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97 Things Every Scrum Practitioner Should Know: Collective Wisdom from the Experts
Improve your understanding of Scrum through the proven experience and collected wisdom of experts around the world. Based on real-life experiences, the 97 essays in this unique book provide a wealth of knowledge and expertise from established practitioners who have dealt with specific problems and challenges with Scrum.
You'll find out more about the rules and roles of this framework, as well as tactics, strategies, specific patterns to use with Scrum, and stories from the trenches. You'll also gain insights on how to apply, tune, and tweak Scrum for your work. This guide is an ideal resource for people new to Scrum and those who want to assess and improve their understanding of this framework.
Scrum Is Simple. Just Use It As Is., Ken Schwaber
The 'Standing Meeting, ' Bob Warfield
"Specialization Is for Insects," James O. Coplien
Scrum Events Are Rituals to Ensure Good Harvest, Jasper Lamers
"Servant Leadership Starts from Within," Bob Galen
Agile Is More than Sprinting, James W. Grenning
You'll find out more about the rules and roles of this framework, as well as tactics, strategies, specific patterns to use with Scrum, and stories from the trenches. You'll also gain insights on how to apply, tune, and tweak Scrum for your work. This guide is an ideal resource for people new to Scrum and those who want to assess and improve their understanding of this framework.
Scrum Is Simple. Just Use It As Is., Ken Schwaber
The 'Standing Meeting, ' Bob Warfield
"Specialization Is for Insects," James O. Coplien
Scrum Events Are Rituals to Ensure Good Harvest, Jasper Lamers
"Servant Leadership Starts from Within," Bob Galen
Agile Is More than Sprinting, James W. Grenning
278 pages, ebook
Published April 27, 2020
34 people are currently reading
252 people want to read
About the author
Gunther Verheyen
20 books36 followersGunther Verheyen is a seasoned Scrum practitioner. He assists, serves, advices, suggests on many things Scrum. He works with teams, individuals, executives. He facilitates unlearning and learning. He thinks, reflects, wonders and wanders.
After a career as a consultant he shepherded the Professional series of Scrum.org, the home of Scrum, while also leading its European operations. Gunther left Scrum.org in 2016 to further his path as an independent Scrum caretaker.
In 2013 Gunther published the acclaimed book “Scrum – A Pocket Guide (a smart travel companion)”. Ken Schwaber recommends his book as ‘the best description of Scrum currently available’ and ‘an extraordinarily competent book’. In 2016 the Dutch translation of his book was published as “Scrum Wegwijzer (Een kompas voor de bewuste reiziger)”.
When not travelling for Scrum and professional software development, Gunther lives and works in Antwerp (Belgium).
After a career as a consultant he shepherded the Professional series of Scrum.org, the home of Scrum, while also leading its European operations. Gunther left Scrum.org in 2016 to further his path as an independent Scrum caretaker.
In 2013 Gunther published the acclaimed book “Scrum – A Pocket Guide (a smart travel companion)”. Ken Schwaber recommends his book as ‘the best description of Scrum currently available’ and ‘an extraordinarily competent book’. In 2016 the Dutch translation of his book was published as “Scrum Wegwijzer (Een kompas voor de bewuste reiziger)”.
When not travelling for Scrum and professional software development, Gunther lives and works in Antwerp (Belgium).
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
December 30, 2020
Scrum is easy to learn but difficult to master, and 97 Things is a series of essays that address some important ideas about how to do Scrum well that often get lost, thus making it hard for teams to succeed, much less master, Scrum. The authors all have deep experience in working on Scrum teams, and each essay will likely leave you with things to try, or at least thinking about.
This book is for any Scrum practitioner, regardless of whether you are a Scrum Master, Product Owner, and Developer. While there are sections that focus on each role., teams work better when each member understands and supports the others on the team, so everyone will benefit from reading all of the items.
A recurring theme in many of these essays is to step away from the mechanics (which are easy) focus on values that underly Scrum. Understand why you are using Scrum and building software and the details of how to implement Scrum well will follow. Some essays (including one of mine: Adopt Before You Adapt) advise focusing on building good team dynamics and a culture of successive improvement. Other essays focus on the importance of understanding what you are building (a Product Owner is an amorphous concept with out a clear definition of “product”), or what the best thing for a Scrum Master to do in a particular situation (and sometimes the answer is “nothing: giving the team an opportunity to learn to self-organize). Throughout you are reminded that the goal of a software project is to deliver value in the form of product and how the Scrum framework can help deliver the thing that is useful... and sometimes that is different that what you set out to do at the start.
