Scrum Log Jeff Sutherland

Scrum is an Agile development framework that Jeff Sutherland invented at Easel Corporation in 1993. Jeff worked with Ken Schwaber to formalize Scrum at OOPSLA'95. Together, they extended and enhanced Scrum at many software companies and helped write the Agile Manifesto.

Thursday, August 17, 2006

Scrum Tuning: Program Management with Scrum - Boston



Scrum Tuning: Program Management with Scrum
1-2 Nov 2006 Boston

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Take your ScrumMaster certification or knowledge of basic Scrum, Agile and lean practices to the next level!

Get Agile at Patientkeeper, one of the most Agile software companies on the planet. Scrum Tuning: Program Management with Scrum training in Boston will be led by Co-Creator of Scrum, Jeff Sutherland, who has over a decade of experience using Scrum for software development along with experienced Scrum Trainers Hubert Smits and Jean Tabaka from Rally Software Development. This is a unique opportunity.

The Program Management with Scrum course was formulated to help experienced Scrum Masters tune up their Scrum implementation. Participants will present their current implementation as a case analysis. Using extensive experience on scaling Scrum in the enterprise, Trainers and the class will evaluate and suggest improvements in the implementation based on the extensive literature on Lean Product Development and Lean Manufacturing. The book, Agile Project Management with Scrum, by Ken Schwaber is required reading for the course along with the primary Scrum book, Agile Development with Scrum.

Dr. Sutherland started the first Scrum at Easel Corporation in 1993 and has done research and development on Scrum using his last five companies as laboratories. His entire current company at PatientKeeper is run by a MetaScrum, and is one of the most advance implementions of Scrum worldwide. Mary Poppendieck, in her latest book on Lean Software Development, says:

Five years ago a killer application emerged in the health care industry: Give doctors access to patient information on a PDA. Today there is no question which company won the race to dominate this exploding market; PatientKeeper has overwhelmed its competition with its capability to bring new products and features to market just about every week. The sixty or so technical people produce more software than many organizations several times larger, and they don’t show any sign that the size of their code base is slowing them down.

A key strategy that has kept PatientKeeper at the front of the pack is an emphasis on unprecedented speed in delivering new features. It will not surprise anyone who understands Lean that PatientKeeper has to maintain superb quality in order to support its rapid delivery. CTO Jeff Sutherland explains it this way:

“Rapid cycle time:
  • Increases learning tremendously
  • Eliminates buggy software because you die if you don't fix this.
  • Fixes the install process because you die if you have to install 45 releases this year and install is not easy.
  • Improves the upgrade process because there is a constant flow of upgrades that are mandatory. Makes upgrades easy.
  • Forces quick standardization of software via new features rather than customization and one off.
  • Forces implementation of sustainable pace….. You die a death of attrition without it.
  • Allows waiting to build new functionality until there are 4-5 customers who pay for it. This is counterintuitive, and caused by the fact … everything is ready within 90 days."
Of course, there will be updated material and training exercises in the course which you cannot get from books. The entire syllabus will be made available upon registering for the course so you can look it over and bring it with you to the sessions. You may get to see our Product Backlog presented by the PatientKeeper Chief Product Owner or attend our Daily Scrum of Scrums!

Logistics Information



Boston Scrum training is held in the PatientKeeper Board Room on the second floor of 275 Washington Street in Newton, MA. This is directly off the Mass. Pike and across the street from the Sheraton Hotel, only about a 10-15 minute drive from Logan Airport or from Harvard Square.

PatientKeeper, Inc.
275 Washington Street - Second Floor
Newton, MA 02458
617-987-0394
617-812-8527 fax

The Sheraton Hotel across the street from PatientKeeper is the most convenient. However there are many good hotels in the Harvard area. Check www.hotels.com or your favorite travel site for hotels in Cambridge, MA, and pick one that fits your price.

The fee for Scrum Tuning: Program Management with Scrum is $1500. You can register in three ways:

1. Fax a Purchase Order to PatientKeeper at 617-812-8527
2. Request an invoice and send a check to Jeff Sutherland, PatientKeeper, Inc., 20 Guest Street, Suite 500, Brighton, MA 02135
3. Use the Scrum Tuning button on the upper left side of this page. This will connect you with the sign-up site.

Refund policy: 90% of the course fee will be refunded for cancellations more that 7 days in advance of the course. No refunds will be provided for cancellations within a week of the course.

Sunday, August 13, 2006

All-At-Once Scrum: The Agile Enterprise


At the Agile 2005 conference in Denver, I presented a research paper on a multi-team, multi-product Scrum which has a daily Scrum-of-Scrums meetings and a weekly MetaScrum where all Sprints are started, stopped, or changed by a broad base of company stakeholders. Thus the entire company runs as a Scrum.

Sutherland, Jeff. Future of Scrum: Parallel Pipelining of Sprints in Complex Projects. Agile 2005, Denver, CO. IEEE.

The thrust of an All-At-Once Scrum is to enable the entire enterprise to be Agile. Better software and faster development may not be enough to win in the marketplace. You need an All-At-Once Scrum to turn your company into a competitive monster.

Since the IEEE format limits text to 10 pages, I have written up a more detailed version which will be published real soon in a short book called "The Scrum Papers." Let me know if you are interested in the long paper and I will send you a draft of the book (but only if you agree to give me feedback on how to make the paper better)!