Scrum but not software

During the scrum master course, Jeff mentioned that he was working with a venture capitalist firm that was using scrum internally. This triggered me because as a developer, I'm familiar with scrum for building software. But here was a company using scrum that was definitely not building software. Of course, I really shouldn't have been that surprised. Most of the principles underlying scrum seem to have come from how Toyota builds cars.

Intrigued, I read the paper by Jeff on this company: "Take no prisoners". From this I learnt that even project driven companies, with multiple project managers each working on their own project, can still benefit from implementing scrum. It's a bumpy road and things are much less clear than they are for a software company, but the principles stay the same.

The difficulties for the company discussed in the paper seem to center around getting "done" and "ready" defined. And to do this, they have had to reorganize the way they work. Obviously a commited team over there. Other problems center around creating overlapping expertise within the scrum teams. Initially, everyone has their own projects, so there is little or no overlap. But in time this seems to have grown and improved, allowing for greater efficiency.

The good news is that this company is seeing productivity double+ (and with less working hours). So maybe there's hope yet for all you over worked managers out there!

Certified scrum master!

Five years ago I started my own IT company JanXL. Since then I haven't been without freelance work unless I chose to be. Which is great :-)

But I realized I hadn't been to a course in over 5 years as well. So it was time to talk to management (me). After all, a good company invests in it's employees. Luckily, it was an easy sell, which is why, come last thursday, I found myself in a room of 40+ IT people all hanging on the lips of scrum founder Jeff Sutherland.

It was great! Despite the course consisting mainly of 2 full days of slides , Jeff is the real deal and he told from personal experience which kept it interesting. Luckily, there were a few exercises and games. The scrum master course was organized by Xebia who also organize the scrum meetup nl (next one is februari 4 in Hilversum).

So now I'm a scrum convert, certified scrum master, member of the agile alliance, and eager to go out an preach the agile gospel.

Which is why I started this blog. To chronicle my agile adventures (or lack thereof).

Wish me luck :-)