I just finished reading Henrik Kniberg‘s Scrum and XP from the Trenches. It’s a very good book, easy and fun to read, and well worth the time for anyone working with agile product development.
The writing is to the point, practical, and concise. Just the way I like it in technical books. No fluff, just stuff.
The positively surprising thing to me was how much of the things the author describe we already do at HubSpot. He and I obviously read many of the same data sources.
Nonetheless, there are some important points where we don’t do what he suggests. At least, not yet. We haven’t invested a lot in communications gear for / with folks who are geographically outside the main HubSpot office in Cambridge, but still 100% with us on the team in Scrum.
We have our own notion of a focus factor (actual velocity / available man-days), and we’ve been tracking it. But we call it something else in our sprint tracking statistics, and we don’t look at the historical average to adjust for the next sprint. That is one of those brilliant “duh, that’s obvious” insights I got from the book. Thanks, Henrik!
All-in-all, a good read. It’s not an introduction to Scrum / XP / agile development at all, but if you’re in the mix already, it’s useful.
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