February 07, 2007
What Is Scrum?
We had a great release of OYE in December, and going forward we have a lot planned for this year. While we have a lot of cool stuff planned we are changing the way we develop and test our products. We are moving toward Scrum/Agile/(insert buzzword here). When I hear the word scrum I think of the picture associated with this blog posting. Am I crazy? According to the Scrum web site, "Scrum is an agile, lightweight process that can be used to manage and control software and product development using iterative, incremental practices." From my experience in software development thus far here is a more accurate definition -> "A disordered or confused situation involving a number of people." Moving to a more iterative development and testing process requires a change in thinking (from the waterfall method) and few things, namely:
1. Flexibility and adaptability by the developers and testers.
2. Good communication between each member of the team.
3. Good project management.
4, High quality developers and testers.
5. Tools and metholdologies that will help get the work done.
For my project we definitely have items #4 and #3. We definitely don't have item #5 right now but we're working on it. And the rest (#1 and #2) remain to be seen. In practice it means that we will be developing and testing in iterations (sprints), and we'll have several iterations before we have a major release. I won't get into any more detail than that for now, but it is going to be a learning process for the entire team.