Less extreme Scrum

Agile software development has often seen as an foreign element leading to chaos in Virginia Satir’s model. Current situation of Scrum is indeed somehow chaotic. Key persons are arguing against each other and it has been very demanding to define what Scrum actually is? Ken Schwaber’s ScrumGuide is our current definition but it is not ready for a Scrum Alliance’s multi-choice exam.

There are many different versions or variations of Scrum which may or may not be under a common framework. Common thing in these is that they are more realistic and less extreme. It has been visible for a while that radical extreme Scrum has given space to real life. Some of these modifications clearly belong under the title “Scrum but” but some others are coming from Schwaber and Sutherland, who are the authorities who define Scrum.

In the London Gathering Schwaber introduced product backlog refactoring meetings where team collaborates with the product owner to create actionable product backlog items. In Munich Gathering Sutherland emphasized that the user story must be ready for the Sprint, which means that a good enough specification exists to continue.

The main difference here between Rational Unified Process and Scrum is in the collaboration between the developers and the product owner. In RUP there are strong roles and artifacts that are just handed to next group of people. Product owners’ role has got more content by the discussion of release planning – still obscurely defined time-box of Scrum.We are now also openly talking about undone features and telling that team might not be able to complete a user story to the point that it can released. So we add a stabilization Sprint where undone features are completed before the release.

Situational leadership model was my favorite in the 80’s. In addition to Tucman’s model it was also well visible in the Munich Gathering. Actually that means that we have to admit that leaders can’t just assume that teams self-organize when they are just empowered to do so. Sometimes directive forms of leadership are needed though we understand the drawbacks of command and control.

Schwaber’s integration teams that he introduced in his book Enterprise and Scrum have not been heard much in talks of the Scrum people. The case studies of real life projects tell clearly that defined organizations are used, not just self-organizing flocks of business and technical people. The question of scaling agility is interesting and clearly not solved in a way that theoreticians and practitioners can both accept. Actually, I would like to asses (or rather measure) different agile solutions instead of arguing about right or wrong Scrum.

Scrum gathering Munich

I am taking part to Scrum gathering this week. This is fully booked though the economy is down. The talks that I have heard so far are encouraging and enjoyable. I am here to see friends and to hear their stories and experiences. There are many issues that I should rise (in this blog and otherwise) but I the thing near my heart is collaborative design. Developers are still struggling with functional organizations. Product owners don’t talk with the developers and we have subgroups of developers who communicate only with specifications. This might be because of the early phase of the agile adoption but understanding the cross-functional teams might be difficult too.

Losing weight with Scrum

Scrum is simple and hard. So is losing weigth for the majority of people.

The secret of losing weight is that you eat less. That is that simple, but doing it is hard.We can apply empirical process control to control one’s weight. Let’s have a daily weighting every morning to create a burn down chart of your body mass. Then you tell your group of peers what did you actually eat yesterday and what are you planning to eat today. This is basically how weightwatchers do it.

Eating less is hard and so is software development. Deciding what do (that is called prioritizing), limiting work to capacity under pressure and keeping the commitment are tough things to do in real life.

Disclosure: My own weight is normal and has always been.