More on Scrum

It is one thing to learn something like Scrum, and to go back to the organization to apply it. I was in such situation and it is really a fabulous learning experience for me and the organization I work with.

To summarize the learning,  here is my side of the story. We are attempting very much to apply scrum within the team and within a management environment that base on the waterfall model. It is a difficult part trying to convince the management of what to expect. The 2nd part that differs greatly that the management had a harder time embracing is that: The work that developer commits is based on their estimation. This does not help at all really if you focus very much into the benefits of it.

The solution to the above 2 is that, while internal to the team we practice Scrum, externally, we generate reasonable data and information records for reporting purpose. As for the second issue, the developer commitment will be detailed out as well as time management system continue to be used and required to be filled by all staff.



In addition we had some tools us in the form of VSTS 2008 which has a Scrum template build for those who work on Scrum. We started without, but eventually start to populate the required records such as sprint, start date, target hours of work, planned hours to work and working hours available. The result was using this, we were able to churn out reports much faster and we are able to trace our progress like never before. Though the drawback is that there is a lot of stuff to key in for every sprint.



In the quarterly forum I was also able to meet up with an exert who helped in imparting to me some great ideas if implementation. Mike Sutton from wizewerx.com was the man who gave us the insights.


In a nutshell to move from a waterfall to scrum model, follow the following steps:
1. find a pm, developer, sponsor who is interested
2. find a pilot project
3. do it

~~ Show me the data.