Overview

Scrum is “a team-based framework to develop complex systems and products” [1] — Its an iterative, incremental approach to product development. Scrum helps team to repeatedly deliver usable sets of functionality within very short time. Scrum helps teams improve by creating transparency and surfacing impediments which keep teams from becoming more productive.

Scrum Attributes

• Embraces change by its incremental and iterative process model
• Controls chaos through empirical process control
• Empowers cross-functional teams to self-organize
• Maximizes business value and team productivity
• Wraps engineering practices (e.g., in software development: Extreme Programming)
• Scales from project to enterprise level through Scrum of Scrums

Scrum Process Model

Scrum Process Model

History

The term Scrum derives from rugby and was first used in 1986 when Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka published “The New New Product Development Game” [2] in Harvard Business Review. In their article, they described companies from different industries which took a new approach to product development to outmarket their competitors. Their approach was very similar to Scrum as it is known today: “The ‘relay race’ approach to product development [... which] may conflict with the goals of maximum speed and flexibility [with ...] a holistic approach or ‘rugby approach’ – where a team tries to go the distance as a unit, passing the ball back and forth – may better serve today’s competitive requirements”.

In 1993, Jeff Sutherland, co-founder of the Scrum Alliance, formed the first Scrum team. In 1996, Ken Schwaber, co-founder of the Scrum Alliance, formalized the process model used by Scrum. In 2001, Ken Schwaber and Mike Beedle published their first book about Scrum “Agile Software Development with Scrum”[3]. Today, Scrum is the most popular method used in agile software development.

References

[1] Scrum Alliance website, http://www.scrumalliance.org/

[2] Hirotaka Takeuchi, Ikujiro Nonaka, “The New New Product Development Game”, Harvard Business Review
[3] Ken Schwaber, Mike Beedle, Agile Software Development with Scrum