The Scrum Primer

THE SCRUM PRIMER

Pete Deemer

Scrum Training Institute (ScrumTI.com)

Gabrielle Benefield

Scrum Training Institute (ScrumTI.com)

Craig Larman

craiglarman.com

Bas Vodde

Odd-e.com

version 1.2

A note to readers: There are many concise descriptions of Scrum available online, and this primer aims to provide the next level of detail on the practices. It is not intended as the final step in a Scrum education; teams that are considering adopting Scrum are advised to equip themselves with Ken Schwaber’s Agile Project Management with Scrum or Agile Software Development with Scrum, and take advantage of the many excellent Scrum training and coaching options that are available; full details are at scrumalliance.org. Our thanks go to Ken Schwaber, Dr. Jeff Sutherland, and Mike Cohn for their generous input. © 2010 Pete Deemer, Gabrielle Benefield, Craig Larman, Bas Vodde

2

Traditional Software Development

The traditional way to build software, used by companies big and small, was a sequential life cycle commonly known as “the waterfall.” There are many variants (such as the V-Model), but it typically begins with a detailed planning phase, where the end product is carefully thought through, designed, and documented in great detail. The tasks necessary to execute the design are determined, and the work is organized using tools such as Gantt charts and applications such as Microsoft Project. The team arrives at an estimate of how long the development will take by adding up detailed estimates of the individual steps involved. Once stakeholders have thoroughly reviewed the plan and provided their approvals, the team starts to work. Team members complete their specialized portion of the work, and then hand it off to others in production-line fashion. Once the work is complete, it is delivered to a testing organization (some call this Quality Assurance), which completes testing prior to the product reaching the customer. Throughout the process, strict...