Scrum Quotes

“No Heroics. If you need a hero to get things done, you have a problem. Heroic effort should be viewed as a failure of planning.”
― Jeff Sutherland, Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time

“Multitasking Makes You Stupid. Doing more than one thing at a time makes you slower and worse at both tasks. Don’t do it. If you think this doesn’t apply to you, you’re wrong—it does.”
― Jeff Sutherland, Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time

“The Scrum Master, the person in charge of running the process, asks each team member three questions: 1. What did you do yesterday to help the team finish the Sprint? 2. What will you do today to help the team finish the Sprint? 3. What obstacles are getting in the team’s way? That’s it. That’s the whole meeting.”
― Jeff Sutherland, Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time

“Doing half of something is, essentially, doing nothing.”
― Jeff Sutherland, Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time

“Greatness can’t be imposed; it has to come from within. But it does live within all of us.”
― Jeff Sutherland, Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time

“It was the Scrum Master’s job to guide the team toward continuous improvement—to ask with regularity, “How can we do what we do better?” Ideally, at the end of each iteration, each Sprint, the team would look closely at itself—at its interactions, practices, and processes—and ask two questions: “What can we change about how we work?” and “What is our biggest sticking point?” If those questions are answered forthrightly, a team can go faster than anyone ever imagined.”
― Jeff Sutherland, Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time

“That absolute alignment of purpose and trust is something that creates greatness.”
― Jeff Sutherland, Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time

“The human mind has limits. We can only remember so many things; we can really only concentrate on one thing at a time. This tendency—for the process of fixing things to get harder as more time elapses—represents a similar limitation. When you’re working on a project, there’s a whole mind space that you create around it. You know all the different reasons why something is being done. You’re holding a pretty complicated construct in your head. Re-creating that construct a week later is hard. You have to remember all the factors that you were considering when you made that choice. You have to re-create the thought process that led you to that decision. You have to become your past self again, put yourself back inside a mind that no longer exists. Doing that takes time. A long time. Twenty-four times as long as it would take if you had fixed the problem when you first discovered it.”
― Jeff Sutherland, Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time

“Making people prioritize by value forces them to produce that 20 percent first. Often by the time they’re done, they realize they don’t really need the other 80 percent, or that what seemed important at the outset actually isn’t.”
― Jeff Sutherland, Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time

“the people who multitask the most just can’t focus.”
― Jeff Sutherland, Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time

“At its root, Scrum is based on a simple idea: whenever you start a project, why not regularly check in, see if what you’re doing is heading in the right direction, and if it’s actually what people want? And question whether there are any ways to improve how you’re doing what you’re doing, any ways of doing it better and faster, and what might be keeping you from doing that.”
― Jeff Sutherland, Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time

“In software development there’s a term called “Brooks’s Law” that Fred Brooks first coined back in 1975 in his seminal book The Mythical Man-Month. Put simply, Brooks’s Law says “adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.”8 This has been borne out in study after study.”
― Jeff Sutherland, Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time

“Each cycle J.J. would talk to the team and ask three very simple questions: What did you do since the last time we talked? What are you going to do before we talk again? And what is getting in your way?”
― Jeff Sutherland, Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time

“observar, orientarse, decidir y actuar. Asimilaba”
― Jeff Sutherland, Scrum: El arte de hacer el doble de trabajo en la mitad de tiempo

“Agile Manifesto.” It declared the following values: people over processes; products that actually work over documenting what that product is supposed to do; collaborating with customers over negotiating with them; and responding to change over following a plan. Scrum is the framework I built to put those values into practice. There is no methodology.”
― Jeff Sutherland, Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time

“The thing that cripples communication saturation is specialization—the number of roles and titles in a group. If people have a special title, they tend to do only things that seem a match for that title. And to protect the power of that role, they tend to hold on to specific knowledge.”
― Jeff Sutherland, Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time

“aunque planear el combate es importante, los planes se evaporan en cuanto suena el primer disparo.”
― Jeff Sutherland, Scrum: El arte de hacer el doble de trabajo en la mitad de tiempo

“Blame Is Stupid. Don’t look for bad people; look for bad systems—ones that incentivize bad behavior and reward poor performance.”
― Jeff Sutherland, Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time

