Although Scrum has become an integral software project management tool in many organizations, not all adoptions have gone well-or as well as they could have. By examining the business, technology, and cultural issues that block successful Scrum adoption, Rob Sabourin offers you the knowledge and tools you need to get the most out of your Scrum practices. Explore with Rob the organizational issues that he's encountered-inability to overcome corporate inertia and internal resistance to change-and bring your own experiences to share. In addition to organization issues, some teams fail due to internal issues-the absentee product owner that allows teams to run amok, lack of tester involvement in sprint planning, failing to understand product priorities, and more. Learn how wedging old metrics programs into new Scrum frameworks distorts management's perception of progress and productivity.

You've heard the hype about Scrum: 300% increases in productivity, huge reductions in defects, happy employees, and delighted customers. You wonder-is this really possible just by holding daily stand-up meetings and having something potentially shippable at the end of each sprint? Mitch Lacey shares the mostly untold secrets that make these kinds of results not only possible but likely. He explains critical Scrum practices-promiscuous pairing, refactoring, continuous integration, and more-and reveals why it's crucial to define what "done" really means for your team and stakeholders. Discover what the books don't tell you but you've begun to suspect: Just following the rules is not enough. If you are doing Scrum already and are struggling to move beyond your initial set of practices, or if you're making some progress and want to accelerate your results, make sure to attend this session.

If your Scrum practices-or any agile processes-aren't working as effectively as they might, this class may be just what you need! When teams have trouble executing their work processes, the root cause is often ambiguous definitions of boundary, authority, role, or task-what Dan Mezick calls BART definitions. Although the Scrum framework, effectively implemented, provides excellent BART definitions and structure, sometimes theory and practice don't match. Dan describes how agile teams can employ BART analysis to uncover organizational problems that impact group performance. With a detailed BART analysis, you can identify and isolate effective ground rules for interactions among group members. These ground rules positively impact behavior and foster cultural improvements. In a lively discussion format, Dan introduces the fundamentals of BART analysis and applies it to Scrum.

The past decade brought the rise of the Agile movement, which split into two parts-Scrum, dominating the project management practices of agile; and XP, dominating its technical practices. Of the two, Scrum has had the greater impact as the industry quickly grasped its team-based benefits. During the rapid adoption of Scrum, technical practices were not being ignored. Programmers were gradually adopting XP and related development practices. In 2008, the Software Craftsmanship movement was founded as evidenced by the Manifesto for Software Craftsmanship. Driven by the tremendous improvement in programming accuracy and style that comes from agile principles and practices, this movement strives to "raise the bar" of professionalism and quality in the software industry. We can-and must-choose the disciplines, attitudes, and practices that comprise our profession, and then we must live within those bounds.