So you've decided to try Scrum as your development methodology. Good! To start off on Scrum I relied primarily on these two documents: "Scrum in Five Minutes" by Softhouse [PDF]. It really is what it claims: A simple, understandable guide to the roles, responsibilities, and processes defined by Scrum. For my first few sprints and roadshows I would present this document first to get everyone speaking the same language. "Scrum and XP from the Trenches" by Henrik Kniberg [PDF]. A 142-page ultra-detailed ......

I think we've all been there. There's that one big present under the Christmas tree wrapped in the fancy paper. Maybe it's just from mom to you, or from the grandparents. Who cares? It's HUGE! You patiently wait through the socks, Pop Rocks and Big League chew combo, and Mad Libs (really? for Christmas?) to tear into that bad boy. Paper flying, hands a blur, you open it and find . . . Hmm. It's not quite what you pictured. In fact, it looks a little used. It's not that is bad, but. . . Then it hits ......

After narrowly surviving my umpteenth project using the Waterfall method it was obvious something had to change. It turned out the major rewrite we'd done wasn't such an ordeal for the coders on the team. What they really disliked boiled down to three things: They didn't like being dependent on others for their success. They didn't like not knowing what the other team members were working on. They didn't like the negative feedback and/or scope creep during each full-scale demo to our customers. One ......