PDF Summary:Scrum, by Jeff Sutherland
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1-Page PDF Summary of Scrum
According to software developer and management expert Jeff Sutherland, the methods most companies use to build products are misguided and lead to inefficiency. Too much time is spent planning, too much energy is wasted on unimportant tasks, and not enough emphasis is placed on flexibility. In Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time, Sutherland details the Scrum framework, a more effective way of developing products.
In this guide, we’ll show you how Scrum works and why it’s used by some of the most successful businesses across the world. We’ll demonstrate how to implement the Scrum framework and how it leads to a company that is happier, more productive, and more efficient at every level. Along the way, we’ll examine advice from other business experts on efficiency, productivity, teamwork, and other management strategies to see how Sutherland’s theories stack up.
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Once you have a clear picture of which tasks will bring the most value in the least amount of time, he advises that you simply begin working on those tasks.
In this way, the Scrum method improves on traditional project methods, which would begin by making a big roadmap for the project. The Scrum method takes a much simpler and straightforward approach by simply beginning on the most important tasks without a large, comprehensive plan.
Covey’s Time Management Matrix
In First Things First, Stephen Covey gives a framework for prioritizing tasks. The two things you should consider when choosing a task are importance and urgency. In the business sense, importance would be the amount of value a task brings to the project. Urgency deals with tasks that require immediate action. Covey suggests prioritizing importance over urgency, as unimportant but urgent tasks can be a huge waste of time. Important and urgent tasks are dangerous. You want to avoid being in the position of having to rush to finish something important. This is similar to Sutherland’s advice to tackle the most important tasks first.
Work in Sprints
A Sprint is the core process within Scrum. Sprints are fixed lengths of time, usually one or two weeks, in which the team works on a particular task or tasks. The key values of the Scrum framework are developed and maintained inside Sprints. Sprints are where the work gets done, where value is created, and where people turn ideas into reality.
(Shortform note: Sutherland and Ken Schwaber introduced the term “Sprint” in the essay “SCRUM Development Process,” which they first presented in 1995. Since then, the idea of working in Sprints has become ubiquitous in business management circles. Jake Knapp wrote a book on Sprints in 2016. We also see it show up in news articles that claim working in sprints will “transform your productivity,” and recommend working in short bursts even in your personal life.)
Sutherland gives us four phases to a Sprint cycle.
Phase 1: Plan
At this stage you should have a prioritized task list and a Scrum team ready to begin working. The goal of this phase is to determine three things:
- How the Sprint will bring value. The product manager begins by proposing how the product will increase in value during the upcoming Sprint.
- Which tasks will be completed in the Sprint. The team then chooses which items from the task list they will complete. The tasks must be fully completed within the chosen time frame, meeting the standards for completion defined in the task list.
- How the tasks will be completed by the Developers. The last step of Sprint planning is to plan out the work needed to complete the chosen tasks. This can be done by organizing the workload into daily tasks, but those decisions are left to the Developers. The Product Manager and Scrum Coach should have no say in how the tasks are completed.
Planning as a Habit
In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen R. Covey gives advice on how to best prioritize your time and achieve your goals. When trying to tackle personal goals, he suggests weekly planning. Weekly planning is broad enough to allow for adjustment but narrow enough to ensure things are getting done. Covey gives a step-by-step guide to weekly planning:
Identify your roles
Identify one or two goals for each role
Assign a day for each goal
Schedule time for enriching activities
Build in time for the unexpected
Adapt the plan as needed
Covey’s advice thus aligns with Sutherlands: Covey recommends planning week-by-week because it can allow for frequent adjustment, and Sutherland recommends planning Sprint-by-Sprint for the same reason, to allow for frequent adjustment as the project proceeds.
Phase 2: Meet Daily
Sutherland recommends that during each Sprint, the Scrum Coach and Developers hold short meetings every day. He states these meetings should be held in the same place, at the same time, and they should be no longer than fifteen minutes. Consistency and simplicity are important.
During the meeting, each team member should report:
- What they accomplished yesterday.
- What they will accomplish today.
- What’s slowing them down.
