(Professional Expertise Distilled) Stacia Viscardi - The Professional Scrum Masters Handbook-Packt Publishi-20

Prévia do material em texto

Preface
Technical projects are like an old horse I had when I was a kid; they'll flip you 
when you least expect it! Yet the element of surprise is actually a surety in our 
technical world. Agile methods, with their focus on helping teams deliver quality 
features and products quickly and flexibly, have drawn me in as a way to help 
tame the bucking horse, the element of surprise in technical projects, and Scrum, 
in particular, as a gateway to discover which day-to-day processes and working 
styles fit best for a particular team in a particular setting.
A ScrumMaster, like a good rider, must know when to go easy on the horse, when 
to use the spur, when to pull the reins, and when to just hang up the bridle and 
put the saddle away for the day. There are nearly a quarter million CSMs now, and 
many more to follow. While this is great news and represents a steady interest in 
Agile methods, we are in the soup. There is rampant misuse and misunderstanding 
of Scrum, which diminishes and possibly eliminates the amazing possibilities that 
people discover by using it correctly. I've observed too many examples of good 
Scrum gone bad—times in which tough, courageous, persistent ScrumMasters 
could have really made a difference, but didn't; times when product owners could 
have been a bit more involved; times when teams hid poor quality and shouldn't 
have. Additionally, with the advent of several newer methods, the terms Iteration 
Manager and Agile Master are floating around and representing an increasingly 
watered-down, dangerous version of what the true ScrumMaster was meant to do. 
That sucks, and makes me sad—and spurs me to action. I don't want the original 
vision for ScrumMaster to become lost in the methodology/certification wagon 
train; I want people to reach their full potential and believe that Scrum is one way 
to facilitate that.
	Preface