Update on Scrum
Greetings all -
Our use of Scrum is continuing, and we’re still quite happy with it. Our second sprint (numbered “sprint 3” to line up with our previous milestone numbering) was fairly successful and we had a lot of good representation from management and stakeholders at the product review.
During the last two weeks of December we didn’t really have time for a full sprint but we didn’t want to run a sprint over the holidays, so we did an informal mini-sprint, with much less process than usual. I can’t really report that it was a success. Stuff got done, but there seemed to be a lack of cohesive focus around who would do what, and there was general weirdness around it.
However, overall we are happy with Scrum. We just finished our planning for sprint 4, and while I didn’t 100% agree with the prioritization of the product owner, the great thing about Scrum is that everyone agrees up front to the rules and the battles over what we’ll do during the sprint end after the sprint backlog selection meeting. And – perhaps most importantly of all – there will be another formal opportunity to reassess our progress in five weeks, so even if we make a questionable decision for a single sprint its impact is limited.
I hope you all have a great New Year!
Chris