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Week 4: Scrum: Part 1

The book "Scrum: Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time" is the story of a method of management that grew out of the software industry over the past two decades.  It gives us a new way to run our teams with simple, yet hard-to-master rules about how we work.  The first few chapters focus on what is wrong with traditional management and why focusing on improving the function of teams yields the highest return on our effort.

Copy and paste the most interesting five questions below into a new blog post (at least one per chapter).  As you read the first three chapters, write your response to each question below the question.  At the bottom of the post, summarize what you learned.  Tag the post with "SC1".  During the commenting days, write a comment on two other people's posts.

• Chapter 1: Explain the planning process for the new FBI system "Sentinal".  How was a Gantt chart used in the process?  What is Sutherland's beef with this kind of planning?
• Chapter 1: Sutherland explains the 80/20 rule: 80% of the value often comes from 20% of the work.  In the last year of FRC, what were some of the 20% jobs that added tremendous value to the team?
• Chapter 1: At the end of every sprint (2 weeks in this case), the Sentinal team presented a working demo to stakeholders across the FBI.  Why is this necessary and important to do?
• Chapter 2: "OODA (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act)", "inspect and adapt", and "PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act)" are all getting at the same core idea.  Explain this idea and how it relates to the way a team functions.
• Chapter 2: Explain how we would implement the paper airplane example to practice a OODA cycle at a team meeting.  What would be the point?
• Chapter 3: What evidence does Sutherland bring up when justifying a focus on team improvement over individual improvement?  Do you think that should apply to our FRC team?  In what cases does it not?
• Chapter 3: The best teams are transcendent, autonomous, and cross-functional.  In your OWN words, what does this actually look like on an FRC team?  It may help to reference examples from the West Point, NPR, and Special Forces case studies.
• Chapter 3: Explain the "Fundamental Attribution Error" and why it is so destructive.  Reference the Milgrim Obidience Experiment in your summary.
• End with a summary of what you learned.