Book Review: Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time

Always looking for a strategy to increase productivity, I was extremely pleased to get my hands on Jeff Sutherland’s book, Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time. I have already started to apply the concepts into my day to day operations because we tend to work with a lot of projects. This book has also been an invaluable supporting reference as I teach an advanced instructional design class for the University of Wyoming. As part of the class, I introduced them to the Scrum model as an alternative to the traditional ADDIE model typically taught.

Throughout the book, Sutherland discussed how he had developed Scrum. He does this by sharing stories how the principles helped get a program back on track to ultimate success. The story that stood out to me was the FBI’s quest to develop a program that would help them connect the dots and prevent another 9/11. The original plan took over a decade and cost almost $500 million, however, it was never finished. In one year and only $30 million using Scrum, the project was completed.

Scrum is 248 pages long and arranged into nine chapters. The different chapters focus on different project management approaches and origins of Scrum. Sutherland also detailed how the different Scrum elements originated. Finally, he devoted a considerable amount of pages highlighting the benefits of Scrum.

At the end of each chapter, Sutherland provided a number of key takeaways. Sutherland also used a number of other concepts to explain the concepts of Scrum such as “Shu Ha Ri” and “Observe, Orient, Decide, Act.”

Sutherland’s book, Scrum, explained why someone should use this methodology over another. He pointed out that there is a lot of material explaining how to implement Scrum and what to do. But this book gets into the head of the designer of the methodology. I really appreciated reading Sutherland’s insight into the strategy.

The last chapter of the book provided examples of how others were using Scrum to accomplish interesting tasks from teaching students to handling poverty. Based on what I have been learning about Scrum, I am changing the operations in my office. We are currently using each term to identify projects we want to work on. We are declaring our two-week work cycles as sprints and are tracking our stories on a whiteboard and through Asana. I am happy with the direction we are going.

I would definitely recommend Scrum as part of your reading if you are thinking about using this methodology. So far, I have been pleased with the results. I am considering assigning Scrum as a text for future classes.

Additional Reading

• Organizing Our Department With Asana
• Our Processes for Providing Faculty Support
• Book Review: Program Planning and Evaluation for the Public Manager

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