How to apply scrum in this company

Now my boss thinks its time to start using Scrum in our company (he read about it, and I convinced him that its a good idea).

What information about Scrum did you share with your boss? What expectation does he have regarding Scrum?

What was your experience like when you grew in your knowledge and experience with Agile? Empathy is a valuable trait with any proposed transformation that you've already gone through.

Why do you feel it is up to you to apply "Scrum" slowly? What does your team think about any of the proposed development and delivery improvements (CI, CD, SBE, TDD)?

Scrum usually requires deep and pervasive change. Any change ought to be substantial enough to evidence empirical improvement.

Wouldn't it be more practical to contain and control the shock of doing this, rather than to try to eliminate it?

What does your boss think about this, and how it could best be managed? What about the rest of the organization, including the business? What sort of sponsorship for enterprise change will be required?

No matter the approach, do what you can to increase the possibility of success. There have been some great points already made. Ensure the business understands the intent and this is not a silver bullet, change takes time and failures create knowledge. If the Development Team is not technically ready, then that alone will create some significant opportunities through challenge.

The Scrum Guide (http://scrumguides.org/) should initially be shared with the business stakeholders; the Scrum Master should already have it. Once the Scrum Team is rolling, it can be a great experience to dissect The Scrum Guide together to understand its intent and the consequences of breaking the rules.

Don't rule out shock therapy (http://jeffsutherland.org/scrum/SelfOrganizationShockTherapy.pdf) as an option but accept that it has its risks and requires a strong Scrum Master.

Hi Qwerty :-),
I have worked in both waterfall and Scrum projects and I have also worked in projects where teams have transitioned from working in waterfall to scrum. What I have seen is all teams struggle initially, but some teams come out having learnt something and understanding how to take it forward, while other teams have been less happy with the entire philosophy and have wanted to go back to waterfall. What I am trying to say is , from waterfall to scrum is a transition and like any other, it works well, only when done right and when we stick to the scrum principles in true spirit.

Below are some pointers that i felt have helped teams moving from waterfall to scrum.


1. Understand if scrum is the best way to execute the given project. Typically there would be a scrum coach or a governance body for the organization that would come up with the guidelines on what kind of projects could be a good fit for scrum. This is one of the important factors to keep in mind. Some (not all) data integration projects, infrastructure or migration based projects are better executed in waterfall. So, we have to make a very objective assessment, before we decide to execute a project in scrum.

2.Provide some basic training to the team as a whole to understand what scrum principles are and what benefits they provide. Give them a few case studies so that they can understand how to create stories/ epics/ tasks, how to point stories, how to come up with definition of done and so on and let them work on that as a team.

3. Invest in a good scrum coach and scrum master for the team. They should be able to mentor and guide the team when discussion and disagreements start taking more time than the real work at hand.

4. Accept that it is not going to be perfect from day one. You are not going to be able to get the perfect Epics/ Stories/ tasks out there. Even some well trained teams fail to do that. Take it all as part of learning and be happy as long as you see the team motivated and making progress in terms of deliverables.

There are several other things we could do, but these should help you get started.

Hi, is there a business assessment form or a site to get an indication of the Agility of an organisation? This for defining transformation strategies. Advice on this topic would be helpful.

Is there any resources on this site that I can refer to, in order to implement Scrum in my company?  We have the traditional Division Head, Functional Managers, Project Managers, Senior Engineers, subcontract workers and vendors, and various SMEs (Subject Matter Experts).  How do we define the specific roles in Scrum?

Jeff Sutherland in his book talks about how he implemented Scrum at Openview Venture Partners, a venture capital firm, which is not a software development house.  How to do it?