Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time, by Jeff Sutherland

Jeff Sutherland. Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time. New York: Crown Business, 2014. 248 pages. ISBN 9780385346450.

Scrum is a project management and product development technique that's intended to deliver results more frequently and quickly than traditional methods. Originally developed for application in software development projects, Scrum can be applied in other project or development settings. Decrying the use of traditional project management techniques, such as Gantt charts, author and Scrum creator Jeff Sutherland describes the origins of Scrum, shares anecdotes about its application in war, home improvement, and business settings, and gives a checklist of Scrum principles. Although the anecdotes are interesting, this book is more of a sales pitch for Scrum and less of a primer. Sutherland does provide a list of Scrum principles as an appendix, but there isn't any real instruction on how to put them into practice. The Scrum principles outlined are:

• Pick a product owner
• Pick a team
• Pick a Scrum Master
• Create a product backlog (i.e., list of to do items)
• Refine and estimate the product backlog
• Conduct sprint development
• Make work visible with a Scrub board listing to do, doing, done items
• Hold daily Scrum meetings
• Conduct sprint reviews or demos
• Conduct sprint retrospective (i.e., debriefing)

At the end of each chapter is a list of main points that the reader should take away; these are fairly useful. Other particularly useful suggestions include the creation of a product backlog and the use of development sprints. Such efforts can be useful in many environments, not just in software development. Overall, this book was thought-provoking and would be useful for anyone who's interested in improving productivity in environments where team work is the norm.