During the fall of 2019, I got totally consumed (and sometimes drained and overwhelmed) by an exciting new Scrum book project. Having finalized the manuscript I finally feel comfortable sharing more information about it.
O’Reilly Media envisioned adding a book about Scrum to their “97 Things” series and got in touch with me (through Dave West of Scrum.org). By the end of August 2019, we decided to get started. I had the honor of curating the initiative. We agreed on calling our new book “97 Things every Scrum practitioner should know.” The goal was to compose a book consisting of 97 essays with diverse angles and perspectives on the Scrum framework from contributors globally.
I had no idea what I was getting into, or how much 97 actually is (a lot, I discovered), or where it would take me. But I liked the challenge. Once into it, I liked it so much that I decided to make it my main focus, holding off most other work request and re-ordering my existing plans. It turned out an exciting and insightful experience. I had the pleasure of collecting, editing and ordering essays about Scrum from seasoned Scrum practitioners across the planet on behalf of the many seeking Scrum practitioners out there.
In a few incremental waves, we ended up inviting 129 people to contribute, not minded by their title, organization or position. We invited potential contributors for their insights, past or on-going, and the potential value of sharing them with fellow practitioners. In the end, 69 authors accepted our invitation and delivered one or more articles (indeed, an average of 1.406 articles per author). I cannot thank them enough for going through the effort of writing down their thoughts, perspectives and experience, and their willingness to make them available for Scrum practitioners worldwide.
Find an overview of them, alphabetically sorted, in the PDF “97 Things every Scrum practitioner should know (Contributors).” Or try to recognize them on following overview:
In the current version of the manuscript, the 97 essays are grouped and ordered* along following themes:
- “Start, Adopt, Repeat.” holds 11 Things.
- “Products Deliver Value.” holds 11 Things.
- “Collaboration Is Key.” holds 10 Things.
- “Development Is Multi-faceted Work.” holds 12 Things.
- “Events, Not Meetings.” holds 10 Things.
- “Mastery Does Matter.” holds 12 Things.
- “People, All Too Human.” holds 8 Things.
- “Values Drive Behavior.” holds 6 Things.
- “Organizational Design.” holds 9 Things.
- “Scrum Off Script.” holds 8 Things.
I also owe a huge thank you to O’Reilly Media for the trust and the collaborative partnership, specifically to Chris Guzikowski and Ryan Shaw for initiating this endeavor and to Corbin Collins for sustaining it. More than being a king of punctuation, Corbin has impressively improved the language and clarity of quite some, if not all, of the 97 Things.
I look forward to keeping you updated on the publication date, which we will derive from our actual progress. It is not expected to be later than July 2020, and will probably be sooner. As we speak, O’Reilly and I are working really hard to turn my manuscript into a book available for you, dear reader.
I believe we will be able to connect the world of seasoned practitioners to the world of seekers through “97 Things every Scrum practitioner should know.”
Warm regards
Gunther Verheyen
independent Scrum Caretaker
December 2019
(updated February 2020)
