Scrum is a process that works well for software development teams transitioning from waterfall or chaotic processes. It provides structure for prioritizing work, focusing teams, and delivering working software frequently. However, Scrum does not address all aspects of product development like marketing, sales, architecture, careers and portfolios. It also does not directly solve problems with time to market or development best practices. While Scrum improves quality, satisfaction and focus, challenges remain with coordination, self-organized teams, epics and balancing business needs with maintainability.

1. 10 Years Of My Scrum Experience
Stephan Schmidt
Stephan Schmidt, Vice CTO, brands4friends

2. Me
Stephan Schmidt
Vice CTO brands4friends

3. Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

5. Development is a solved problem

6. Waterfall
Resources
($$$)
Time Scope
Kanban (Lean) Agile (Scrum)

7. Context: After 10 years of Scrum
I’m moving on – kind of …
.. but would introduce Scrum as a process
anytime again for companies coming from
waterfall or chaos

8. Scrum is a process to efficiently
work on tasks when you have
more tasks than time
What should I work on? Not only software
development.

9. Biggest down side of Scrum:
Companies haven’t learned what
agile means for marketing,
sales, ….
Big impact would be for companies to learn
what agile means for them and structure
themselves accordingly.

10. Scrum is not a product
development process
Do the right thing vs. doing things right

11. Scrum is not a portfolio process
What is my company doing?

12. Scrum is not a release process
Release, Continuous Deployments ….

13. Scrum says nothing about
development best practices
The #1 reason for it’s success as very few
developers are opposed. But you need to
fill this gap by yourself.

14. Scrum doesn’t solve time to
market
Biggest lever: do less

15. What Scrum solves

16. Works
Scrum is one of the first processes that
(easily following recipes) just work for most
people

17. Quality
Scrum increased code quality because it
gave responsibility to developers

18. Satisfaction
Overall everyone is satisfied, business,
product and developers

19. When will I be finished answered
with very little estimation
overhead for projects
What am I going to do in what sprint

20. Scrum Helps With Focus
1. Feature
2. Feature
1. Feature
2. Feature
3. Feature
4. Feature
5. Feature
3. Feature
4. Feature
5. Feature
Time Time
Parallel Serial

21. Self Organized Teams
Cross functional teams, shared
responsibility, better communication and
fewer SPOFs

22. What Scrum doesn’t solve

23. Development Start
Idea
Front-up Development
Problems are here
Everyone focuses
here

24. Top Management Attention of top
possible impact management for a
project
Reinertsen 1998

25. Scrum Challenges

26. Architecture
Emerging architectures?

27. Careers
Flat hierarchies exist and self-organized
teams “without” roles increase the problem

28. Performance Appraisal
Peers to the rescue?

29. Sometimes there is not enough
time in a sprint, sometimes there
is too much
The downside of time boxed sprints is
10%-20% less efficiency

30. X scrum masters for Y teams
Scrum masters amount of work is
decreasing over time, but you can’t do
without a Scrum master either.

31. Balance Headroom
Vs.
Business
Maintainability vs. Business Value
and
Pull vs. Push

32. Roles
Scrum master =! Team Lead
Scrum master =! Developer
Scrum master =! Project Manager
Role conflicts lead to trouble

33. Coordination
SPOFs (DBAs etc.) no recipe
Portfolio management, how to do that?
Coordinating POs – often working towards
their own goals
Scrum of Scrums looks not efficient to me

34. Epics
Focus, not 1 developer == 1 story
Sometimes too many, too different small
stories in one sprint => Focus on Epics

35. Self Organized Teams
1. Goal and bonus management vs.
self organized teams
2. Recruiting vs. self organized teams
3. Firing vs. self organized teams

36. Thanks!
Questions?
@codemonkeyism
stephan.schmidt@brands4friends.de