Scrum

First of all, I want to acknowledge the processes, principles, and frameworks around scrum are a net good. They've helped me and the teams I've worked on deliver exceptional projects time and again. But this isn't a review of scrum, it's a review of Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time.At face value I assumed this book would provide guidelines into the best practices behind scrum, and be more aligned to a book such as [b:Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days 25814544 Sprint How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days Jake Knapp https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1457284924l/25814544.SY75.jpg 45671240] (which I gave 5 stars). But this wasn't it.Scrum reads like a book written by someone who wants their legacy upheld in an autobiography of sorts. Time and again, the reader has to wade through examples where Sutherland has performed miracles with scrum. Examples of how military exercises and military figures helped inspire him to develop the methodologies... how the special forces (US military) used scrum to figure out how to kill people more efficiently (note: these weren't quite the words he used, but you can read between the lines). How scrum helped law enforcement arrest more people than ever before (note: these were pretty much the words he used, no reading between the lines required).The book opens with how the author was one of the best fighter pilots in Vietnam and quickly jumps to 9/11 and how scrum helped the FBI. That is the tone that the book set immediately.The 2 stars I'm giving this review feel more like a 1.5. The book certainly has some gems within, but you could get all of these by skipping to the end of each chapter and reading the key takeaways. Let me save you some time:* Planning is useful. Blindly following plans is stupid.* Inspect and adapt.* Change or die.* Fail fast so you can fix early.* Hesitation is death. Observe, Orient, Decide, Act.* Look outward for answers.* Great teams are cross-functional, autonomous, and empowered, with a transcendent purpose.* Don't guess. Plan, do, check, act.etc. etc. etc.A lot of death or dying chat, with attempted parallels between making a to-do app and most effectively committing war crimes in the Korean peninsula, or bootlicking psychologically abusive colonels.If you're looking for an instructional book that gets to the point with concrete, applicable examples, then this isn't the book for you. If you want a semi-autobiographical account of the man who singlehandedly saved the world with scrum, this is the one.Edit: Dropped to 1 star because, in retrospect, that half-star wasn't worth the rounding-up.