How to Transition to Scrum

Question

My team has grown fairly quickly from 1 to 5 over the last year or so and are very interested in changing our development style from Waterfall to a more iterative approach like Scrum. We work for a University and specialize in CRUD web apps for internal customers who are always changing requirements along the way.

So, my question is...How do we best implement Scrum techniques?

Supplemental concerns: Is it recommended to quit Waterfall "cold turkey" in order to facilitate the transition or do you feel a progressive approach is more effective? In other words, pick and choose some scrum techniques to implement now and add others further down the road?

Answer 1

IMHO a step by step approach is wiser. You should first start doing retrospectives at the end of each iteration / sprint (if you use iterations - if not, that should be step 0 :-)

On the retrospective, you look through what is going well, not so well, and what can / should be improved. Then pick the most pressing issue and think about how it can be improved - primarily using Scrum, but you may have a look at other (agile or not) solutions too if you feel the need to. The aim is to work out your own process, which may be strict Scrum, or a hybrid - whatever works best for you, in your specific situation.

Answer 2

Personally, I would go a bit more Jeet Kun Do when it comes to project management strategies. With my team, I've created a piece of software where they answer the scrum questions (with some personal sauce), so instead of 15 minutes of debating, everybody knows what to do. And it beats having someone taking notes.

Even though SCRUM/Agile project management is populair, the waterfall approach has it benefits too. I would give a try-out first and keep the goodies and get rid of the baddies.

Answer 3

1. Make sure your dev practices can support agile. You should have automated tests, daily integration builds, one-change-one check-in, customer accessible test environment, etc.
2. Get your customer on board. Scrum is a business-centric PM framework. It is in their interest to use agile techniques because it gets them the greatest value for their money. But they have to want it.
3. Get your team, PO, and management professional training in Scrum.
4. Make sure you, your team, and customers share the agile values (Agile Manifesto style). You would be amazed how many people value documentation over working software.
5. If you have 1-5, then go cold turkey. Scrum is a simple framework.

Answer 4

Make sure your team is truly cross-functional. Get all team members be commited 100% to the project on hand.

Note - succes of scrum teams often depends on strong scrum master - hence try to get a experienced scrum master or a coach to help your team during the transition period.

Try not to mix waterfall and agile - suggest go cold turkey to scrum.