Andy's Mind

I was talking with someone about Scrum and other methodologies the other day and he said something like this: “all methodologies are like cookbooks, you don’t use all the recipies – in fact implementing them to the letter is not good, you should skip some parts“. It then dawned on me – and I quickly pointed it out – that Scrum is so simple there is hardly anything to skip.

If you look at the hard, “methodology-ish” bits then Scrum is just three roles (Team, Product Owner, Scrum Master), three meetings (Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint Review) and three lists to maintain (Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog – with tasks and burndown chart – and Impediments). Not much to throw out – and nothing that would make any sense to.

I can, however, very much understand that people with experience in traditional project management approach are wary of implementing a methodology in full. PMBOK has a few hundred pages, RUP is so complex just understanding it takes ages and Prince-2 smells of centuries-old british bureacracy it was created for. All call for complex documentation and processes, all assume static models and formalized communication.

Indeed, the burden they call for can almost kill all the productivity in an organization. No wonder people learned the hard way that it is better not to follow everything those heavy books prescribed.

We’re well into our first iteration of the development project with all Scrum methods in place. We have a proper sprint backlog now, with tasks, kept in ScrumWorks. There are daily status meetings called Daily Scrums. I have to say that I do see the benefits already. Even though the team is a bit too small and I’m not always on site – so I’m trying to moderate over Skype, which doesn’t work as well.

The biggest benefit is, I think, a noticeable improvement in communication. Now I really do know every day where the team is, what was accomplished, what wasn’t, what’s in their way – and what chances we have to deliver on our promises. I don’t need any reports now. Even between the Daily Scrums I can always open the ScrumWorks and see what has changed. I hope the team feels the same way about it.

This improvement led me to see even more how much the whole management team could also benefit from better communication. A weekly scrum meeting could do wonders for a bunch of people, who spend most of their time traveling around the region, doing various things and not talking to each other.

Good, frequent communication in a team is necessary. Even more so in a dispersed one. But unless all those involved are from similar backgrounds, age groups etc. – and on top of that like each other – such a communication won’t appear on its own. It has to be cleverly fostered within a team. Scrum gives an excellent, simple tool to do so – the Daily Scrum meeting.

I’m focusing these days on implementing SCRUM practices in our team. At first I was doing it slowly, by for example introducing a requests handling process that included a public backlog and monthly iterations (Sprints). Judging by the results I think we are ready to fully embrace it. (more…)

That the traditional telco’s business model is going down the drain is no news for some time now. The important question is what is going to replace it. (more…)