The Art of Scrum: How Scrum Masters Bind Dev Teams and Unleash Agility

This book covers the nuts and bolts of scrum―its framework, roles, team structures, ceremonies, and artifacts―from the scrum master’s perspective.

The Art of Scrum details the scum master’s responsibilities and core functions in planning and facilitating the ceremonies and artifacts of a scrum team: sprint planning, sprint execution, backlog refinement, daily standups, sprint reviews, and sprint retrospectives. It analyzes the scrum master’s interactions with other scrum roles, including the product owner, development team members, other scrum masters, and the agile coach. It details the soft skills a scrum master uses to coach a group of individuals and turn them into a high performing scrum team. This book is for scrum masters and all readers whose scrum and stakeholder roles bring them into contact with scrum masters.

Scrum Master Dave McKenna catalogs the three skill sets that scrum masters must master to be successful at binding teams and unleashing agility: soft skills, technical skills, and contingency skills. The author illuminates his examination of these skill sets with insights and anecdotes drawn from his own experience as an engineer, agile coach, and scrum master. He illustrates common mistakes scrum masters make, as well as modeling successful strategies, adaptations to changes, and solutions to tricky problems.

What You’ll Learn

• How scrum masters facilitate the agile ceremonies
• How scrum masters align scrum teams to sprint goals and shield them from interference
• How scrum masters coach product owners to build a backlog and refine user stories
• How scrum masters manage contingencies such as intra-team conflicts, organizational impediments, technical debt, emergent architecture, personnel changes, scope creep, and learning from failure.

Who This Book Is For

The primary readership is scrum masters, product owners, and dev team members. The secondary readership is scrum stakeholders, including executive sponsors, project managers, functional and line managers, administrative personnel, expert consultants, testers, vendors, and end users. The tertiary readership is anybody who wants to know how build an agile team that consistently delivers value and continuous improvement.

Table of Contents

Part I: Scrum: Overview
Chapter 1: The Agile Principles
Chapter 2: The Scrum Framework
Chapter 3: Scrum Roles
Chapter 4: Scrum Team Structures
Chapter 5: Scrum Ceremonies and Artifacts

Part II: Scrum: The Scrum Master’s Perspective
Chapter 6: The Scrum Master’s Responsibilities and Core Functions
Chapter 7: The Scrum Master’s Interaction with Other Roles

Part III: The Scrum Master’s Skill Sets
Chapter 8: Sof t Skills of the Scrum Master
Chapter 9: Technical Skills of the Scrum Master
Chapter 10: Contingency Skills of the Scrum Master
Chapter 11: Putting It All Together