Book Notes From: 'Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time' By Jeff Sutherland
Observe, Orient, Decide, Act
- Designed Scrum to allow a
Product Owner to make decisions quickly, based on real-time feedback.
- By getting constant input
from whoever is getting value from what you're doing.
- You're in a position to
constantly adjust your strategy and more quickly succeed.
- The idea goes by the name
OODA
- Observe :
- its clearly seeing the
situation as it unfolds
- Moving outside of yourself
to see the whole picture - not merely your own point of view.
- Orient:
- Its not just about where
you are; its also about what outcomes your capable of seeing
- The menu of alternatives
you create for yourself.
- What Scrum does, by
delivering a working increment, is give the Product Owner the ability to
see how much value that increment creates - how people react to it.
- The key is not to have fully
established design at the beginning but, rather, to make a functional
prototype, then see what can improve.
- The idea is that the sooner
you have some real feedback, the faster you can make a better 'car'.
- Think about a minimum viable
product.
- What is the absolute least I
can build and still deliver some value to a customer.
- If you can't put something
before an external customer - identify an internal customer - who can act
in lieu of the public.
- Create an opportunity to
inspect and adapt.
- Stark choice in front of you
- change or die
- If you don’t get inside your
competition's decision loop - they'll get inside yours
First Things First
- Product Owner - constantly
updates the product backlog
- The key is to figure out how
to deliver the most value the most quickly.
- You keep updating and
prioritizing the backlog of each sprint.
- toward the order that delivers value the fastest.
- The key thing to remember is
that the order is always in flux.
- Acknowledge uncertainty, to
fully accept that your current snapshot of order and value is only
relevant at that one particular moment.
- it will change again and again.
Release
- So you have your priorities -
you know where the 80% value lies.
- Whenever you are making
something - you want to put it in the hands of those who are actually
going to use it as fast as possible.
- You need to get that product
out to the public as early as is feasible
- When you do an official
release or a rollout of a big program - you'll have already adjusted and
found out what people actually value.
- Once people have your product
or service - they'll tell you what the next most valuable things are.
- Then develop 20% of that and
deliver again and again.
- Don’t focus on delivering a
whole list of things - everything and the kitchen sink - focus on
delivering what's valuable.
Money for Nothing and Change
for Free
- It's tempting to say
"Well, that covers it" - then the contractor says "I'm
agreeing to this and only this. If you want any changes it will cost you.
- Building blocks of Scrum
- By managing themselves as a
cross-functional unit, the team was able to accelerate quickly -
delivering more faster.
- At the end of the sprint -
an increment of the product was done.
- Each sprint the Product Owner
was able to re-prioritize the backlog based on customer feedback.
- Everyone works towards the
same goal with the same vision -
- Deliver real value as fast
as possible.
Risk
- Management of risk is at the
heart of any successful business.
- What scrum allows you to do
is reduce the risks of failure.
- There are three types of risk
- Market Risk
- Scrum helps you minimize it
by emphasizing incremental delivery.
- Technical Risk
- Is it possible to build
what the customer wants.
- Build a few different
prototypes to see which one works best before going into full
production.
- Financial Risk
- Can we sell what we've
built.
- Causes most companies to
fail.
- They have built something
cool - but cant sell it
- Another way companies fail -
is by overpaying to acquire
customers.
- What Scrum does for business
is answer the key question fast:
- Will we make money making
this?
- By putting incremental
releases in front of customers quickly, you'll find out what customers
value and what they are willing to pay for.