Enterprise and Scrum, The

by Ken Schwaber

It’s time to extend the benefits of Scrum―greater agility, higher-quality products, and lower costs―from individual teams to your entire enterprise. However, with Scrum’s lack of prescribed rules, the friction of change can be challenging as people struggle to break from old project management habits. In this book, agile-process revolution leader Ken Schwaber takes you through change management―for your organizational and interpersonal processes―explaining how to successfully adopt Scrum across your entire organization. A cofounder of Scrum, Ken draws from decades of experience, answering your questions through case studies of proven practices and processes. With them, you’ll learn how to adopt―and adapt―Scrum in the enterprise. And gain profound levels of transparency into your development processes. Discover how

Genres: Management, Business, Nonfiction, Technology, Software, Computers

176 pages, Paperback

First published June 6, 2007

Reviews

[Jury Razumau · Rating 1 out of 5]

Amazingly, one can be considered an expert and still write a book based on the it-worked-for-my-friend's-company type of argument.
Supposedly, there's the following framework: if the company has some issues, we should just switch to Scrum and then follow it strictly. If there's something messing with our switch, we should call it “impediment”, fix it, and be happily sure that these impediments were the main issues in our company. The question of why this is the case is never discussed.
Well, maybe this book isn't supposed to convert me. So it quickly goes to the description of how one should transit to Scrum (create Scrum team that will guide other teams to Scrum; also, it should fix the impediments) and some discussion of possible problems. Then, there are solutions.
Scrum master (spelled as “ScrumMaster”) isn't good enough? Replace him. Product Owner can't cope with the backlog? Replace him. Team still works slowly? Replace everyone.
Legacy code is discussed for several pages in the most obvious possible way. Proposed solution? Fix it or deal with it.
Finally, there's redundancy, more redundancy and some redundancy again. Also, redundancy.

[Henrik · Rating 2 out of 5]

Provides some additional information about Scrum. Too bad it is poorly written.

[Dominik "Dodo" Dopplinger · Rating 3 out of 5]

You can easily see that this book is dated. To some of the described practices are more modern alternatives in place (Product backlogs in excel), but the general agile mindset is there and some ideas in the book are really good ("Commiting to defy the laws of nature")

[Tomas Lundborg · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sammanfattning, inte en recension...

Enterprise Scrum, Ken Schwaber, en av grundarna till Scrum. Idag konsult, författare.

Scrum är tänkt att salutera prestationer och synliggöra otillräckligheter. (2)

Det kommer att komma ett antal konsekvenser med att införa Scrum, såsom personalomsättning, konflikter, jobb förändras, vissa arbeten exempelvis produktägarens kommer att bli tuffare och svårare. (6)

Schwaber påpekar att man ska vara väldigt strikt i sin tillämpning av Scrum, eftersom varje lite egen tillämpning kommer sannolikt är en workaround på en defekt i sin process. Om man gör unika tillämpningar måste man ha en djup förståelse om VARFÖR man gör det, så man verkligen når en bra lösning. (8)

Vid utrullning av Scrum kan man ha en ETC, en enterprise transition team som ansvarar över en Transition product backlog. (10)

Under utrullning kommer man att stöta på ett antal problem, separera dem i "de som Scrum tillförde" och "de blivit synliga genom Scrum", på så sätt kan dels stävja motstånd mot metoden som kan uppstå då det är jobbigt. Dels skapas en förståelse och förutsättning att nå den verkliga grundorsaken. (18)

Scrum följer upp via empiri och är till naturen transperent. Det gör att informationen som PO har är bra, och rätt beslut kan tas. (26)

Det är människorna som gör att Scrum funkar, ett problem presenteras för personer i org, som i sin tur åtager sig att lösa problemet, och kan kollektivt ta itu med problemet och lösa det. (32)

Ett alternativ för utrullning är "osmosis-approach". Den går ut på att börja med Scrum i ett eller ett par team, som i sin tur bevisar att det funkar, för att sedan rulla ut det i resten av organisationen. (33)

Ett tips kan vara att sätta upp ett visionärt högt mål, typ halverade ledtider inom ett år för att inspirera och för att visa att förändringsprocessen verkligen är på G.

Vanligtvis så styrs projekt genom en adminstrativ kontrollapparat, som ser till att planen följs, att aktiviteter och uppgifter blir genomförda. Det som uppmuntras är strukturell excellens, att man ligger så nära planen som möjligt, man uppmuntrar att arbeta så att aktiviteter blir genomförda. Dett till skillnad från en värde-driven org/projekt, som drivs av att producera värde. Team och individer följs upp på verkligt resultat (inte att aktivitet A, B, C är klara). Mål sätts upp i linje med de resultat som är önskvärda, team committar mot de resultaten, styr sig själva mot de målen, och följs upp hur väl de verkligen har nått resultaten, genom att man inspekterar resultatet (snarare än en administrativ representation av resultatet, ex. en rapport som beskriver vilka aktiviteter som gjorts sen sist) (86)

[Agile Kindergarten · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent! It's always so nice when you read something by an expert that describes your own experiences. It's even better when the expert gives step by step instructions on how to deal with those challenges. As many of us know, the enterprise levels above the development team often have their own ideas of how Scrum should work, and as a result create impediments to its success. Ken's book is about how to scale Scrum across the enterprise with Exec Level Scrum Teams and Rollout Teams to support the transformation. If you have a company that wants to "go Agile" - insist the powers that be read this book first.

[Reid · Rating 3 out of 5]

The concepts are very useful are as the case studies and disparate implementations that are outlined. The author, though an expert (and founder) of Scrum/Agile is surprisingly inarticulate, at times repetitive and often disorganized in his presentation for the sake of convincing readers of value while educating them in his ideologies. It reads as an off-the-cuff brain dump from 20 years of presentations rather than a book.

[Sean · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a 10,000 foot reference and introduction I would recommend this as a good read. Helpful for teams and managers getting ready to implement or adopt scrum as introductory preparation material.

If you are already using scrum or other agile methods this is probably not a huge value add but worth the read as a quick refresher.

[Sami Poimala · Rating 2 out of 5]

This books takes the Scrum to the next level - from a single project to the organization level. It does OK job on that, but nothing that will blow your mind.

If you are into Scrum and methodology development, you'll want to read this.

[Mika · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting approach into how enterprises can be run by using Scrum. Not maybe the easiest way to implement and doesn't give so many real life tips how to do this (as enterprises are static like rocks). Anyway, gives a very good alternative approach for managing teams and hierarchies.

[Thomas]

Allgemein Hinweise, wie man Scrum im Unternehmen einführen kann, n paar Tipps und Erfahrungen, aber im Prinzip nicht viel Neues.

[Jac · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting but not immediately useful for me.

[Mihai Criveti · Rating 3 out of 5]

More of the same, I suppose.