I just spent the last 4 days in a course for my project; the last 2 were a
Scrum course.
The Scrum course was really good. It's a new process for us, and it's sure going to need adaptation from us, but it really sounds like a fun way to do things. I especially like the "protection" that the Srum master is supposed to provide to the developers, shielding them from disturbances (including management...). Also, the realistic side of evaluating and planning on every sprint, the evaluation by the team of the various features (the planning poker game), the intense communication with the product owner, etc... It sounds like a very realistic and down-to-earth process.
A few year ago we tried and introduce XP (extreme programming) to the team, but there was quite a lot of opposition. In the last project, we used a mix of the corporate waterfall model and a RUP-like iterative process. It was quite efficient. As far as I can say, the blend of Scrum that we will use now is a refinement on that theme, and will provide us with additional tools to make that more efficient. Also, we hope that management will eventually understand that iterative processes are the only ones which reflect real life.
Update:
I forgot to mention that I managed to get a book (I didn't steal it, they actually gave a few copies away) of what seems to be a very good introductory book to Scrum:
"Agile Software Development with Scrum"
Ken Schwaber, Mike Beedle
Prentice Hall
ISBN 0-13-067634-9
Print | posted on Thursday, February 22, 2007 9:27 PM