I just read your comment again, and I want to add this to my other reply:
I would say the top, most useful, make-or-break practice that I would say is most essential to Scrum succeeding is a combination of:
* 1 point ≈ 1 hour of work
and
* no task above 3 points, try to only have 1-point tasks
Coincidentally, this process is what took the longest in our planning meetings, because the coders sat down and planned out the tasks, kind of the way you would in an algorithms course.
The payoff is that our estimates, after the first couple of sprints, were dead on, and there was very little "discovered work" mid-sprint. No midnight oil. And no corner-cutting.
I would say the top, most useful, make-or-break practice that I would say is most essential to Scrum succeeding is a combination of:
* 1 point ≈ 1 hour of work
and
* no task above 3 points, try to only have 1-point tasks
Coincidentally, this process is what took the longest in our planning meetings, because the coders sat down and planned out the tasks, kind of the way you would in an algorithms course.
The payoff is that our estimates, after the first couple of sprints, were dead on, and there was very little "discovered work" mid-sprint. No midnight oil. And no corner-cutting.