The Better Projects Scrum Reading List

Readers

I am running a project using Scrum, and I have been discovering that even though the information is to hand many readers of traditional PM and BA sites aren't familiar with the process.  So I wanted to give an overview.

And once I started on that, it got out of hand and I have extended the overview into a list of all the things I think are important to know about when starting the agile/scrum journey.

Lastly the link titles don't always match the article headings at the other end.  It's a matter of context.

The Better Projects Scrum Reading List

The Basics

• A brief introduction - Mike Cohn
  
• What is Scrum - by Darrell Norton
• The neat one page diagrams - a, b, c
  
• Scrum in 5 minutes - by Softhouse

The advanced readings

• The Scrum papers - 181 pages by Schwaber and Sutherland
• Scrum talk by Schwaber at Google
  
• Why my process is better than yours - A collection of essays by Martin Fowler
  

Process milestones/ceremonies

• Sprint planning - by Mike Cohn, How we do it in practice by Jack Milunsky
• Stand-ups; Fundamentals of the daily stand up - by Mishkin Bertieg, 3 Questions for daily Stand-ups - by Jeff Sutherland, 7 Tips - by Stacia Broderick
  
• Sprint reviews - by Peter Stev
  
• Retrospectives - (on slideshare)

The Roles

• The Product Owner - great series of posts by Mike Cottmeyer, The Mythical Product Owner Role by Michael Groeneveld
  
• The Scrum Master role - Discussion at Stack Overflow
  
• Effectiveness tips for Scrum Masters - by Michael James
  
• The difference between the scrum master and the PM - by Johanna Rothman
• Managers, not ScrumMasters, by Jeff Sutherland
  
• The Team; The responsibilities, Self organisation - by Jeff Sutherland,
• Surfacing Team Dysfunctions - by Plaman Balkanski
  
• PMs and BAs finding their place in Scrum
  

Requirements management

• The Product Backlog
• User Stories - Jack Milunsky, What's in a Story - by Dan North, Bill Wake's INVEST model by me
  
• NFRs in the backlog, by Dean Leffinwell, NFRs as user stories by Mike Cohn
  
• Acceptance criteria by Anthony Marcano, Presentaton on Slideshare by Scornelius, And see the Dan North article above.
  
• Managing multiple stakeholders and competing priorities
• Value management
  

Estimating

• Story points - by Peter Stevens
  
• Story ponts versus time - by Gus and Simon
  
• Sprint Backlog items
  
• Planning Poker, devised by Mike Cohn
• Sprint burn down charts
• Velocity, Optimising velocity by Richard Kronflat
• Differences between EVM and agile estimating - by Alistair Cockburn
  

Release planning

• Product burn up chats
  
• Release planning - from VersionOne
  
• Aim for small releases - by Gus and Simon
  
• Release early and often - by Corey Ladas
  
• Refactoring, Refactoring forever - by Richard Kronfalt
• "Monte Carlo" release planning by Mike Cohn
  

Testing and quality

• Done - Peter Stevens provides a definition, Podcast with Schwaber, The Done Manifesto
  
• Testing and verification (looking to XP and other tools) by Dr. Ralph van Roosmalen
• Unit testing -  by Roy Osherove
• QA for requirements
• Technical debt by Martin Fowler, The Mikado Method by Daniel Brolund,
  

Scrum smells

• What is a scrum smell
• 5 common Scrum mistakes 
• Scrum smells,a scrum community wiki
  

Personal improvement

• Shu Ha Ri (The journey from beginner to master) - by Jurgen Apello (on ideas by Alistair Cockburn)
  
• Varying the process, by Rowan Bunning
  
• Scrum-but - on Slideshare

Implementing scrum 

• Tips on implementing Scrum - for the team (Kelly Waters), for the client, for the stakeholders (Lynda Bourne, PMI)
  
• Selling Scrum as a positive alternative
• The challenge of Iterative requirements definition
• Iterative and incremental product builds
• The relational database and object base impedence (?)
• Augmenting Scrum with XP
• Lessons learned and shared, a year with scrum on Slideshare, Organisational change and scrum by Richard Banks
  

More

• A Scrum book list is available here.
• Online communties
 

If you'd like to offer any links, let me know in the comments.

(Picture by Gilmoth, CC @ Flickr)