USEFUL SCRUM RESOURCES

Books

Among many books on the market about SCRUM, the two titles below provide enough background on the topic to answer most questions you may have.

Ken Schwaber's Agile Project Management with Scrum (Microsoft Professional) provides an excellent introduction to SCRUM in the context of software development. The book covers fundamental concepts of the SCRUM process, explains underlying principles, and illustrates them with examples. SCRUM product backlog is introduced as a way to represent and prioritize project objectives. SCRUM sprint backlog is then described as a mechanism to track progress of work during a single sprint. The book also provides the definition and discussion of the roles people play in SCRUM: the product owner, the SCRUM master, and the team members. Lastly, Ken Schwaber describes key meeting types and their purpose in SCRUM: the sprint planning meeting, the daily SCRUM meeting, and the SCRUM retrospective. Overall, this is a very concise book that will provide you with valuable insights from a practitioner and co-creator of the SCRUM method.

Mike Cohn's Agile Estimating and Planning (Robert C. Martin Series) is a necessary compliment to Ken Schwaber's book. It is dedicated to the two aspects of software development that are fundamental in the organization's ability to deliver business value through software on time and with adequate quality: approach to planning and work estimation. The book draws a distinction between an empirical and a defined process and argues that the empirical process (commonly referred to as an agile process) is much better suited to software development than a defined process (e.g. waterfall). Mike Cohn provides in depth description of a number of methods of work size estimation, including the story points, ideal days, and the planning poker method as a group decision making mechanism related to estimation. He then shows how agile methods, including SCRUM, can be used to optimize project results in time for added business value in a more efficient way than defined processes. The book is indispensible for anyone seriously considering applying SCRUM in their development process.

Online

What Is Scrum is a good introductory white paper by Ken Schwaber (the author of Agile Project Management with Scrum (Microsoft Professional)). It provides basic information about SCRUM for someone who is just starting. It is also a great preliminary material to refer to someone considering the use of SCRUM.

ScrumAlliance.org is a community site that provides wealth of resources for people interested in SCRUM. The organization offers training and certification worldwide, as well as an extensive library of articles about SCRUM.

MountainGoatSoftware.com is a company funded by Mike Cohn (author of Agile Estimating and Planning (Robert C. Martin Series))and dedicated to promoting agile software development practices through training. The site contains a number of useful articles, as well as an online planning poker application that helps teams utilize the planning poker estimation method described in Mike Cohn's book.

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