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Pries and Jon M. Quigley</p> <p class="text"> The scrum approach focuses on the business needs of projects when developing products and services. It provides the same benefits with line management with only minor modifications to the tools. The scrum approach strips away non-value-added activities and impels delivery by focusing on the immediate details. It is not possible to interpret scrum as anything but a disciplined development model. Its counterpart, the waterfall model, is a sequential development framework in which each major phase appears to be &#034;pouring&#034; its results into each successive phase. Scrum is not only iterative, but has actions that require team learning and allows the rest of the project to be built on such learning. Much team learning will occur during each cycle of the scrum activities for the project in the form of the sprint retrospective and customer planned input. Hence, we control the end game activities&#151;the customer going directly to the developer&#151;while still allowing the customer to make adjustments to the product as time passes. If anything, the scrum approach enhances the ability of the customer to add changes to the product. </p> <p class="text"> During product development, both customer and supplier tend to acquire new knowledge about the product as they begin to implement the product specification and derived requirements. Verification and validation results may drive even more change. Both customer and developer can use the scrum approach to reduce the risk caused by midstream changes in the specification of a product. In Kimball Fisher s book <i>Leading Self-Directed Work Teams</i>, he describes a situation facing Tektronix s that is no less applicable today:<sup>1</sup> </p> <blockquote class="text"> Historically, Tek design engineers had taken about five years to develop a new product technology. As long as we could keep a product family in the marketplace for about ten years, this was not a problem. But during the 1980s, increased competition from numerous well-financed and technologically-advanced organizations changed the rule forever. Major product technologies were becoming obsolete in two years instead of ten. The technologies that new electrical and software engineers learned in school were, in fact, often obsolete twelve months after graduation . . Once a new technology was introduced by Tek, or by one of its able competitors, there was less than 800 days to recoup the investment and make a profit. Looked at in this light, every day of lost opportunity caused by bureaucratic slowdowns was costing the company thousands of dollars. </blockquote> <p class="text"> The pace of technological change generally accelerates, with lulls only during severe economic downturns. The ability of an organization to respond to economic variation while still delivering a quality product to schedule is valuable, perhaps more so than in previous decades. Conventional project management responses lag significantly behind the economic variation. </p> <p class="text"> The scrum approach to project management brings an exciting new dimension to the way we handle a variety of project management situations such as risk, scheduling, and other factors involved in completing a project. Scrum originated in the agile software development world and has been used primarily for software development in small- to medium-sized projects. We believe that it is time for scrum to come into its own as a tool for small- to medium-sized projects for any kind of development and for other kinds of projects; for example, Six Sigma projects. We also use the scrum approach with line management activities with one modification to the scrum tools. Agile development, like scrum, is an instantiation of the agile manifesto &#040;although precursors to agile development existed earlier; for example &#034;extreme programming&#034; or XP&#041;. This manifesto identifies key principles of operation:<sup>2</sup> </p> <ol class="text"> <li>Individuals and interactions over processes and tools</li> <li> Working software over comprehensive documentation</li> <li>Customer collaboration over contract negotiation</li> <li>Responding to change over following a plan</li> </ol> <p class="text"> According to <i>The Agile Customer s Toolkit</i> by Tom Poppendieck, agile development is centered around the seven principles of lean thinking:<sup>3</sup> </p> <ol class="text"> <li>Eliminate waste&#151;only add value, not