This helps the team know exactly where they are in the Sprint, what needs to be done next, and where they can improve. In these daily meetings, there should be no additional tasks assigned by management. If there are any impediments to the team’s progress, it's the responsibility of the Scrum Coach to remove them. The Daily Meetings help build communication, clarify direction, and increase efficiency.
Use Multiple Lists to Increase Efficiency
The Scrum framework gives a team a structure to the workflow: Each week or two weeks, a Sprint is completed and each day, the team meets to discuss progress. Different task lists are used for each type of check-in. Sutherland isn’t the only management expert who recommends using different task lists for different purposes: In Eat That Frog, Brian Tracy recommends four different lists to use depending on which timeframe you need to plan for:
Master list: This contains everything you want to do. Any time a new idea or task comes up it's added to the master list.
Monthly list: At the end of each month, move items from your master list to your monthly list.
Weekly list: Build the weekly list as you work. This way, at the end of each week you will already have your next week roughly planned out.
Daily list: Take items from the weekly list and list the tasks you wish to complete that day. Check off items as they are completed.
Phase 3: Demonstrate
After each Sprint, the team must demonstrate what they’ve produced in the Sprint. Anyone with a stake in the project or its outcome is invited to see this demonstration. Outside participants, such as customers, are encouraged to attend and give feedback. If no stakeholders or customers are able to attend, the Product Manager acts as their stand-in and attempts to view the demonstration from an outside perspective.
The idea behind the Sprint demonstration is to force Developers into making a finished, demonstrable product during each Sprint. Sutherland recommends building a prototype—something you can show the customer that actually functions even if it’s not fully fleshed out, so that you don’t waste time trying to make a perfect product but instead focus on building something that works that you can improve later.
Prototyping
In Inspired, Marty Cagan discusses the usefulness of prototypes in software development. Prototypes take less time and energy to make than a finished product, and they allow the team to flesh out ideas and see what works. Cagan gives four types of prototypes:
Feasibility Prototype: A prototype used to determine if a product can actually be created. You should only build enough to ensure the team is capable of completing it.
User Prototype: A user prototype is a non-functional simulation of the final product. A simpler user prototype may be a bare-bones version to help the team visualize the product. A more complex user prototype may be tested internally and externally to see how it works.
Live-Data Prototype: A pared-down but functional version of the final product. A live-data prototype is used to test if a product is commercially viable by getting real data from test users.
Hybrid Prototype: This is a combination of the previous three types. These are the least scalable of the four types, as they are meant to be built quickly and provide feedback.
Phase 4: Reflect
After demonstrating the product, the team then examines the previous Sprint. The aim of the Reflection is to find ways to increase productivity and efficiency within the Sprint process. Team members should look at what went right, what went wrong, and how the team reacted to any obstacles or problems that arose. They should identify potential changes that could be made to improve the process. Then, they should decide which changes will have the biggest impact and look to implement them in the next Sprint. With each Sprint reflection, the team should be finding new ways to increase productivity.
This part of the process requires a high degree of maturity and trust, as each team member must take responsibility for their actions and look for ways to improve.
Accountability
The reflecting phase is about encouraging accountability: Whether working individually or with a team, you must hold yourself and others accountable if you wish to be successful. The Oz Principle details how to lose the victim mentality and assume responsibility for your actions. The authors lay out four steps to help practice accountability:
Face the facts: You must face reality if you wish to be accountable. This includes recognizing when things around you change, making space for other people’s perceptions, and being honest about your own shortcomings.
Admit your role: Acknowledge that you aren’t just a victim of circumstance and that your actions contributed to those circumstances. Once you recognize your own culpability, you can more easily find a solution.
Take responsibility for solving problems: If you see a problem, help fix it. It can be easy to say “not my job” or “not my fault,” but being accountable means helping to solve the problems you see around you.
Take action: Once you recognize a problem, you must stay committed to finding a solution. Don’t let any obstacles get in the way of your goal.
