Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time

by Jeff Sutherland

The Scrum Master and the team are responsible for how fast they’re going and how much faster they can get.

The Product Owner is accountable for translating the team’s productivity into value.

Product Owner needs to be knowledgeable about the domain.

Product Owner has to be empowered to make decisions.

Product Owner has to be available to the team, to explain what needs to be done and why.

This is one of the reasons I rarely recommend that CEOs or other senior executives be Product Owners. They just don’t have the time the team needs.

Product Owner needs to be accountable for value.

This kind of awareness, the ability to see a whole sphere of sky and watch events unfold, shaped his military theories and eventually rewrote how America wages war.

Boyd described it as moving outside of yourself so as to see the whole picture—not merely your own point of view.

Thus, Orientation reflects not only how you see the world and your place in it, but what world you’re capable of seeing.

Then, based on that information, she can change what the team will do in the next Sprint.

The Product Owner thus has the ability to adjust on the fly to a constantly changing world.

The idea is that the sooner you have some real feedback, the faster you can make a better car.

there’s a pretty stark choice in front of you: change or die.

The key is to figure out how to deliver the most value the most quickly.

The right order one week won’t be the same the next. Your environment will have changed.

So you have the priorities. You know where 80 percent of the value lies.

But what it gets you is feedback.

Make those mistakes early, with as little damage as possible.

You know it’s not perfect, but it’s darn close.

focus on delivering what’s valuable, what people actually want or need.

deliver real value as fast as possible.

Do people want what we’re building? Can we actually build it? Can we really sell what we’ve built?

but in reality people don’t know what they really want until they can try something out.

Will we make money making this?

The first step is just putting together a Backlog and a team.

Think about the vision you have for your product or service or whatever, and start breaking down the things you need to do to execute that vision.

as the Product Owner, put together a road map of where you think things are going.

to remember that this is just a snapshot in time, so don’t overplan, just estimate.

If you have a sales team, they need to know what features you’re working on so they can start marketing them.

The important thing, though, is just to begin. Just start.

Get your Backlog, plan your first Sprint, and away you go.

Create a list of everything that could possibly be done on a project. Then prioritize it.

She translates vision into Backlog.

A Product Owner sets out what needs to be done and why.

Create new things only as long as those new things deliver value.

an approach that teaches children to teach themselves and to value their own skills and those of others. Also, to have fun while doing so.

But the brightest promise for humanity lies with those people who’ve devoted their lives to helping the poorest of the poor.

It is a codification of who we believe we are.

Corruption—whether on the small scale of bureaucrats taking bribes for services, or on the grand scale of large banks garnering wealth by privatizing profit and socializing loss—is a result of a lack of transparency and the centralization of power in the hands of the few.

power is conferred by “whom you know,” not by “what you bring.”

it’s pointless to look for evil people; look instead for evil systems.

How do we encourage transparency, priorities, and accountability? You know the answer: Scrum.

These are not revolutionary goals. This is what people should expect from their government.

The world is changing, and those who profit from secrecy and deception will soon find they have few places left to hide.

Change or die.

People in the Shu state follow the rules exactly, so they learn the ideas behind them. People in the Ha state begin to create their own style within the rules, adapting them to their needs. People in the Ri state exist beyond the rules; they embody the ideals.

The paradox of those rules, though, is that they eliminate boundaries, they create freedom—and for many, freedom can be terrifying.

We do have a founder/president, but even he isn’t your manager.

Greg and the other founders refrain from telling anyone what to do.