Agile Project Management with Scrum (Microsoft Professional)

This book is a sales pitch for agile project management, not a book on how to use it. There is chapter after chapter with the same format. 1) describe long list of problems company has, 2) implement agile 3) magic happens. There is a small amount of information on agile and how to use it.

As a newly appointed ScrumMaster I have chosen this title to gain overview of the methodology. The book indeed gave me basics. Examples and stories helped me to build up my own approach (and maybe to avoid some troubles). Now I run the scrum process and through its iterations I improve myself. However, it is not an in depth manual or how to" cookbook. Gaining proficiency is left on your own work experience or some of suggested training courses. For me the book was fine and I would recommend it. I am only in doubt whether the pricing is set appropriately.

This book provides a simple introduction to Scrum. Author briefly explains basic Scrum concepts based on real life case studies. However this book is not sufficient to start practicing Scrum in real projects. You will need at least a Scrum Master training course in order to fully understand Scrum techniques.

Coming from PMI PMP background I have noticed that the author does not understand the foundations of "traditional project management". For example on page 88 he draws a Network Diagram and refers to it as to Gantt chart... He also very often mentions PERT charts as one of his painful memories from waterfall projects.
Being such an expert in software project management Ken should know that there is no PERT chart, just the PERT technique (for estimating the duration of a task). PERT chart is a name of Network Diagram, wrongly introduced by Microsoft Project. It really strikes me how many people confuse MS Project with project management.

All in all, this book is worth reading if you need a brief introduction to Scrum.

This is a great book on Scrum. In a light, enjoyable series of anecdotes about real-world projects, it succeeds in communicating the deeper principles rather than just the surface-level practices.

I am completely satisfied with the shipment and quality of the book. I would absolutely go back to this seller, if he has what I need.