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60 of 63 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great book, wish I had it earlier, April 1, 2003
SCRUM is a "light weight wrapper" of techniques to manage and guide your software projects. Actually, you could use it on a lot of other types of projects, but software is its best use.What's unique is that it wraps around the "Design it first" school that I follow, as well as the Extreme Programming (XP) school that follows a proto-typing approach. SCRUM provides the mechanisms for organizing and controlling the development of your software project. You develop a short list of deliverables for the next 30 days and have a series of daily meetings. Oh, there's more to it than this. In software projects I have followed a process where the design is fully thought out in advance. I say it is 85 % accurate as I know that mid-course corrections will be made as the software is developed and delivered to the client. On large projects we typically work in 2 week deliverables, the author suggests 30 day "sprints". We break all the projects up into many packages of deliverables. One advantage to this was the client could see progress, give on course corrections, and you'd be sure to get paid. On small projects we have not followed any formal procedures. What SCRUM does is give me a better, more thought out process for what the author calls these 30 day "sprints." I wish I had read this book earlier. I picked up the book at a computer store and bought it reluctantly. I had heard good things about SCRUM, but the book looked too small and a quick read at the store didn't really turn me on that much. But after I sat down to read it at home, I was very pleased. It is a very well-underlined book now. I agree with the XP folks on the productivity of 2 person programming teams and have found their "test first" approach to be very interesting. However, I do find that their design-on-the-fly approach to be flawed. When XP works, I think it is because it attracts good programmers... it's not the XP proto-typing approach itself. In fact, I think any methodology that relies on proto-typing wears out the goodwill of the client. The clients time is limited and they value it highly. I will say that I found many interesting ideas in XP. And, I recommend that anyone interested in the subjec of this book, go to the XP websites and read their books (about 6 or so at this time). SCRUM fits around XP just as well as the design-it-first approach. What I disagree with in SCRUM (and XP) is the use of open office areas for programming. I believe studies have actually been done on this and closed offices, no windows, white walls, lots of marker boards... wins out. Anything beyond trivial programming requires concentration. Noise and movement kills concentration. The graphics in the book really suck, as they look like they were printed out in some kind of old 320x200 screen resolution. But there is great depth to this book. It's a smaller sized book with small type (but still easy-to-read). So you actually get a lot of meat. In the future, I will refer to this great book often and recommend all software people read it. John Dunbar Sugar Land, TX
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