I’ve recently implemented the SCRUM methodology at work (C2C Systems).
It has been a really interesting process, has taught us some very valuable lessons and provided a number of benefits :
- There are many things that go into the development process that people do not view as (or understand are) part of the software development lifecycle (SDLC). During the first couple of Sprints we didn’t have all of these surrounding tasks in the backlog so our time estimates for getting features complete were a good deal off. However this was made visibile by the daily SCRUM meeting very quickly and sorted out on the subsequent Sprints.
- Developers really appreciate the kind of visibility it gives them of what is going on. What is left to do and in what sort of timescale, also what the objective for the Sprint is and the (non changing) list of tasks for the Sprint are.
- It doesn’t work well when you have interdependant tasks in the same Sprint. OK, maybe one or two would be OK but lots of dependancies are a bad thing. All design and investigation work should be in the first (or early) Sprint and the coding in the subsequent (or later) Sprints.
- It ‘s incredible the visibility you get of Impediments. …and the difference it makes when you ‘fix’ them. Fixing them also demonstrate to the development team you are serious about helping them be successful.
- It ‘s incredible the difference it makes when you focus everyone on SCRUM work. For example we got a little behind during one Sprint, we focused all developers on the Sprint work, barred interruptions (I triaged all Support Escalations for the day) and the productivity for the day went through the roof.
- Our estimating (of timescales) improved beyond recognition. Instead of ‘Oh that’ll take about 2 weeks’, you get accurate estimates (because the developers know that you have all components of the SDLC in the ‘plan’ they feel more comfortable providing accurate timescales instead of trying to cover their arses). I measure the delta between time worked on a task and the time estimated, then add all those together for all tasks and generate a percentage figure – last Sprint was 98% accuracy in our estimating
Here are some links that I found useful when planning / implementing SCRUM.
- Mountain Goat Software
- Control Chaos
- Scrum Alliance
- Scrum (Management) Wiki
- Scrum (Development) Wiki
and here is a sample Excel spreadsheet I use for planning and tracking our SCRUM projects.