Reviews for The Enterprise and Scrum

1. Disappointing

   Rated 2 out of 5 stars, August 12th, 2007

   As a Certified ScrumMaster who has introduced Scrum to one development department (~100 staff) of a large software house I was really looking forward to this book. The most difficult aspect of our adoption of Scrum has been managing the complex dependencies between multiple teams working on a single software package - this is something that seems to be poorly understood and documented so I was very hopeful that this book would help.
   
   Unfortunately I found it to be very short and very superficial. While these issues are covered there is little in the way of solid, practical, advice other than to "use the Scrum process" - a recurring theme of the book. With each new chapter I found myself thinking "Ah! NOW we're getting to it..." only to be disappointed.
   
   Having read much about Scrum and having followed the process for some time, this book added nothing new for me. If you're looking for an introduction to Scrum, the author's own "Agile Software Development with SCRUM" is much better. For more general help on managing "agile" projects - including with large teams - you could do much worse than Mike Cohn's "Agile Estimating and Planning"
   
   Very disappointing.

2. Excellent resource for any large group adopting Scrum

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, July 12th, 2007

   The two best things about this book are that it: (1) provides a framework for adopting Scrum across an enterprise, and (2) describes some techniques for surmounting some of the problems you will likely face as you try. Although the book is about the "enterprise and Scrum" most of the contents will be applicable to any group of teams transitioning to Scrum. A set of five teams working together on a single project would benefit from this book even if they are not the whole enterprise.
   
   Too many agile books suffer from being targeted at a single team working on a deserted island--that is, a seven-person team with no issues outside their one team. This book does not suffer from that problem. Want to know how to organize work on a project that is partitioned by architectural layer? How to structure a product backlog for the entire organization? Or how to organize teams across a large project? Or what are the proper reporting relationships on a large Scrum project? This book provides sage advice on these enterprise adoption issues and more.
   
   The book is chock-full of real-life anecdotes (in which only the name of the company and key players have been changed). Each anecdote illustrates how one real company dealt with a real problem. Their problem, their context, and their solution won't exactly be yours, but seeing how others have addressed challenges can be illuminating in thinking how to address yours.
   
   This is probably not your best choice as a first book on Scrum. For that start with the author's other two books. This book picks up where they left off, providing a wealth of information for enterprises and even workgroups adopting Scrum. If you're already familiar with the basics of Scrum, and especially if you are starting to hit the hard points of adopting it and spreading it through your organization then this book is for you.