Scrum Master v Project Manager

[aussielong]

What I'm hearing here is customers and dev teams not understanding how you construct a sprint cycle.
You shouldn't have a sprint deadline imposed unconditionally. You should get your customer to tell you what elements from the product backlog they want in that cycle, you estimate it, then you tell 'em how long it will take.
They come back and say "that's too long to see something" (I know, don't get me started) so you ask them what functionality they want to take out to bring it in within their time frame.
It can be tough (and you have to be), but that's how it should work. No victimhood allowed. No sirreee.

If they ask you for some extra stuff and you pull out the "what functionality would you like me to drop" line - they will go and ask someone else who is willing to tell them what they want to hear to get ahead of you. You risk getting sidelined.

Within reason I think its better to try "I can do all of that but quality will suffer in these areas". This is where you increase risk. Keep pointing that out during scrums. It's the managers call whether to take that risk and he/she should manage the risk by working out Plan B.

[Freamon]

The idea of Agile and formal qualifications seems like a bit of a contradiction in terms.

[Lockhouse]

If they ask you for some extra stuff and you pull out the "what functionality would you like me to drop" line - they will go and ask someone else who is willing to tell them what they want to hear to get ahead of you. You risk getting sidelined.

Within reason I think its better to try "I can do all of that but quality will suffer in these areas". This is where you increase risk. Keep pointing that out during scrums. It's the managers call whether to take that risk and he/she should manage the risk by working out Plan B.

In theory, with Scrum the idea is it's the feature set that's the variable, not the quality or the time which are fixed. You do what you can, anything not done or completed in the Scrum goes back into the project backlog. It's the project owner who prioritises and maintains the list of stories.

Not saying that's what I do or what happens in the real world, that's just the theory.

[Lewis]

Can anyone recommend some good Scrum/Agile books?