Scrum - how best to implement?

[PRINCE2 of Darkness]

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[suityou01]

I think I may have an opportunity to use Scrum in a forthcoming project, but not software development. Instead, it is a huge and complicated requirements gathering exercise that is expected to take about a year. It is currently planned to do that phase as one stage of a project. I am coming to the conclusion that an agile method might be the best way to do it because the business do not know they want.

The organisation is committed to procuring the solution in one hit; I can see no way to change that. So the requirements will go in a big folder and get put out to tender. Which is very sad. But beyond my control.

Having done a search I see some people on here have worked in Scrum teams and are positive about it.

What advice would you have on introducing Scrum to a large organisation?

The amount of times I have seen agile methods be applied badly as an excuse for the business not making their minds up is a vast number. If the business do not know what they want, how the feck can you do the requirements gathering?

Step one for you my friend is a scoping meeting with the stakeholders. Find the boundaries first, cost it out, get funding and agree the milestones. Then and only then can the requirements gathering get under way.

If you don't, your project will die of "death by requirements"

Agile is about time boxed delivery cycles, usually about a week. So a 12 month agile window is immediately juxtaposed to the agile approach.

90% of the time, agile means cowboy approach. DO NOT THROW THE BABY OUT WITH THE BATHWATER.

Good luck.

SY01

[MarillionFan]

Agile and SCRUM.

Recently I've been asked a number of times about this in interviews and on CVS's. So if the question is, Can I do Full Product Life Cycle for small piecemeal releases? Then the answer is yes.

Fook me, some of the 'methodology' bull the industry comes up with is breathtaking!

[suityou01]

I was requirements gathering before Christmas and getting pissed around. I turned the situation around with a series of pointed questions.

Your client has the agony of choice. Remove this. Fast.

[SueEllen]

Your client has the agony of choice. Remove this. Fast.

WHS

If users don't know what they want give them something so they can say yes or no.

If they say don't know then you need to interpret what kind of don't know it is.

Agile projects don't work when users don't know what they want.

[minestrone]

It's just another fad in the long list of software management fads.

It's good if you want to look like you are a mover and a shaker in a company, promise to take the pain away. In reality it fixes nothing, the problems always boil down to people not knowing what they want and people who are incapable of producing a technical solution, scrum does not fix either of those things.

The only place scrum and agile really work is in fattening the bank balances of the people that sell the courses.

[Drewster]

WYAS.........

No "Flavour of the Month" <cough> methodology <cough> will achieve anything if done "badly" and far far too often people buy into the moonshine and stardust that saying "We use <insert silver bullet of choice>" will somehow actually solve anything!......

and its not just "new" tulip its "old" tulip as well..... ITIL, CMM, SSADM none of them "do" anything by repeating the words loudly........

[MPwannadecentincome]

(scoping)

Done that. "We don't really know. Can't you tell us?"

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That's easy. I've got a budget and a deadline, it is the requirement and its quality that are undefined.

you have a budget - for what?

[lightng]

That's easy. I've got a budget and a deadline, it is the requirement and its quality that are undefined.

Cheapness, Quickness, Quality-ness. Please be picking any two.

[NickFitz]

I'm reminded of Viv Stanshall's Sir Henry at Rawlinson's End: "I don't know what I want, but I want it now!"