Title: The Scrum Primer
Authors: Pete Deemer, Gabrielle Benefield, Craig Larman, Bas Vodde
Published: 2012 (Version 2.0)
Availability: free from InfoQ
The Scrum Primer is one of the shortest concise Scrum books. A good start for beginners, since it covers almost all important topics and aspects of the Scrum framework. It is an easy read yet it gives a good grasp of agile and Scrum.
Despite it is only 20 pages long, the authors found enough room for discussing the 3 roles, the 4 events and the 3 artifacts in detail. The reader will see examples and practical advice for using agile techniques, combined with as many explanations as many fit the tiny volume. The Scrum Primer is fairly accurate in using the terms of The Scrum Guide and typically does not present arbitrary techniques as mandatory parts of Scrum.
Even though reading The Scrum Primer is a good start, it is still essential to gain familiarity with The Scrum Guide, too.
Notes for Readers Preparing for a Professional Scrum Master Exam
Although the Scrum Primer is one of the accurate textbooks, it is not immaculate. The following list may help to avoid the traps.
- “These iterations are no more than four weeks each[…]“ – The correct definition is “a time-box of one month or less”.
- “In Scrum, there are three roles: Product Owner, Team, and ScrumMaster.” – This is a known source of confusion for Scrum Primer readers. The authors sometimes refer to both the Scrum Team and the Development Team as ‘Team’. Even when it is not clear from the context.
- “The Product Owner is responsible for maximizing return on investment (ROI)[…]“ – No! ROI is just a potential way to measure value. When applicable. In other chapters of the book, this statement, fortunately, appears in a refined form.
- “Teams are also known as feature teams[…]“ – In practice, this is true. Nota bene, feature team is not a Scrum term.
- “The ScrumMaster” – Notice the lack of space. This is the CSM trademark, not the correct spelling of the Scrum Master.
- “The ScrumMaster and the Product Owner cannot be the same individual[...]” – The Scrum Guide does not forbid this, though better keep the advice.
- “[…]to attend the Scrum Alliance’s Certified ScrumMaster training[…]” – We should give the benefit of the doubt so this is not an advertisement just a biased piece of advice. Scrum.org and Scrum Alliance are the dominant players of the Scrum training market and nothing suggests we should ultimately prefer Scrum Alliance.
- “The Product Backlog exists (and evolves) over the lifetime of the product; it is the product roadmap[…]” – The product roadmap is not a Scrum term, though it is a good practice to have one. On the other hand, the granularity of the roadmap can be different than of the backlog and can look further in time.
- “Larger ones are broken into smaller items during the Product Backlog Refinement workshop[…]” – Product Backlog refinement is a process in Scrum. It is fairly adequate to organize workshops but not compulsory.
- “[…]officially called a Potentially Shippable Product Increment[…]” – This is a little bit outdated by now, it is officially called potentially releasable.
- “Sprint Planning Part One” – No more parts. We have topic one and topic two.
- “The Sprint Planning Meeting will often last several hours, but no more than four hours for a two-week Sprint[…]“ – This is very close to the truth, though the Scrum Guide only says “for shorter Sprints, the event is usually shorter”, so it does not explicitly set a shorter time-box for shorter Sprints. This discrepancy appears multiple times throughout the book in connection with time-boxes.
- “[…]if halfway through the Sprint the Product Owner decides there is a new item he or she would like the Team to work on, he cannot make the change until the start of the next Sprint.” – This is almost true, however, the Development Team and the Product Owner can agree in trade-offs at any time.
- “[…]the Product Owner or the Team can terminate the Sprint[...]” – Wrong. Only the Product Owner can cancel the Sprint.
- “In the Daily Scrum, one by one, each member of the Team reports three things to the other members of the Team[…]“ – Not anymore, the format of the Daily Scrum is optional.