Announcing the availability of the 4th edition of “Scrum — A Pocket Guide”
Uncovering better ways of explaining Scrum
In 2013 I ended up writing a book about Scrum for Van Haren Publishing, a publishing house specialized in IT publications based in the Netherlands. They wanted to add a book about Scrum to their portfolio. By that time, I had been applying Scrum for 10 years and in the two years preceding the actual creation of my book, I had been at the heart of the Scrum storm that was sweeping the Netherlands. And survived.
Writing a book about Scrum was anything but a long-lived hope, ambition or dream. Rather, it was an accidental and unplanned endeavor. At the same time, writing a simple book with as few lines of text as possible actually turned out taking a lot more time and energy than I thought it would take. I went through that effort in the time between ending my position as a Principal Consultant at a large international consulting company and embarking on my partnership journey with Ken Schwaber (Scrum co-creator) as the Director of the Professional Scrum Series at Scrum.org.
Imagine my surprise that more than a decade later the 4 thedition of my book is now globally available via diverse channels.
A journey in itself
My book was originally published in November 2013 in the ‘pocket guide’ series of “Best Practice” books of Van Haren and became thus known as “ Scrum — A Pocket Guide”. I gave my book the subtitle “A Smart Travel Companion” because I wanted to emphasize (a) that my book was small in size and (b) that Scrum is all about a journey, rather than about following a predefined route to reach some final, preset destination. Do note how that theme was explicitly reflected in the cover of the very first edition… ‘Journey’ in this context has a dual meaning for me: creating and evolving a product with Scrum is a journey while improving one’s understanding and use of Scrum is a journey too.
Next to describing in my book what the rules of the game of Scrum, I added some examples to show how these rules leave much room for a variety of tactics to play the game. I elaborated on this much misunderstood ‘incompleteness’ of Scrum by re-using my description of why we call Scrum a framework, not a methodology. I also added a historical perspective to Scrum and the Agile movement, thereby looking back as well as considering the future state of Scrum. In that first edition (2013) I described the Scrum Values while also already pointing out how the traditional three questions of the Daily Scrum are a good, but optional tactic (thus: not mandatory). Both topics and viewpoints made their way into the official Scrum Guide in 2016 and 2017 respectively.
In the meantime, evolving my pocket guide to Scrum has unexpectedly turned into a journey in itself. After the accidental creation of my pocket guide to Scrum, I decided to deliberately evolve it…a few times.
I updated the book to a second edition (2019) to offer a slightly more generic description of Scrum, with different words and other angles to the known set of rules. Part of the inspiration came from observing how Scrum was increasingly being adopted to tackle complex challenges, also in domains beyond software and new product development. What helped me was learning from my readers that explaining Scrum from its roots in software development makes sense for people in other domains too.
The focus of the third edition (2021) remained on clarifying the intent and purpose of the rules and roles in the framework, but with wordings that better served that purpose. I had learned from my readers that my book offered the, more than ever needed, foundational insights for people and their organizations to properly shape their Scrum, regardless of their domain or business. The third version also introduced some changes in the official terminology.
Yet, as the ‘doctrine of improvability’ says: “There must be a better way”.
As the balance of society keeps shifting from industrial labor to digital work, complexity and unpredictability keep increasing and so does the need for agility through a tangible framework like Scrum. I want to keep helping people and their organizations properly shape their Scrum, regardless of their domain or business. I want to keep helping people improve their understanding of Scrum, whether they aspire to start with Scrum or whether they need a compass to re-align along their journey.
My initial ambition with this fourth edition (2024) was to only slightly improve the cohesion of my description of the rules of the game. This is reflected in my revised Scrum Game Board: all aspects of Scrum (rules, principles and values) are now captured in that one visual. I made the aspect of a “Shared (visual) workspace”, previously shown on my Scrum Game Board, a part of the management principle of “Self-organization”.
But, as these things go with yours truly, I could not resist checking, updating and editing what I wrote before, even the parts I thought I would never touch again. It resulted in a complete make-over with much more refinements than originally anticipated and even a new section called “eXtreme Development” in the “Tactics for a Purpose” chapter.
It is quite amazing and humbling that the result of my accidental work in 2013, after more than a decade, is more alive than ever. Meanwhile, I will strive to keep uncovering better ways of explaining Scrum…
I thank Ken Schwaber for the foreword and his review for the original (2013) edition:
“Scrum — A Pocket Guide” is an extraordinarily competent book. It should be the de facto standard handout for all looking for a complete, yet clear overview of Scrum without being bothered by irrelevancies.
I thank all other reviewers for their much-appreciated feedback on the subsequent editions as well as all translators for their past and on-going efforts to spread my words in different languages. I thank all at Van Haren Publishing, and especially Ivo van Haren (owner) and Bart Verbrugge (editor), for allowing me and helping me to keep expressing my independent Scrum Caretaker view on Scrum.
With my book I aspire to offer you a companion along the way, all the way. I hope you open up my book again now in a while to find information that is most valuable to where you are on your journey at that time.
Love
Gunther Verheyen
independent Scrum Caretaker
24 September 2024
What else?
Next, in some upcoming blog notes, I plan to share a few excerpts from my updated book. Stay tuned.
I will also be translating my book to Dutch again, the home market of my publisher.
And, not to forget: every person attending my Professional Scrum classes gets a free signed copy of “Scrum — A Pocket Guide”.
Find an overview of my books and their translated versions in the “ Books “ section of my website.
Originally published at https://guntherverheyen.com on September 24, 2024.
