Scrum: the art of doing twice the work in half the time

Jeff Sutherland

Why I looked at this book

It's a tempting idea, that there's a much more efficient way of working. But how realistic is it? One hears so much about 'agile working' nowadays that one is suspicious that it's all talk, and introduces as many problems as it solves. I'm interested to find out whether there's substance behind the talk, and whether it can be applied to the work of an individual or whether it's just for teams.

First impressions

The book starts by describing how Scrum was used to deal with the disastrous problems at the FBI in 2010 when it became clear that the second attempt at computerising their systems was heading for failure. This was a huge project, and I'm more interested in how Scrum can be applied to small projects, but it was certainly an impressive indication of the power of the Scrum technique.