Scrum For Dummies

Introduction

Welcome to Scrum For Dummies. Scrum is an agile project -management framework with proven results in decreasing time to market 30 to 40 percent, improving product quality, and heightening customer satisfaction — all this while lowering costs from 30 to 70 percent. Scrum accomplishes all this through integration of business and development talent, improved communication models, increased performance visibility, regular customer and stakeholder feedback, and an empirically based inspect-and-adapt mentality. Even the most complex project can be managed more effectively using scrum to increase your bottom line.

About This Book

My goal is to demonstrate explicitly how scrum can be used for any project — not just software development. As with my Agile Project Management For Dummies (published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.), this book is intended to be a field manual for the application of scrum in real-world situations. While I cover scrum fundamentals in detail, this book also delves into how to actually get out and experience its amazing benefits.

Scrum itself is easy to explain, but often the application is difficult. Old habits and organizational mind-sets need to be shifted, and new ways embraced. For this reason, I’ve included success stories so that you can see how scrum can fit into your unique situation.

The main thrust of understanding scrum lies in the three roles, three artifacts, and five events that form its foundation. While I cover these thoroughly, I also ...