a sign of commitment it is a sign of FAILURE – no energy and heroic efforts are failure.
Don’t Be Unreasonable. Goals that are challenging are motivators; goals that are impossible are just depressing.
No assholes. Don’t be one, and don’t allow the behaviour.

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time!
Decompose in little tasks.
People must know that the features they work on will be USEFULL.
You can’t plan everything ahead of time.
The Map is Not the Terrain. Don’t fall in love with your plan. It’s almost certainly wrong.
Only Plan What You Need To. Don’t try to project everything out years in advance. Just plan enough to keep your team busy.
PRIORITIZE tasks – Define character, user and customer.
ESTIMATE with Fibonacci. Poker sizing.
Have your own judgement.
If too much differences people talk.
People doing the WORK know the time needed.
Know Your Velocity. Every team should know exactly how much work they can get done in each Sprint.
Set Audacious Goals.

During Sprint Retrospective: look for what went right, what could have been done better, what can be made better next sprint.
Implement improvements right away.
Team happiness: Autonomy, Mastery, & Purpose.
Scrum Master – keep the team from pride and complacency.
It’s the Journey, Not the Destination. True happiness is found in the process, not the result.
Quantify Happiness.
At the end of each Sprint, the team should pick one small improvement – or kaizen.
Nothing should be secret.
Don’t forget performance.

The Backlog should have everything that could possibly be included in the product.
List everything.
Product Vision is the intersection of “What you can implement”, “what you can be passionate about” and “What you can sell”.
Aim for REVENUE first. 80/20 rule.
“Will we make money doing this?”
Build MVP.
Figure out where the most value can be delivered for the least effort, and do that one right away. Then identify the next increment after that, and the next.
3 SCRUM roles: Product Owner, Scrum Master & Team members.
Product Owner: Insert VISION in the backlog.
Principles of MVP, Lean startup: TEST: put it to end-users as quickly as possible, get feedback, then iterate.
Observe, Orient, Decide, Act (OODA).
Create new things ONLY if they deliver value.
What you thought in the beginning is needed never end up to be actually needed.

SCRUM can be used in everything to improve performance & results.
SCRUM can be used in school (ex: Netherlands).
Get rid of all titles, managers, structures, process.
Give people the freedom to do what they think best and the responsibility to be accountable for it.