Scrum beyond developers

So you think Agile and Scrum only belong in the world of software developers?

We think of software developers as those nerdy, geeky people who think so much of code that it makes us go crazy, and we wonder how they still manage to remain sane. However, adopting the agile methodologies of these very software developers could hugely benefit the businesses of today by boosting product development, reducing the completion times and maximizing value; and if you ever bump into a crippling delay in a project or a disappointed customer’s unhappy response, the methodology provides worthy alternatives too.

One of the agile management tools is called Scrum. Scrum has been around since mid-90s and has been proven successful time and again, offering a refreshing alternative to the traditional management. Drawn from the Agile Manifesto, scrum includes realistic estimation of time which would be necessary for completion of the tasks and bring about a transparency of progress of the task. Scrum also helps nip the evil in the bud by facilitating the identification of problems early on, and preventing any last minute dramas.

Today’s organizations are so focused on completing everything in time that creativity and innovation often take the back seat, incidentally, sometimes they may not get a seat at all. Scrum, on the contrary, effectively marries time and flexibility thus giving some breeding ground for innovation and creativity. Scrum ensures that product elements are based on user stories, and these desired features are then placed on a product backlog, the completions of which are termed as sprints. The daily progress of sprint completion is reported by team members and recorded on a burn-down chart. The burn-down chart maps the hours estimated for the task completion against the passage of time. This way if a particular task or project begins to fall behind it gets detected much sooner rather than later. Problems get discussed early on, especially during the standing scrum meetings and challenges get identified much sooner too.

Scrum definitely brings the customer back into focus. It introduces some new necessary roles that an organization may not have had previously - the product owner who represents stakeholders and serves as the voice of the customer; the scrum master who shields the teams, deals with obstacles and provides the necessary tools to keep the process moving forward (similar to a project manager) and the development team which is a cross-functional team who helps the project come to life.

Implementation of scrum in an organization would require a strong commitment and dedicated team. It would require high-level sponsorship. It would generally be a good idea to start out on scrum with a pressing/urgent issue where clear timelines can be defined and outlined. You could begin by defining a product, so a proper product owner and a responsible team could also be identified. Make sure that the team is completely committed to the cause or in this case, the product. An on-going scrum coaching would also help the organization.