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Does SCRUM work?

I work on a small incubation team in Microsoft Research, Cambridge. Our projects vary widely. The smallest is about 6 man-months of work. The largest so far is about 3 man-years of work.

I'm used to the traditional Microsoft development process from my days in Windows:

  1. Gather and formalize requirements
  2. Draw up and review an overall product feature spec
  3. Write up and review an overall architecture spec
  4. Write up and review individual component design specs
  5. Write up and review implementation specifications
  6. Write up and review test plan specifications
  7. Implement the features, doing unit testing (and formal testing as time allows) until you hit code complete
  8. Have a LONG stabilization and testing phase, including design changes as needed. This phase is usually several times longer than hitting code complete.
  9. throughout (1-8), status meetings, status meetings, status meetings

This process is a necessary evil for some types of products, but is overkill for my tiny incubation efforts. I take an abbreviated specification approach, shrinking the design phase (but still requiring it), skipping test specs, and then combining implementation and testing execution.

I have heard about SCRUM from a few places, but I'm not sure it applies to my size of project either. And, even for projects it does apply to, it's unclear to me whether it's really of benefit over our old, admittedly gargantuan process.

Do you have opinions or direct experience? If so, please feel free to post a comment here, else email me directly. As I move forward, I'll also share my opinions here.

Published Thursday, May 04, 2006 8:23 AM by John L. Miller

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# re: Does SCRUM work?

Here is a little story: I am the technical lead of a project that was already in progress during approximately 7 months. Today we had a meeting that almost lasted for 4 hours where the customer suddenly decided that one of the biggest features was not really what they had in mind. If we would have used the SCRUM framework these kind of feedback will be given during the Sprint Review meeting and then we would have only lost the work of the past sprint (30-days). The SCRUM framework can be used for all projects but it is useful for SCRUM teams ranging from 5 to 9 people. The biggest problem is that you need to convince the stakeholders of the possibilities of this emperical approach as they are used to work with defined processes. After about maybe 2 or 3 sprints they will start to see the benefits of the SCRUM framework. It is definitely worth trying out but you need a SCRUM master with steel balls :). Just go for it!
Thursday, May 04, 2006 8:41 AM by Gabriel Lozano-Morán

# re: Does SCRUM work?

I just posted a quick take on our experience to date.

Post is here: http://www.codevista.com/2006/05/03/scrum-at-work/

Where are into our 3rd Sprint, and have had tremendous success.

I definitely think it is worthy of consideration. It may not be the right solution for every team / org / project - but it has huge potential if used in the right places and ways.

Thursday, May 04, 2006 10:52 AM by Roger Oney

# re: Does SCRUM work?

SCRUM: Sounds good
But I would prefer Microsoft development process. If you have a solid use-case, the engineers would not go wrong in interpreting it; maybe if they do not understand something or want the functionality changed, there are always change requests. I do not particularly see the advantage of having a meeting every 15 minutes especially if everyone is not self-disciplined it might go on forever.

I have myself worked with the following approach:
1. Have Use-cases ready before the developers start looking at it.
2. High Level brain storming diagrams.
3. High Level Technical Specification.
4. In-depth design of the components in UML with every object and sequence necessary.
5. Developing the current component while simultaneously designing the next component.
6. Integration and Testing and more Iterations till code freeze
7. Bug fixing till ZBB
Friday, May 05, 2006 10:17 AM by Srikar

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