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

by Jeff Sutherland

1. Transcendent:

2. Autonomous:

3. Cross-Functional:

He used the Japanese words: Muri, waste through unreasonableness; Mura, waste through inconsistency; and Muda, waste through outcomes. These ideas are highly aligned with Deming’s PDCA cycle, which I wrote about earlier: Plan, Do, Check, Act. Plan means avoid Muri. Do means avoid Mura. Check means avoid Muda. Act means the will, motivation, and determination to do all that.

Unfortunately, we can’t. And the more we think we can, the worse we actually are at it.

Jobs that aren’t done and products that aren’t being used are two aspects of the same thing: invested effort with no positive outcome. Don’t do it.

the German plant was expending more effort to fix the problems it had just created than the Japanese plant required to make a nearly perfect car the first time.8

It’s crucial, though, that you have the team who’s actually doing the work do the estimating, not some expert “ideal” estimators.

Pursuits do seem to be what make us happy.

That’s because happiness is crucial to your business and is actually a better forward predictor of revenue than most of the metrics your CFO provides.

Happiness leads to success in nearly every domain of our lives, including marriage, health, friendship, community involvement, creativity, and, in particular, our jobs, careers, and businesses.1

“Study after study shows that happiness precedes important outcomes and indicators of thriving.”

People aren’t happy because they’re successful; they’re successful because they’re happy. Happiness is a predictive measure.

that the only route to employee happiness that also benefits shareholders is through a sense of fulfillment resulting from an important job done well.

When I was a fighter pilot we used to say after three thousand hours in the cockpit you need to quit because you become complacent, and that could kill you.

The three most common types are market risk, technical risk, and financial risk. Or, to put it another way: Do people want what we’re building? Can we actually build it? Can we really sell what we’ve built?

All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible. —T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom4