Thousands of IT professionals are being asked to make Scrum succeed in their organizations-including many who weren't involved in the decision to adopt it. If you're one of them, The Scrum Field Guide will give you skills and confidence to adopt Scrum more rapidly, more successfully, and with far less pain and fear. Long-time Scrum practitioner Mitch Lacey identifies major challenges associated with early-stage Scrum adoption, as well as deeper issues that emerge after companies have adopted Scrum, and describes how other organizations have overcome them. You'll learn how to gain quick wins that build support, and then use the flexibility of Scrum to maximize value creation across the entire process.

In 30 brief, engaging chapters, Lacey guides you through everything from defining roles to setting priorities to determining team velocity, choosing a sprint length, and conducting customer reviews. Along the way, he explains why Scrum can seem counterintuitive, offers a solid grounding in the core agile concepts that make it work, and shows where it can (and shouldn't) be modified. Coverage includes

• Getting teams on board, and bringing new team members aboard after you've started
  
• Creating a definition of done for the team and organization
• Implementing the strong technical practices that are indispensable for agile success
• Balancing predictability and adaptability in release planning
• Keeping defects in check
• Running productive daily standup meetings
• Keeping people engaged with pair programming
• Managing culture clashes on Scrum teams
• Performing emergency procedures to get sprints back on track
• Establishing a pace your team can truly sustain
• Accurately costing projects, and measuring the value they deliver
• Documenting Scrum projects effectively
• Prioritizing and estimating large backlogs
• Integrating outsourced and offshored components

Packed with real-world examples from Lacey's own experience, this book is invaluable to everyone transitioning to agile: developers, architects, testers, managers, and project owners alike.

Mitch Lacey has been an agile practitioner and consultant and is the founder of Mitch Lacey & Associates, Inc., a software consulting and training firm. Mitch helps teams and companies realize gains in efficiency by adopting agile principles and practices such as Scrum and Extreme Programming. Mitch cut his agile teeth at Microsoft Corporation working on a variety of projects, sometimes as the product owner, other times as the ScrumMaster. Today, with more than 16 years of experience under his belt, Mitch works as an agile trainer and coach. He also continues to develop his craft by experimenting and practicing with project teams at many different organizations.Mitch is a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) and a PMI Project Management Professional (PMP). He is a frequent speaker at conferences worldwide; has served on the board of the Scrum Alliance and the Agile Alliance; and chaired the Agile 2012 conference.