SCRUM, Agile, and Traditional Project Management
On my product team we have been using the SCRUM methodology of software development for a while. For those of you not familiar with it, here is the oversimplified version…
- Get a big list of all the things you want to do, prioritized by our customers (in our case by proxy via our product manager)
- Estimate how many things you can get done in your team’s sprint interval (usually anywhere from two to four weeks, a team’s interval length never changes)
- Do them
- Show them to the customer
- Lather, rinse, repeat
Of course it’s a little more complex than that, but you get the idea. From a developer’s point of view, this is fantastic and predictable way of developing software. It’s easy to release working software on a regular basis. There is very little risk you will end up developing something the customer doesn’t want, and if they do change their minds (and they will) you don’t waste very much time.
One of the great things about working at Quest is that we develop software and sell it to customers - and that’s pretty much all we do. We’re reasonably good at it and our management team has a realistic understanding of how it works. Within reason, trading a feature for a release date is always an option. So long as we continue to satisfy our customers we will always have another version coming along soon.
On the other hand, many (most?) developers do not have this sort of luxury. Whether working for internal customers in an organization’s IT department or external customers on contract, traditional project management requires prediction of the costs and efforts involved in an entire project, usually before the scope of the project is fully known. Getting non-software project managers to buy into a process like SCRUM is incredibly difficult. With government or defence contracts it may be impossible or illegal. This is probably the single biggest disconnect in the business of developing software. During my years as a contract developer I spent many sleepless nights worrying about it. Talking to folks at CanHEIT this week it seems it’s still just as much a problem as ever.
I count myself very lucky.
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