I just read The Professional ScrumMaster's Handbook, written by Stacia Viscardi, a Scrum coach. While the book was certainly entertaining, it was not exactly educating for me as a Scrum Coach; that is, I didn't learn much from it. If you are just embarking onto your Scrum Master journey, however, the book is nevertheless very valuable for you. I am a critical reviewer - you will notice that when reading this article.
Now, here is what I think:
The audience is stated as "This book is not for ScrumPuppets who simply do what they're told; rather, The Professional ScrumMaster's Handbook is for anyone who wishes to be a true ScrumMaster as the role was originally intended: a fearless, professional change leader."
I liked that excellent intro, which set very high expectations for me. Unfortunately, the brilliant term "ScrumPuppet" only appears once in the whole 308-pages-book and didn't even make it into the index. I was a little bit disappointed about this. In addition to that, the topic of organizational change is not covered deep enough to live up to my expectations as advertised. The topic of how to be a change agent is covered, while the higher-level process of changing a organization's culture is not. On the other hand, the book goes into depth what a Scrum Master should do and not do, which characteristics and skills he needs and so on. The true value, however, lies in the described experiences of the author, which are quite beneficial for the reader.
Chapters 1 to 3 dive into Scrum. I very much liked the description of the history of Scrum, including it's roots and the background of Ken and Jeff. Very comprehensive, very good! Unfortunately that's about what I liked in those chapters. There is a constantly alternating mix between the core elements of Scrum and value-adding best practices. While this is certainly a good idea, an unexperienced reader will not be able to discern between those two and might conclude that everything described is part of Scrum, which is not the case. In addition to that, the author uses her own terminology in several places (e.g. "Scrum Delivery Team" on page 18) and also displays her own interpretation of the application of Scrum, without making the deviations from the Scrumguide (I won't discuss the differences of the Scrumguide and the Scrumalliance's Agile Atlas Core Scrum, since it is not "blessed" by Jeff and Ken) transparent (e.g. "everyone is welcome to attend" [the Daily Scrum] on page 21). In fact I got the impression that the author didn't read the Scrumguide and might lack some knowledge about the most recent developments of Scrum (e.g. commitment vs. forecast).
In chapter 4, the tide turned for me. The author comes up with very clever and colorful comparisons (e.g. comparing the sprint boundaries to castle walls or comparing stressful pace with writing to the very last second in an exam - which of course doesn't exactly raise quality). She also gives good practical advice for certain situations a Scrum Master will face sooner or later. This trend continues through the next chapters as well. Here is one especially nice tidbit, I want to share with you (page 136): "Just like the snake sheds its skin every so often to reveal shiny new scales, an individual, a team, and an organization must shed its old culture skin by creating new knowledge and sharing stories about the new way of doing things."
Of especially high value is chapter 6, where Stacia shows different information levels and compares them brilliantly with different magnification levels of a microscope. 1x magnification is the product vision, 2x the product roadmap, 4x the release plan, 8x the product backlog, 16x the sprint, 32x the tasks, and 64x the team room. Each magnification is explained and augmented by best practices and examples. The average reader benefits greatly from that.
The author discusses the values of Scrum in chapter 7. A good idea with many important hints. Unfortunately, some important studies are mentioned - but not named or referenced in the text (e.g. pages 186 and 188). This is very unfortunate since this critical information cannot be used to work with management or critics - especially since this information is correctly displayed throughout the rest of the book. So yes, the information itself in this chapter is helpful, but you will have to do your own research to validate some of the points.
Chapter 8 - Everyday Leadership for ScrumMaster and Team - straightens chapter 7 out again. An excellent self-reflection exercise and the plea to push your boundaries beyond the comfort zone fire off your thoughts and are supported by all sorts of analyses about your Scrum Master personality. Very helpful, especially for the just-starting Scrum Master.
Chapter 9 deals with shaping the Agile Organization. I expected instructions for organizational change here, but wasn't able to find a central theme. My impression was that of a collection of interesting puzzle pieces that are scattered around, not forming a clear picture. So while the individual sections are interesting and good, don't expect them to form a wonderful sculpture.
This gets a little bit better in chapters 10 and 11, where at least some of the (new) puzzle pieces are fitted together, still not forming a clear picture yet. However, even though the borders are blurry, you still can see some of it. In other words, some very important facts are highlighted and explained. There definitely is a lot to be learned from those chapters (for a new Scrum Master); still, the big picture evades my grasp. The title of chapter 10 is "Scrum - Large and Small", which is then followed by some challenges, which apply to small Scrum implementations as well (at least in my opinion). So the challenges are great to learn from, but they don't specifically contribute to large-scale Scrum. Some other important aspects of scaling Scrum are not mentioned at all - so don't expect a scaling-Scrum-guide or something like that!
Summing it up, there is a lot of useful information in that book. A new Scrum Master should read it to learn from Stacia's experience. However, the new Scrum Master should not read it as his first book, because he could get confused by the aforementioned statements. In addition, after you read about the history of Scrum, hop on to chapter four. Be aware that this book seems to be a "Minimum Viable Product" with still some room for improvement. I count on the second edition removing the shortcomings of this first one and raising the books value even higher!
Sunday, August 11. 2013
Book Review: The Professional ScrumMaster's Handbook (Stacia Viscardi)
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