The SCRUM development method

[mouser]

What is Scrum?

• Scrum is an iterative, incremental process for developing any product or managing any work. It produces a potentially shippable set of functionality at the end of every iteration. It's attributes are:
• Scrum is an agile process to manage and control development work.
• Scrum is a wrapper for existing engineering practices.
• Scrum is a team-based approach to iteratively, incrementally develop systems and products when requirements are rapidly changing
• Scrum is a process that controls the chaos of conflicting interests and needs.
• Scrum is a way to improve communications and maximize co-operation.
• Scrum is a way to detect and cause the removal of anything that gets in the way of developing and delivering products.
• Scrum is a way to maximize productivity.
• Scrum is scalable from single projects to entire organizations. Scrum has controlled and organized development and implementation for multiple interrelated products and projects with over a thousand developers and implementers.
• Scrum is a way for everyone to feel good about their job, their contributions, and that they have done the very best they possibly could.

http://www.controlchaos.com/about/

im posting about scrum after it got mentioned here in a discussion of it being used recently at yahoo:
http://www.shmula.com/159/scrum-at-yahoo

[Rover]

A good!  More academics solving the worlds problems...

15 min. daily scrum meeting!  Get real.  This will not happen in any corp. anywhere. 

[colonelz]

A good!  More academics solving the worlds problems...

15 min. daily scrum meeting!  Get real.  This will not happen in any corp. anywhere. 

-Rover (July 25, 2006, 10:28 PM)

Sorry, but we have used this method for some projects. And it worked very well. It's good for small teams of about or less than 5 people and for smaller projects lasting only some weeks. It can be used also for bigger teams if you seperate groups (coders, networkers, etc.). It can be a real world solution for real people.

[Rover]

Sorry, but we have used this method for some projects. And it worked very well. It's good for small teams of about or less than 5 people and for smaller projects lasting only some weeks. It can be used also for bigger teams if you seperate groups (coders, networkers, etc.). It can be a real world solution for real people.

-colonelz (July 26, 2006, 11:14 AM)

Just about anything will work for teams of 5 or less for a few weeks. 

I have a general disdain for academics who solve the worlds problems from within their classrooms.  I lived through the 80's and 90's where all the MBA's practiced the Managment Style of the Week as proclaimed by the "Experts" at Harvard, etc.   It was crap then it's crap now.

There is no single answer to the problem.  It depends on the talents and attitudes of your staff.  It depends on the product and the ability to transfer the vision.  Scrum looks like another attempt to micro manage developers and not allow them to think about the big picture.

[mouser]

I don't tend to follow any of these textbook strategies like scrumm and extreme or agile programming, BUT i think you can learn a lot by trying to formulate such approaches, and reading comprehensive strategy outlines like this, and trying to understand why they work and when they fail.