Scrum – a Project Management Approach

Scrum – noun

1: a rugby play in which the forwards of each side come together in a tight formation and struggle to gain possession of the ball using their feet when it is tossed in among them; also: the arrangement of players in a scrum b: a usually brief and disorderly struggle or fight.  2a: (British) madhouse.  2b: a usually tightly packed or disorderly crowd

The Scrum I am talking about is none of these.  Scrum is an iterative process of software development that is typically used with agile softward development.  Even though it was intended to be for management of software development projects, it can be used in running software maintenance teams, or as a program management approach.

I have found it to be very effective in managing ongoing projects – meaning projects that are not building something from the ground-up.  If you read my post on Context Switching, you will remember the diagram of “Total Demand” to “Completed Work” – Scrum is the way in which I manage the “Total Demand”.

Scrum can be explained best by looking at this image…

The concept is simple.  Take all the work to be done and put it on a list.  Figure out what you can get done in 30 days.  Meet with development team for 15 minutes to review each day.  Roll out functionality/enhancements every 30 days.  Don’t get me wrong – you don’t just show your client and your team a diagram and POOF! you have a project that is on-time, under budget and they client is enamoured with your work.  This is a foundation and process that is easily implemented and can save brain cycles for something more challenging – like actually getting the work done.

This video, while a little cheesy, does a fantastic job of explaining Scrum in under 6 minutes.

Resources: Methods and Tools, Wikipedia, Scrum Workflow Complex Example, Scrum Workflow Complex Example #2

- Bill Weber

photo credit: John Scone