The Agile Pocket Guide: A Quick Start to Making Your Business Agile Using Scrum and Beyond

A fast and easy guide to Agile/Scrum principles for any organization The philosophy of Agile is to collaborate as much as possible with your teams and clients to build quality products that ship early and often, while learning and re–learning as you go. The Scrum approach organizes business priorities around short team sprints that yield incremental improvement. If you find yourself at the helm of a team, The Agile Pocket Guide will guide you in implementing Agile and Scrum principles through organizational change and by bringing personal ownership into the equation. Discover how to develop products, services, and software quickly and efficiently by adhering to the basic tenets of the Scrum framework, as well as how to apply the processes and steps required to become agile, regardless of the swiftness of your team or the level of bureaucracy in your organization. In this straightforward and practical handbook, you′ll learn: The dynamics of a successful Agile environment The very basics of Scrum and how to employ them quickly Practical questions to ask the Team Leader as well as the Team How to build an environment of communication and collaboration for the entire organization And much more!

About the Author vii Preface ix Acknowledgments xvii Introduction Team Tribes: A Story xix 1 Servant Leadership 1 2 What the Business Wants from You—Managing Requirements 5 3 Your Agile Team 9 4 The High–Performance Team 13 5 Everyone around the Campfire 17 6 Daily Stand–Up, or Daily Scrum 25 7 Introducing the Product Owner, or Value Driver 31 8 Discoveries from the Product Backlog 37 9 The Sprint Backlog and Release Planning 43 10 Sprint Planning Meeting 49 11 User Stories and Estimation 55 12 Timeboxed Sprints (Iterations) and the Meaning of Done 67 13 Tracking Flow and Information Radiators 73 14 Demonstration of the Product 79 15 The Retrospective 85 16 Wash, Rinse, Repeat, Win! 89 17 Team and Business Cultural Dynamics—Team ScienceTM 95 18 Scrum of Scrums 101 19 Thirty–Second Scrum Elevator Pitch 105 20 Understanding Requirements 109 21 Paired Programming—Team Kaizen 115 22 Measuring a Working Product 121 23 Technical Debt Is a Progress Killer! 127 24 Oh Kanban! 131 25 Personal Kaizen—More on Servant Leadership 137 26 Team Kaizen—Practicing Agile 143 27 Product Kaizen—The Value Driver for Your Product 147 28 Cultural Kaizen—Leadership in Dynamic Team Cultures 155 29 Conclusion 159 Index 161

PETER SADDINGTON owns a successful research and analytics consultancy and has been integral in multi-million dollar Agile Transformation projects with some of the biggest Fortune 500 companies, including Cisco, T-Mobile, Capital One, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Aetna, Primedia, and Cbeyond. He is a sought-after speaker at many industry events and is a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST). He has also received three master's degrees, one of which is in counseling, and provides life-coaching services in addition to his consultancy.