inventory</li> <li>Amplify learning&#151;repeat</li> <li>Decide as late as possible&#151;defer commitment &#040;note: this action is known in manufacturing as postponement&#041; </li> <li>Deliver as quickly as possible</li> <li>Empower the team&#151;train, trust, and lead</li> <li>Build in integrity&#151;both customer-perceived and conceptual</li> <li>See the whole&#151;avoid suboptimizing</li> </ol> <p class="text"> We prefer to think of the scrum approach that we propose as <i>high-intensity management</i>. We increase tempo, improve responsiveness, increase communications, and reduce risk. Our goal is to focus on a limited number of tasks within a short planning horizon so that we can drive them to completion and remove them from our concern. Today s product development organizations are often stretched thin in occasionally suboptimal attempts to reduce cost. Often the same human resources are used for multiple projects, which diffuses the focus of the team from a particular set of deliverables. A term that describes this behavior is &#034;frazzing.&#034; This neologism was created by Massachusetts psychiatrist Edward Hallowell in his book <i>Crazy Busy: Overstretched, Overbooked, and about to Snap! Strategies for Coping in a World Gone ADD. </i> Frazzing is short for &#034;frantic multitasking.&#034; While sometimes this sort of work is selected by an individual, there are times when it is thrust on him or her by the volume of actions that organizations expect the employee to execute. Scrum helps by setting a specific set of activities within a relatively short span of time; in other words, we can use scrum as a tool to convert from suboptimal multitasking to high-speed mono-tasking and get more done &#040;see Figure 1&#041;. </p> <br> <center> <img src="http://ittoday.info/ITPerformanceImprovement/Images/2011-02PriesQuigleyFigure1.jpg"border="0"> </center> <p class="text"> <b>Figure 1.</b> Why scrum? </p> <p class="text"> When task load is high, it is difficult to focus on priorities. Even when we know the priorities, we sacrifice the second-level priorities which somebody in the organization expects to be addressed. This approach can drive employees to motivational numbness such that they can t take action in any direction &#040;see Figure 1.3&#041;. We have implemented scrum across multiple departments. Tools can make life easier and scrum can help project management in various environments. <br> <center> <img src="http://ittoday.info/ITPerformanceImprovement/Images/2011-02PriesQuigleyFigure2.jpg"border="0"> </center> <p class="text"> <b>Figure 2.</b> Distraction </p> <p class="text"> One of the hallmarks of the scrum approach is the ability to adapt to reality rather than trying to force reality to adapt to our often top-heavy systems. We suggest that the scrum approach has the makings of a complex adaptive system, which provides the flexibility needed to meet shifting customer demands. We expect the scrum approach to become the preferred approach for project management and line management&#151;an alternative to what we call &#034;dropping the crystal.&#034; Dropping thecrystal occurs when upstream managers concoct a set piece product launch process with the inflexibility implied in the phrase. These processes often have hundreds of deliverable items, tens to hundreds of controls, and obligatory marathon reviews. </p> <p class="text"> It is clear from <i>Software Project Secrets</i>, by George Stepanek, why software projects differ from other sorts of projects. There are a number of attributes that make these a risky proposition:<sup>4</sup> </p> <ol class="text"> <li>Software is complex.</li> <li>Software is abstract.</li> <li>Requirements are incomplete.</li> <li>Technology changes rapidly.</li> <li> Best practices are not mature &#040;or constantly evolving&#041;.</li> <li>Technology is a vast domain.</li> <li>Technology experience is incomplete &#040;segmented&#041;.</li> <li>Software development is research.</li> <li>Repetitive work is automated.</li> <li>Construction is actually the design.</li> <li>Change is considered easy &#040;it is only software&#041;.</li> <li>Change is inevitable.</li> </ol> <p class="text"> The point behind the scrum approach is to constantly deliver a workable, sellable product to the customer at the end of each delivery period, which can be as often as each sprint. In some scenarios such as software development, this period may be as short as a day&#151;the team executes a daily build with nightly verification of all changes plus regression testing &#040;testing is done to see if the change has caused any problems&#041;. &#9830; <br> <br> <b>References</b> <br> <br> 1. Kimball Fisher, <i>Leading Self-Directed Work Teams,</i> (New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1993), 32. <br> <br> 2. Kent Beck, et al., <a href="http:// agilemanifesto.org/"target="blank"><i>Manifesto for Agile Software Development</i></a>, (February 2001), (accessed June 20, 2009). <br> <br> 3. Tom Poppendieck, <a href="http://www. poppendieck.com/pdfs/AgileCustomersToolkitPaper.pdf "target="blank"><i>The Agile Customer s Toolkit</i></a>, (2003), (accessed June 16, 2009). <br> <br> 4. George Stepanek, <i>Software Project Secrets, Why Software Projects Fail,</i> (New York, NY: APRESS, 2005), 8. <br> <br> <b>Read more <a href="http://ittoday.info/ITPerformanceImprovement/index.htm"><i>IT Process Improvement</i></a></b> </p> <!--DISCLAIMER NOTICE AND COPYRIGHT--> <p class="copyright"> <br> <br> Certain names and logos on this page and others may constitute trademarks, servicemarks, or tradenames of <a HREF="http://www.crcpress.com"TARGET="_parent">Taylor & Francis LLC.</a> Copyright &#169; 2008&#151;2011 Taylor & Francis LLC. All rights reserved. </font> </p> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </td> <td width="300"> <table> <tbody> <tr> <td> <table style="background-color:#E0E0D1;"cellpadding="10"margin="5"border="0"valign="top"> <tbody> <tr> <td colspan=2> <h4>This article was excerpted from:</h4> </td> </tr> <tr valign="top"> <td width="100"> <h4> <a href="http://www.crcpress.com/ecommerce_product/product_detail.jsf?isbn=9781439825150&AF=WAUER"target="blank"><b>Scrum Project Management</b></a> </h4> </td> <td> <center> <img src="http://www.ittoday.info/catalog/images/covers80w/K11197.jpg"Border=0> </center> </td> </tr> <tr> <td colspan="2"> <p class="text"> The book provides proven planning methods for controlling project scope and ensuring your project stays on schedule. It includes scrum tracking methods to help your team maintain a focus on improving throughput and streamlining communications. </p> </td> </tr> <tr> <td colspan="2"> </td> </tr> <tr> <td colspan="2"> <h4>About the Authors</h4> <p class="text"> <b>Kim H. &#040;&#034;Vajramanas&#034;&#041; Pries</b> is a co-founder and principal of <a href="http://www.valuetransform.com/about-us.html"target="blank">Value Transformation</a>, LLC, a training, testing, cost improvement, and product development consultancy. He holds four college degrees: BA History from the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), BS Metallurgical Engineering from UTEP, MS Metallurgical Engineering from UTEP, and MS in Metallurgical Engineering and Materials Science from Carnegie Mellon University. In addition to the degrees, he holds multiple certifications from APICS and AQS. He has worked as a computer systems manager (&#040IT&#041;), a software engineer for an electrical utility, and a scientific programmer on defense contract. For Stoneridge, Incorporated (SRI), he has worked as software manager, engineering services manager, reliability section manager, and product integrity and reliability director. In addition to this, Mr. Pries provides Six Sigma training for bothUTEPand SRI, cost reduction initiatives for SRI. Mr. Pries is also a founding faculty member of Practical Project Management. Mr. Pries is also a lay monk in the Soto tradition of Zen Buddhism and functions as an Ino for the Zen Center of Las Cruces. <br> <br> He can be contacted at <a href="mailto:kim.pries@valuetransform.com"> kim.pries@valuetransform.com</a>. <br> <br> <b>Jon M. Quigley</b> is a co-founder and principal of <a href="http://www.valuetransform.com/about-us.html"target="blank">Value Transformation</a>, LLC, a training, testing, cost improvement, and product development consultancy. He holds three college degrees: BS Electronic Engineering Technology from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, MBA in Marketing, and an MS in Project Management from City University of Seattle. In addition to the degrees, he has certifications from the PMI and ISTQB. He has been awarded multiple patents for developing electronics used in the automotive industry. Mr. Quigley has worked within a variety of capacities within new product development organizations. <br> <br> He can be contacted at <a href="mailto:jon.quigley@valuetransform.com"> jon.quigley@valuetransform.com</a>. <br> <br> </p> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </table> </body> </html>