Posts Tagged Agile
Scrum Teams – Lean, Mean developing machine
Posted by Craig_Strong in Development, Scrum / Agile on January 11th, 2010
In the past few years I have read about Scrum, Agile and watched many a tutorials and short videos on the benefits and how to implement it in the work place. After watching from a far I managed to get my hands dirty and get involved with applying it in the workplace. Over a period of many months, bit by bit we have implemented it into our development environment. I have to say it hasn’t been easy and it’s only possible with support from the business in my opinion. Developers and testers were the first to welcome the change as it empowered them and gives them recognition for their efforts as well as control. The business took longer as the change is drastic and involves them a great deal more in product development. However once involved, the agility and development speed and project transparency becomes something recognisable and desired.
During this implementation a common emphasis raised via many sources is to keep the teams small and focussed. Many comparisons have gone through my mind, including why and how to select certain people and create teams. One of the best comparisons and inspirations to make sense of this is to compare the military structure. The comparison that strikes me is that traditional waterfall teams which consist of large scaled divisions that progress in linear fashions with a great deal of resources and structure. They take a great deal of planning, authorisation and strategy to get momentum. When the momentum has started, it’s difficult to stop and change direction. These can be compared to a military invasion, invading in stages as one large force following months of planning and financial investment all moving towards a strategic location in mass. Scrum teams to me represent a different dimension to this, I see scrum teams as small, more precise well equipped units similar to special forces. Smaller teams which are empowered, focused and take more control over their missions who often find themselves more capable and agile. They can be deployed into many different environments, are quicker to adapt and are in and out of missions quickly, sharply getting maximum results.
When you have the balance in place and the team become used to this way of working, the business will benefit and get results. Results which require less investment over time and able to see the impact and return of having small, specialist teams. After all, we have all seen renditions of the battle of Thermopylae, which is basically a tale of a small force with superior weapons, training and passion taking on the might of an army. Although not a direct comparison I think there are similarities in structure do compare in very distant kind of way. The strategy depends upon the business’s plans and objectives, but ultimately every business wants to get more from it’s resources and wants to be able to be quick to respond to environmental conditions to stay ahead of the game.
