Duane Kenney’s brash, no-nonsense business book Why You Suck At Scrum explores how to improve at the project management framework known as scrum, in which self-organized teams sprint to tackle projects.

Kenney is a business coach who worked for decades in product development. He gears his book toward readers who already practice scrums. The book assumes familiarity and does not attempt to be an entry-level introduction.

The narrative diagnoses mistakes teams make at scrums, serving as a troubleshooting handbook for when organizations go through the motions without getting results. It identifies behaviors that undermine scrums, such as when product owners are just taking orders, showing how to get back on track to deliver on the broader Agile methodology’s promise of speed, quality, and predictability.

Chapters look at various follies and traps teams can fall into, such as micromanagement, lack of discipline, and one-size-fits-all approaches. Frequent subheads on drilled-down subjects, like sprint planning and daily standups, make it easy to find what one needs.

Although packed with business jargon like “KPIs” and “ROIs,” the writing is engaging and lively. Mid-level managers, for instance, maintain a “comforting” illusion,” “recoil in horror,” and “chafe” against “muscle memory.” It mentions Agile’s “intoxicating” promises and how some practitioners make a show of it, “like a desperate dieter whose pantry is filled with cookies, but who has carefully arranged a bowl of apples on the counter.”

A compelling read for product managers and other businesspeople, the book succeeds at showing how pain points—like endless project timelines or teams getting so obsessed with metrics that they no longer work as tools for adaptation— are symptoms of deeper problems and then presents remedies.

In short, Why You Suck at Scrum can help seasoned product managers conduct scrums and implement the Agile framework as effectively as possible without succumbing to dysfunction.

Also available in hardcover and ebook.