On top of individual accountability, The Oz Principle also examines how to be accountable as a team. A team’s accountability can have a direct effect on their creativity, camaraderie, and overall performance. Here are some ways you can nurture organizational accountability:
Recognize you and your team members are interdependent
Focus on results instead of individual responsibilities
Use rewards as a motivational tool
Encourage two-way feedback
Find the underlying causes of a problem
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PDF Summary Shortform Introduction
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The Book’s Context
Historical Context
Sutherland wrote Scrum to explain and spread the ideas of Scrum to businesses outside the world of technology. Sutherland developed Scrum in the early 1990s with the help of Ken Schwaber and others. It was designed as a more effective way to develop software than traditional methods. Sutherland and Schwaber first presented Scrum at a research conference in 1995, and it has gained popularity ever since, especially in the technology industry. Tech giants such as Apple, Google, Facebook, Airbnb, Spotify, and Adobe use the Scrum framework in some capacity. Recently, the Scrum method has made its way into other industries, including education, construction, marketing, and finance.
Intellectual Context
Written well into Sutherland’s career as a product management expert, Scrum explains the Scrum framework, a subset of the agile business model, to the masses. Agile methodology is a system for product development that focuses on incremental progress and close...
PDF Summary What Is Scrum?
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In this guide, we’ll take a look at the ideology behind Scrum and will examine how Scrum differs from the traditional management style. We’ll then explore in detail how Scrum works while examining why it works, as well as why it matters and why you should use it. Along the way, we’ll compare Sutherland’s ideas to other management experts and explore how they either align with or differ from other advice on business efficiency.
Agile Methodology
Scrum builds on the agile business model, which Sutherland, along with sixteen other software developers, released with the Agile Manifesto in 2001. The Agile Manifesto recommends four strategies for product development:
- Focus on people, not procedures: Focus on people instead of procedures, because the people, not the plans, are the ones doing the work.
- Build working products instead of extensive documentation: Focus on making something that works instead of detailing what a product is supposed to do.
- Work with the customers: Since the goal of a business is to provide value to the customer, give the customer a chance to provide feedback and base your decisions based on...
PDF Summary Scrum Versus a Traditional Management System
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In Scrum, Sutherland gives a very sparse explanation of the Waterfall Method. It may be helpful to understand more about the traditional management system.
There are five stages in the Waterfall Method, and each phase is intended to be finished before moving on to the next.
Requirements: Here, you come up with the big picture ideas for the project. What problem are you addressing, what are you trying to build, and what needs to be done to build it? All the requirements should be collected and known from the beginning.
Design: In the design phase, you come up with the solutions to the problems set out in the requirement phase. Multiple design choices may be submitted.
Implementation: In this phase, you choose the design choice that you think will work best and build the product. Because you’ve done so much research beforehand, the implementation of your design should be fairly straightforward.
Verification or Testing: Here, you take the product and test whether or not it fits the requirements. If it does not, you go back and test to determine what the issues are.
Maintenance: Although the product meets the...
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Learn more about our summaries →PDF Summary Principle 1: Base Your Plan on Reality
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Procrastination: Procrastination can add significant time to a project. Researchers suggest most procrastination comes from a fear of failure.
Bad Habits: When we perform any task, our brains tend to repeat how we did it whether it was done the right way or not. We often don’t consider how our bad habits will slow us down when estimating.
Planning Fallacy: People tend to be optimistic when planning things out. That is, we think we can perform tasks at a much faster rate than we actually can. Even when we know things usually take longer than we plan, this phenomenon still occurs.
Anchoring Bias: If we set an initial plan for completing a project, we become anchored to that plan even as it becomes clear it isn’t working properly.
We Don’t Speak Up
In a group setting, people also struggle with trusting their own judgment. Whether out of fear of looking unintelligent or misinformed, or a general sense that other people make sound decisions, the “bandwagon effect” causes people to go along with whatever decision the group makes. When making an important business decision, this can be a big problem. Half the group may think something is a bad...
PDF Summary Principle 2: Build and Maintain an Effective Team
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Fully commit to your goals: It’s not enough to merely set an audacious goal, the entire organization must be willing to get behind it.
Think beyond the profits: Although companies are profit-driven, a visionary company looks beyond the quarterly profits and aims to achieve something great.
