The Professional ScrumMaster’s Handbook

A collection of tips, tricks, and war stories to help the professional ScrumMaster break the chains of traditional organization and management

Overview

• Checklists, questions, and exercises to get you thinking (and acting) like a professional ScrumMaster
• Presented in a relaxed, jargon-free, personable style
• Full of ideas, tips, and anecdotes based on real-world experiences

In Detail

A natural and difficult tension exists between a project team (supply) and its customer (demand); a professional ScrumMaster relaxes this tension using the Scrum framework so that the team arrives at the best possible outcome.

“The Professional ScrumMaster’s Handbook” is a practical, no-nonsense guide to helping you become an inspiring and effective ScrumMaster known for getting results.

This book goes into great detail about why it seems like you’re fighting traditional management culture every step of the way. You will explore the three roles of Scrum and how, working in harmony, they can deliver a product in the leanest way possible. You’ll understand that even though there is no room for a project manager in Scrum, there are certain “management” aspects you should be familiar with to help you along the way. Getting a team to manage itself and take responsibility is no easy feat; this book will show you how to earn trust by displaying it and inspiring courage in a team every day.

“The Professional ScrumMaster’s Handbook” will challenge you to dig deep within yourself to improve your mindset, practices, and values in order to build and support the very best agile teams.

What you will learn from this book

• Create and maintain an impediment backlog to support continuous improvement for you, your team, and your organization
• How to tell the difference between an obstacle and a true constraint
• Create a culture transition map to help your team and organization deliver quickly and flexibly
• Work through exercises to help co-workers and management discover for themselves a new way of approaching tasks
• Align your actions to the Scrum values every day
• Facilitate “lean” meetings – light and quick, yet effective

Approach

Focusing on the ScrumMaster role and responsibilities, this book presents solutions and ideas for common problems, improving the overall methodology of a ScrumMaster’s approach.

Who this book is written for

The Professional ScrumMaster’s Handbook is for anybody who wishes to be a true ScrumMaster as the role was originally intended – a fearless, professional, change facilitator. This book extends your working knowledge of Scrum to explore other avenues and ways of thinking to help teams and organizations reach their full potential.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Scrum – A Brief Review of the Basics (and a Few Interesting Tidbits)
Chapter 2: Release Planning – Tuning Product Development
Chapter 3: Sprint Planning – Fine-tune the Sprint Commitment
Chapter 4: Sprint! Visible, Collaborative, and Meaningful Work
Chapter 5: The End? Improving Product and Process One Bite at a Time
Chapter 6: The Criticality of Real-time Information
Chapter 7: Scrum Values Expose Fear, Dysfunction, and Waste
Chapter 8: Everyday Leadership for the ScrumMaster and Team
Chapter 9: Shaping the Agile Organization
Chapter 10: Scrum – Large and Small
Chapter 11: Scrum and the Future
Appendix A: The ScrumMaster’s Responsibilities
Appendix B: ScrumMaster’s Workshop