A Practical Guide to Distributed Scrum

by Elizabeth Woodward, Steffan Surdek, Matthew Ganis

A Practical Guide to Distributed Scrum by Woodward, Elizabeth, Surdek, Steffa...

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[Mike Thompson · Rating 3 out of 5]

The authors provide many warnings of the obstacles faced by teams using Agile/Scrum for system development. They share many lessons learned, recommendation and suggestion from real world experience. In my opinion, IBM teams are the source for most of the materials in the book. I feel the advice is very applicable to all organizations.

The diffuclts faced by distributed teams ring true with my personal experience. I've felt the pain of having team members half a world away. I know the challenges of conference calls. I'm applying several of the suggestions successully.

I found some of the material repetitive. You don't have to read ten times that "sharing the pain" is a technique for working across time zones.

I recommend this book for anyone looking for ways to improve working with distributed teams.

[Bob Schatz]

Good book describing some of the common issues around large and/or distributed organizations using Scrum. You won't find any magical answers in here. It comes down to the basics we always train and coach. It's a communication issue. The basic problems increase when we add complexity of time zones, cultures, and language. My big thing is use video conferencing whenever possible, and ironically get the people together for events like project kick-offs. The investment in travel is minimal to the cost of miscommunication. Anyway, good book with snipets of IBM's experiences.

[Eduardo · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice book which identifies the benefits, challenges and many tricks related to coordination of distributed Scrum teams, showing specific points to consider during each stage of the methodology, such as Scrum planning, daily meetings or flashbacks that take place at the end of each iteration.

[Mihai Criveti · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some good advice for running a distributed team. Feels somewhat short / incomplete and out of date though.

[Martin Meliendrez · Rating 4 out of 5]

It has good practical examples and goes through different scenarios.