Even the creator of the scrum process, Jeff Sutherland, would not have anticipated the current popularity of Scrum today when he invented it in 1993. Jeff borrowed the term “scrum” from a study published in Harvard Business Review in 1986, written by Takuchi and Nonaka. Now, in 2012, it is the most adopted development methodology by corporations.
We at Soffront are very excited to have adopted the Scrum process, and we expect to stay agile and competitive in the demanding market. Sprints are progressing very well in all departments, including development, support, sales, marketing and professional services. Early prognosis is very encouraging.
The autonomy, individuality, and freedom to work are what we hope teams look forward to with the scrum process implementation. Being a globally dispersed team, the primary goal is to ensure that everyone is on board and willing to try out the new methodologies. Meetings are held over Skype or GoToMeetings, and backlogs are maintained through Google Docs.
The main impediments have been the demand of the training about the Scrum process, conveying a message of empowerment to team members, and discouraging interference from management.
There have been mixed reviews from teams about implementing scrum, but the kinks are being resolved on a daily basis. We look forward to constant improvement in team velocity and performance as we sprint.
The implementation continues to spark animated discussions over tea breaks. The team has been very enthusiastic about Scrum, and is hard at work implementing Scrum’s best practices.