This book fills a niche between the Scrum Guide (concise and definitive, but lacking some level of detail), and the many books on Scrum (in depth, capturing good practice, and experienced based, but written from a single perspective). 97 Things is a grand tour through the topics that are sometimes neglected in discussions of Scrum, or which aren’t emphasized enough.
If you are new to Scrum, and want some insights into how you help your journey go better, and even see how Scrum might work in non-software fields like education and policing, read this book for inspiration and guidance. If you are an established practitioner you can benefit from a reminder of how to avoid the pitfalls and challenges that Scrum Teams can face. This is a worthwhile read, and perhaps reference, for anyone who works on or with a Scrum Team.
This book is for any Scrum practitioner, regardless of whether you are a Scrum Master, Product Owner, and Developer. While there are sections that focus on each role., teams work better when each member understands and supports the others on the team, so everyone will benefit from reading all of the items.
A recurring theme in many of these essays is to step away from the mechanics (which are easy) focus on values that underly Scrum. Understand why you are using Scrum and building software and the details of how to implement Scrum well will follow. Some essays (including one of mine: Adopt Before You Adapt) advise focusing on building good team dynamics and a culture of successive improvement. Other essays focus on the importance of understanding what you are building (a Product Owner is an amorphous concept with out a clear definition of “product”), or what the best thing for a Scrum Master to do in a particular situation (and sometimes the answer is “nothing: giving the team an opportunity to learn to self-organize). Throughout you are reminded that the goal of a software project is to deliver value in the form of product and how the Scrum framework can help deliver the thing that is useful... and sometimes that is different that what you set out to do at the start.
This book fills a niche between the Scrum Guide (concise and definitive, but lacking some level of detail), and the many books on Scrum (in depth, capturing good practice, and experienced based, but written from a single perspective). 97 Things is a grand tour through the topics that are sometimes neglected in discussions of Scrum, or which aren’t emphasized enough.
If you are new to Scrum, and want some insights into how you help your journey go better, and even see how Scrum might work in non-software fields like education and policing, read this book for inspiration and guidance. If you are an established practitioner you can benefit from a reminder of how to avoid the pitfalls and challenges that Scrum Teams can face. This is a worthwhile read, and perhaps reference, for anyone who works on or with a Scrum Team.
June 4, 2020
Fijn boek om te lezen. Boordevol praktische verhalen over het toepassen van scrum in de praktijk.
January 31, 2025
Collective “blog notes” from the experts compiled into a book format. Mostly anecdotes, no hard proof on anything. I’ve endured approx. 30% of this “blog notes” collection and decided that there are more interesting things to do with my time.
December 10, 2022
If you asked 97 experts what the most important “thing” about Scrum is, you might get something like this book. Maybe that’s what actually happened. The result is disjointed set of opinions that I find of no practical value.
November 26, 2021
Good compilation from the Agile / Scrum experts! However didn't find anything extraordinary; could be because I have been reading the stuff in their original books and blogs!
June 22, 2022
Lots of good reminders about the essence of Agile and Scrum. In my opinion, even experienced agilists will find here some great tips for reaching the next level of agility. The stories help concepts to stick, and the many links across the book bring even more value. Of course, the text is a bit redundant at times, but the choice of words in every "thing" makes that the whole is not boring but remains interesting. Even if some views might seem to contradict each other, they only touch parts that are not defined in the Scrum Guide, and which are by nature subject to interpretation. Yes, it opened my mind on some things. The division in subsections seems coherent, even though not particularly necessary in my opinion. Still, the editor did a great job of selecting the right stories to keep the book entertaining.
July 19, 2020
As this was written by a variety of authors, there was a lot of variability in the writing. When the essays hit, as with “Product Owner, Not An Information Barrier”, the book imparts a lot of wisdom. Other essays feel like (at worst) opinionated rambles and are not easy to apply. Decent read, a lot of hits, but quite a few misses in the essays.
February 14, 2021
The power of this power lies in the different perspectives you get from all the different authors. Some are very inspirational and lead to practical next steps.
March 17, 2021
This book is a great way to learn more about Scrum from different perspectives. It is great how seasoned practitioners share their view and experience in easy to read, short stories.
May 5, 2021
Super practical tips. Good for seniors and juniors.
May 31, 2022
Good read and good book to equip Scrum Practitioner from expert and Experienced Scrum / Agile practitioner
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews