Reviews for Agile Project Management with Scrum (Microsoft Professional)

1. Agile Project Management

   Rated 4 out of 5 stars, April 12th, 2010

   From a Project/Programme Managers perspective, this is excellent introductory material for those who haven't used Scrum formally. The book introduces the reader to each of the Scrum concepts and also attempts to portray them in a real-world scenario. For those planning to undertake the certification course this would be a very good primer along with Agile Estimating and Planning (Robert C. Martin) by Mike Cohn.

2. brilliant

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, December 12st, 2009

   I write this review because I just read the previous comment and could not disagree more.
   
   First, the book
   
   It was handed over to me by my new project leader about two years ago as he wanted to use that method and make sure everyone in the team understood what and why.
   I really enjoyed the book because it makes the whole idea very clear in the first few chapters and is very accessible.
   You don't really need to read the later chapters if all you want is a broad understanding.
   I think this book got me to understand what we did and why.
   I am not too sure whether it would have allowed me to start using the methodolgy without the mentoring of someone else but I did have a mentor.
   
   I am now embarking into a new project and plan to do exactly the same. I'll recommend the book and be the mentor.
   
   Second, the methodology
   
   I have only developped for 25 years (!) and was extremely impressed by the whole scrum experience.
   Like the author, I was far less impressed with old fashioned "Waterfall" approaches and have seen so many fail miserably (most would be more precise).
   Having a brilliant mentor probably helped. Maybe this is what was missing to the previous reviewer...
   

3. Stick with PRINCE2

   Rated 2 out of 5 stars, November 12th, 2009

   Having read numerous other books about Project Management methodologies I came to this one. A colleague at work recommended Scrum, so I bought this and had a good read.
   
   First of all, the whole 'less is more' point of view didn't wash with me and my experience. The author's tone seems to suggest that he is inferring that other methodologies are overly prescriptive. I get the feeling that he was making an aside to PRINCE2. However, if he checked out the 2009 revisions and read up, he'd see that a common misconception is that PRINCE2 is too heavy on the management side. It isn't; you can scale to whatever size project you want.
   
   Maybe I'm wrong, and maybe the author just thinks Scrum is great, but from the projects I have run I know I wouldn't have gotten anywhere. The whole language (pigs and chickens..?) seems childish to the point of being banal. I'm sure that stakeholders would be confident if they heard that terminology. I'm sure it works for some, but for me (and most of the world thankfully), I'll stick with PRINCE2.

4. Invaluable book. Do not start implementing SCRUM before reading it!

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, October 12th, 2008

   Scrum is easy to understand and hard to implement. You can read about the roles, artefacts and ceremonies on many websites however this isn't enough. You learn best by doing it and in this book Ken is giving us his experience so we don't make the same mistakes. Of course there are many more truths to be learnt but this book gives you an excellent start. A must have for anyone starting with Scrum!

5. Lots of case studies,

   Rated 3 out of 5 stars, December 12th, 2006

   Scrum is a simple emperical process of project management. There are few rules and these are adequately explained in a few pages and within the appendix of this book. So what, you might ask, is the rest of the book taken up with.
   
   Well there's lots of case studies to demonstrate the practical use of Scrum in different scenarios. I must admit to having found these case studies a little uninteresting at times and a bit repetitive, however by the end of the book I feel I probably appreciated their purpose more than I did whilst reading them.
   
   In terms of whether the book is worth owning, I found it well enough written and in general quite useful, however I do feel the meat of the subject can be summed up in far fewer pages and I'm split between the feeling that fewer case studies would have been adequate and that some were just "fillers" to pad out the book and the fact that, maybe, you can never have too many examples.