What do you think using Scrum in Non-Software Development area?

Question

I often ask if Scrum could be a good method to be used in other branches beside software development.

What do you think?

Answer 1

The principles (and the name!) of scrum from the football field; a scrum is basically a short session to make sure your team knows what everyone is up to. Any time you need to have a coordinated team, it helps to make sure that there's sufficient communication going on.

If you have a team where the members need to be coordinated, but don't typically communicate with each other very much while working, such as on a football field, then a scrum-based approach might work.

Answer 2

Yes, Scrum is essentially a process wrapper for any kind of development and could be used elsewhere as well.

Some examples are listed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_%28development%29#Extended_usage.

I think one constraint is the malleability of the product being produced. If the lead time from an idea to a working feature is long, you probably want to go with the less experimental Big Design Up Front route. Examples of highly malleable products besides software could be books or movies.

I have personally used a Scrum-like process for running the process of authoring scientific articles with multiple authors. Definitely better than the usual ad-hoc method :)

Answer 3

I think it is not a "new" idea: look at kanban, just-in-time, lean-managment, kaizen