The Professional ScrumMaster's Handbook

A collection of tips, tricks, and war stories to help the professional Scrum Master break the chains of traditional organization and management

Overview

• Checklists, questions, and exercises to get you thinking (and acting) like a professional Scrum Master
• Presented in a relaxed, jargon-free, personable style
• Full of ideas, tips, and anecdotes based on real-world experiences

In Detail

A natural and difficult tension exists between a project team (supply) and its customer (demand); a professional Scrum Master relaxes this tension using the Scrum framework so that the team arrives at the best possible outcome.

"The Professional Scrum Master's Handbook" is a practical, no-nonsense guide to helping you become an inspiring and effective Scrum Master known for getting results.

This book goes into great detail about why it seems like you're fighting traditional management culture every step of the way. You will explore the three roles of Scrum and how, working in harmony, they can deliver a product in the leanest way possible. You'll understand that even though there is no room for a project manager in Scrum, there are certain "management" aspects you should be familiar with to help you along the way. Getting a team to manage itself and take responsibility is no easy feat; this book will show you how to earn trust by displaying it and inspiring courage in a team every day.

"The Professional Scrum Master's Handbook" will challenge you to dig deep within yourself to improve your mindset, practices, and values in order to build and support the very best agile teams.

What you will learn from this book

• Create and maintain an impediment backlog to support continuous improvement for you, your team, and your organization
• How to tell the difference between an obstacle and a true constraint
• Create a culture transition map to help your team and organization deliver quickly and flexibly
• Work through exercises to help co-workers and management discover for themselves a new way of approaching tasks
• Align your actions to the Scrum values every day
• Facilitate "lean" meetings - light and quick, yet effective

Approach

Focusing on the Scrum Master role and responsibilities, this book presents solutions and ideas for common problems, improving the overall methodology of a Scrum Master's approach.

Who this book is written for

The Professional Scrum Masters Handbook is for anybody who wishes to be a true Scrum Master as the role was originally intended - a fearless, professional, change facilitator. This book extends your working knowledge of Scrum to explore other avenues and ways of thinking to help teams and organizations reach their full potential.

Stacia Viscardi

Stacia Viscardi is an Agile coach, Certified Scrum Trainer, and organizational transformation expert, devoted to creating energized and excited teams that delight their customers and inspire others. With humble beginnings in Port Arthur, Texas, Stacia found her niche as a Manufacturing Project Manager in the early nineties; she landed in the technology world in 1999 and never looked back. In 2003 she became the sixty-second Certified Scrum Master (there are now over 200,000!), and founded AgileEvolution in 2006. She has helped companies such as Cisco Systems, Martha Stewart Living, Primavera, DoubleClick, Google, Razorfish, MyPublisher, Washington Post, and many others find their way to agility. Co-author of the Software Project Manager's Bridge to Agility, Stacia has taught Agile in 17 countries and is active in the ScrumAlliance as a CST and trusted community advisor. When she is not doing Agile stuff, she is training for a marathon or other long race or spending cozy nights on the sofa with her husband Chris, and dogs Jax and Cobi.

A self-proclaimed process nerd, she loves helping teams and organizations discover the Scrum/XP/Lean mash-ups that enables focused, flexible, and fast delivery of products. She created the blog HelloScrum to share knowledge, tips, and tricks with Scrum practitioners, and co-founded KnowAgile, an Agile testing website.

Stacia has co-authored The Software Project Manager's Bridge to Agility with Michele Sliger (2008, Addison-Wesley).