Scrum method

In the early days of software development the usual waterfall method used for product development turned out to be inefficient and problematic for the development teams. As software development is different from other kinds of projects e.g. building a house, where every detail has been planned in advance, software oriented project can be constantly changing along with the needs of the customer. It is can be difficult and complicated to describe to a programmer which functions you want in a program and how they should work and more than often the outcome of the project does not satisfy the customers need. It was therefore necessary to come up with a new method more fitted to the ever changing environment of software development projects. The method developed is called Scrum and is an iterative agile software development framework. By being agile, Scrum ensures that everyone involved in the task know where the project stands, what tasks are left and status of the ongoing tasks. Scrum encourages the team to share knowledge and helping each other to finish the task as fast as possible i.e. Scrum is therefore focused on fast output of the tasks and to adapt to changes in demand from the client or market. The output of the project is therefore customized solution which fulfills all of the clients needs.

History

The initial concept of Scrum was developed by Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka in their paper "The New New Product Development Game" which they published in 1986. In it, they came up with a new faster and more flexible approach to managing product development processes. They described using a rugby team, where the team passes the ball within to reach a common goal or in other words, the project team works together and help each other to reach the projects goal. In it they argue that teams do better when given goals instead of the usual tasks. The team would then figure out how to reach the goal and overcome obstacles to reach the goal in the most efficient way.

In the early 90's Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland began developing the Scrum method more and presented the method at the OOPSLA(Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages & Applications) conference in 1990 along with the paper “SCRUM Software Development Process”. In it they provided principles to develop and sustain complex software products which were used to create the Scrum framework.

Concept

The definition scrum provided by the Scrum guide is the following : A framework within which people can address complex adaptive problems, while productively and creatively delivering products of the highest possible value. Scrum is not a technique or a process but rather a framework which provides you with processes and techniques. It is lightweight, easy to understand but difficult to master. The framework contains roles, events, artifacts and rules which can be applied to the Scrum team.