Todd Miller and Ryan Ripley are the authors of the Leanpub book Fixing Your Scrum: Practical Solutions to Common Scrum Problems.

In this episode of the Frontmatter podcast, Ryan and Todd share their individual career journeys to becoming expert trainers in the Scrum framework and their deep insights in how to improve when things go wrong in your organization.

Ryan, based in Indiana, reflects on his time working in various industries, including work on medical devices, and the pivotal moment when he was introduced to Scrum in 2010 during a training session with Ken Schwaber, co-creator of Scrum. Ryan describes how this experience transformed his approach to project management and led him to embrace Scrum as a core practice in his work.

Similarly, Todd, based in Maryland, recounts his shift from software development to becoming a product owner and his introduction to Scrum, which helped him streamline processes in various projects.

The episode covers the origin and evolution of Scrum, which began with the 1986 Harvard Business Review article “The New New Product Development Game” by Takeuchi and Nonaka. This work inspired the creation of the Scrum framework by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland in the mid-1990s.

Ryan and Todd explain how Scrum helps organizations tackle complex work by providing a flexible framework with key elements such as Scrum events, accountabilities, and artifacts. They discuss the importance of roles in Scrum, and how these roles collaborate to deliver value incrementally.

One of the key insights from the interview is how Scrum can go wrong in organizations when it is misused or misunderstood. Todd highlights examples of “bad Scrum” or “zombie Scrum,” where teams claim to be using Scrum but are actually applying old waterfall-style project management techniques. They explain how their book offers practical solutions to help teams identify and correct these issues.

The discussion also touches on the values of Scrum—focus, openness, commitment, courage, and respect — and how these values underpin successful Scrum implementations.

Ryan and Todd emphasize the importance of applying these values, particularly when dealing with challenges such as miscommunication, hidden issues in organizations, and the pressure to deliver.

In the final part of the interview, Ryan and Todd discuss the process of writing Fixing Your Scrum and the challenges they faced releasing the book just before the COVID-19 pandemic. They share their journey of getting the rights back from their publisher to update and re-release the book, and how they are now using LeanPub to promote and manage its ongoing success.

This interview was recorded on September 4, 2024.

The full audio for the interview is here: https://s3.amazonaws.com/leanpub_podcasts/FM302-Todd-Miller-and-Ryan-Ripley-2024-09-04.mp3. The Frontmatter podcast is available on our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/leanpub, in Apple Podcasts here https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/frontmatter/id517117137, and almost everywhere else people listen to podcasts.

This interview has been edited for conciseness and clarity.

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