Continue setting audacious goals: If a company manages to meet one of their goals, they must not stop there. A company that continues setting ambitious goals even after success are more likely to maintain that success.
Freedom
Once an objective is set, Sutherland says, let the team figure out how to achieve it. A team should organize and manage themselves and be empowered to make their own decisions. This freedom, or autonomy, leads to a happier and more effective team. If people feel they’re being constantly guided by management, it can be deflating. Not only does it rob them of their ambition, but it also stifles their creativity. Both of these can lead to a drastic reduction in productivity.
As a leader, you shouldn’t tell your team exactly what to do or how to do it. Rather, you should provide them with an objective and the necessary tools to complete...
PDF Summary Principle 3: Prioritize the Work
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Covey’s Time Management Matrix
In First Things First, Stephen Covey gives a framework for prioritizing tasks. The two things you should consider when choosing a task are importance and urgency. In the business sense, importance would be the amount of value a task brings to the project. Urgency deals with tasks that require immediate action. Covey suggests prioritizing importance over urgency, as unimportant but urgent tasks can be a huge waste of time. Important and urgent tasks are dangerous. You want to avoid being in the position of having to rush to finish something important. This is similar to Sutherland’s advice to tackle the most important tasks first.
Clarify and Estimate the Task List
Before moving on to the Sprint, Sutherland says the Developers should go over the task list and answer three questions. These questions will help the team ensure that the tasks are clearly defined and achievable, while also giving them a reference point for the amount of work future endeavors will take.
1. Is each task doable? The team should...
PDF Summary Principle 4: Using Sprints
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Planning as a Habit
In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen R. Covey gives advice on how to best prioritize your time and achieve your goals. When trying to tackle personal goals, he suggests weekly planning. Weekly planning is broad enough to allow for adjustment but narrow enough to ensure things are getting done. Covey gives a step-by-step guide to weekly planning:
Identify your roles
Identify one or two goals for each role
Assign a day for each goal
Schedule time for enriching activities
Build in time for the unexpected
Adapt the plan as needed
Covey’s advice thus aligns with Sutherlands: Covey recommends weekly planning because it can allow for frequent adjustment, and Sutherland recommends planning each Sprint for the same reason, to allow for frequent adjustment as the project proceeds.
Phase 2: Meet Daily
Sutherland recommends that during each Sprint, the Scrum Coach and Developers hold short meetings every day. He states these meetings should...
PDF Summary Principle 5: How Sprints Help Maximize Time
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This is because our brains only have the ability to focus on one thing at a time. When trying to juggle multiple tasks at once, a lot of time is wasted as your brain tries to switch from one thing to another. When working on five projects, for example, a whopping 75% of the time will be lost to your brain’s attempts to reorient itself each time you change tasks.
Scrum’s solution to this is simple and obvious: Work on one thing at a time. A team can work much quicker if they prioritize tasks and finish them one at a time. Sutherland argues that if a team finishes three projects sequentially, they will finish in almost half the time as a team that tries to do them all at once.
Tips for Avoiding Multitasking
Other experts likewise note the importance of maintaining focus on one task at a time. Chris Bailey’s Hyperfocus argues that the key to productivity is not managing your time but managing your attention. To hyperfocus is to focus on a single task at a time. Bailey gives five steps to help you hyperfocus:
- **Plan when and for how long you will...
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PDF Summary Principle 6: Why Happiness Matters
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We’ll look at how to quantify happiness, what makes people happy, and how to achieve it in the workplace using Scrum.
Measuring Happiness
Happiness can be tricky to quantify. Sutherland proposes measuring happiness in a relatively simple way. At the end of each Sprint, ask every team member how they feel about the company, their role in it, why they feel that way, and what changes might make them happier moving forward.
These questions can provoke some meaningful discussions and expose what’s most important to each person. The team should then focus on making changes in the next Sprint that will make them happier. By doing so, you will make the team happier and more productive. A win-win.
Measuring Happiness: Alternative Methods
Since happiness is a subjective state, the most common method to measure happiness is the one Sutherland uses: self-reporting. However, experts note that [self-reported happiness is often...