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Half-way through reading your article and I have to ask… What are the books/articles and resources you read for SCRUM? I seem to be in a sweatshop that uses “SCRUM” but I see no benefit’s from it and on another floor their version of SCRUM seems to be different but similarly I see no benefits. Perhaps it is implemented incorrectly here so I am curious now to read more on it.
Hey, thanks for the comment! I link to a couple books at the end of the article you might find useful/motivating. If you’ll permit a long-ish answer, one big principle of “team” Scrum is a self-organized, empowered team:
It’s a very “bottom-up” organizational style, and it seems the success of team Scrum really depends on it. Unfortunately, it also seems very possible for teams to skip all these principles and just add the Scrum jargon—sprint! stand-up! scrum leader!—to a normal top-down management style, call it “Scrum!” and nothing really changes. But with those principles in place, I think it can be really powerful—and enjoyable. That’s my 2 cents anyways!
Great post, I am going to implement this next week. I have been having issues staying on task for sometime now.
Thanks!
Super helpful. Thank you!
Thanks for putting this together, it is a great article. Really helpful!
Thanks for your post, I think JIRA is a great tool for Scrum, it has the entire system of Scrum, task board & sprint etc.
Thanks!!! I use Trello to organize the Task Board!
Thanks for your insights, Alex. I am a ScrumMaster in a huge scaled Scrum environment. Three days ago I was on a Scaled Professional Scrum (Nexus) training, so this post completes my view from Scrum-for-one to scaled Scrum. 
One method I would suggest is Story Mapping. It moves the one dimensional view of your Backlog, a simple ordered list, to a view with several meaningful levels and better release planning possibility. It improves product management at lot. If combined with BDD it gives you more formalized user stories and also easier to create test case descriptions and could lead to test automation.
Great article! Not only it describes the Scrum method at length but you also throw in your personal experience. Thanks for sharing!
I was struggling with the concept of a one-person scrum operation a few months back. The idea of video recording yourself for standup is an excellent idea. Thanks for the tips!
No problem, glad you found them helpful!
A tad late to the party but wanted to thank you for the article Alex.
@saterial: I agree in many workplaces SCRUM is just for show and thus has no benefit other than showing management that you’re working the SCRUM way.
From my experience SCRUM is like a religion (not meant as an insult to anyone!). It only works if the people using it believe it’ll work and they have the room to actually practice it properly (partly by making this room for themselves and partly by their management).
Currently I’m at a company where they use “SCRUM”. The daily standups are a short chat, there is no story time. The retrospective well not sure what that is supposed to be. The sprint plan is done performed but not properly. Tasks are very abstract and often 1 or more sprints (the max I’ve seen is 8 sprints!) long without splitting them up. Add a lot of ADHOC work to demotivate the team further and there you go. No one takes it seriously and the religion dies a slow death 
So yeah it only works detrimental.
HOWEVER: if you really commit, implement it and make sure everyone stays in the game. You will start to to notice that you go from running without knowing where to and what for. To actually planning where to go mozy on over do your thing and be happy about it. The benefit of SCRUM is creating a state of mind, It shows you there is progress and giving you palatable chunks of work making you calm, organized, “happy” and more motivated. Resulting in more efficient work.
Hey, @davyvaessen, I’m glad you liked the article. I definitely understand what you’re saying about how Scrum can be misused. (Or rather, a less effective project management style is used with some Scrum terminology applied!) When implemented well—and with buy-in from the workers on up—I totally agree that Scrum becomes a bit of a state of mind. It feels great to have both big-picture direction and defined work for the moment. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and experiences on the challenges and benefits of Scrum! -Alex