“Often when people talk about great teams, they only talk about that transcendent sense of purpose. But while that’s a critical element, it’s only one leg of the three-legged stool. Just as critical, but perhaps less celebrated, is the freedom to do your job in the way that you think best—to have autonomy. On all great teams, it’s left to the members to decide how to carry out the goals set by those leading the organization.”
― Jeff Sutherland, Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time

“The problem that I frequently see crop up is that people have a tendency to treat the Daily Stand-up as simply individual reporting. “I did this … I’ll do that”—then on to the next person. The more optimum approach is closer to a football huddle. A wide receiver might say, “I’m having a problem with that defensive lineman,” to which an offensive blocker might respond, “I’ll take care of that. I’ll open that line.” Or the quarterback might say, “Our running game is hitting a wall; let’s surprise them with a pass to the left.” The idea is for the team to quickly confer on how to move toward victory—i.e., complete the Sprint. Passivity is not only lazy, it actively hurts the rest of the team’s performance. Once spotted, it needs to be eliminated immediately.”
― Jeff Sutherland, Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time

“Number of Simultaneous Projects Percent of Time Available per Project Loss to Context Switching 1 100% 0% 2 40% 20% 3 20% 40% 4 10% 60% 5 5% 75%”
― Jeff Sutherland, Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time

“Plans Are Worthless”
― Jeff Sutherland, Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time

“This short statement of values has become the bedrock of how companies work across the planet. It’s pretty straightforward saying merely we have come to value: Individuals and interactions over processes and tools Working software over comprehensive documentation Customer collaboration over contract negotiation Responding to change over following a plan”
― Jeff Sutherland, Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time

“When you’re writing stories or making a list of work to be done, it’s important to ask two questions: Is the story ready? And how will you know when it’s done?”
― Jeff Sutherland, Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time

“It was because they made a very basic mistake. They thought they could plan everything ahead of time. They spent months of effort making the sort of detailed plans that seem plausible—that are laid out on pretty charts and include carefully precise steps and almost always describe a fictional reality.”
― Jeff Sutherland, Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time

“People don’t multitask because they’re good at it. They do it because they are more distracted. They have trouble inhibiting the impulse to do another activity”
― Jeff Sutherland, Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time

“Suffice it to say here that the effect of eliminating waste is dramatic, but people often don’t do it, because it requires being honest with themselves and with others.”
― Jeff Sutherland, Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time

“Esta metodología permite a los equipos obtener realimentación sobre su trabajo casi en tiempo real. ¿Están siguiendo la dirección correcta? ¿Lo que, según sus planes, deben hacer después es realmente lo que deberían hacer, considerando lo que ya descubrieron en el ciclo que acaban de concluir? En Scrum, llamamos sprints a estos ciclos. Al inicio de cada sprint hay una junta de planeación. El equipo decide entonces cuánto cree poder hacer en las dos semanas siguientes. Toma las tareas de la lista de prioridades y las escribe en papeletas adhesivas que pega en la pared. Luego decide cuántas de esas tareas puede llevar a cabo en las dos semanas siguientes.”
― Jeff Sutherland, Scrum: El arte de hacer el doble de trabajo en la mitad de tiempo

“No cenário ideal, ao fim de cada ciclo, de cada sprint, a equipe se autoexaminaria – suas interações, suas práticas e seus processos – e faria duas perguntas: “O que podemos mudar na forma como trabalhamos?” e “Qual é nosso maior ponto de conflito?”. Se essas duas questões forem respondidas de maneira franca, o grupo será capaz de avançar mais rápido do que qualquer um já imaginou.”
― Jeff Sutherland, Scrum: a arte de fazer o dobro do trabalho na metade do tempo

“La dinámica de grupos sólo opera correctamente en equipos pequeños. La cifra clásica son siete integrantes, dos de más o de menos, aunque he visto funcionar de maravilla a grupos de apenas tres individuos. Lo asombroso es que los datos demuestran que un equipo de más de nueve se vuelve torpe. En efecto: más recursos hacen más lento a un equipo.”
― Jeff Sutherland, Scrum: El arte de hacer el doble de trabajo en la mitad de tiempo