GUIDELINES FOR THE SUCCESSFUL IMPLEMENTATION OF SCRUM IN AN ORGANISATION
Obtain buy-in from all responsible parties.
A developer that is not willing to embrace agile should not be placed on your team, even a single doomsayer can cause major negativity, disruption and resistance to change. Pick a motivated team that is keen to embrace change.
A CIO who is a heavyweight fanatic is not going to be much help if you are trying to implement scrum
Ensure that the team is empowered and trusted to get the job done and that they are allowed to learn from their experiences
Do not think that scrum is a silver bullet and that on day one everything will miraculously fall into place.The framework and practices are simple and efficient but any change is difficult. It requires dedication and effort and this does not occur overnight, those that persevere will succeed. Give it enough time to witness the benefits.
Ensure that there is a mentor or coach with the correct level of knowledge so that they can guide the adoption of scrum. If you cannot find one locally and you are serious about it then inject extra funding to bring in an expert, its a small price to pay.
Ensure that all those responsible understand scrum and its principles and why things are been done differently to Waterfall and other methods
Ensure that stakeholders, sponsors, business representatives and customers are available for collaboration and feedback. If they are not then appoint persons who can be available, this is essential.
Forget about old habits and how we used to do things. Big Design Upfront (BDUF), Big Requirements Upfront (BRUF) and BPUF (Big Planning Up Front) don’t fit into the scrum framework. These are all anti-patterns.
Inspect and Adapt, ensure that the team and all parties are continuously improving, realise that each project or product is different.Scrum is a framework that is empirically based and allows you to adapt and improve within it.
Ensure that there are dedicated resources. Do not spread resources across multiple projects
Where possible try and co-locate the team. If this cannot be achieved then take advantage of technology and get as close to this as possible through virtuality e.g. video conferencing and individual web-cams
Ensure that the stakeholders, sponsors and customers manage the return on investment (ROI) through value prioritisation. This requires all parties to embrace changing product requirements
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