Where Did Scrum Come From?

Seems like you can't talk about software development without someone bringing up Scrum and Agile these days.  Ever wonder where it all started?  

Jeff Sutherland created the first Scrum team in 1993 and modeled the new software development process on a 1986 Harvard Business Review article called "The New New Product Development Game", written by Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka. Takeuchi and Nonaka are highly regarded business school professors and researchers who have studied leadership and management in top companies in Japan and elsewhere. Their observations became the root of Scrum, which Sutherland then adapted to software development.  

You can read more about this history of scrum on Sutherland's blog:Takeuchi and Nonaka: The Roots of Scrum

Planning Poker Estimation with Remote Teams

(Image from agileconcombre.blogspot.com)

Even though Agile software development favors co-located teams, sometimes getting everyone together all in one place is just not possible. If you have team members that work remotely all or some of the time, or are working with different company divisions or outside consultants and need to do estimation during release planning it can be difficult if you want to play Planning Poker.  This blog entry from fourkitchens.com describes a clever way to use Google Docs to help remote team members vote. It's a great idea that doesn't take a lot of time to set up and can allow this particular estimation process to run more smoothly when people can't all be in the same room.

On Scrum: Playing Planning Poker with a Scattered Team

What's the best day to start a sprint?

When do you start and end sprints at your organization? Do you always start and end on the same day, or does it fluctuate? My teams currently end sprints on a Friday and start them on the following Monday, and that has worked well for us.

We typically do sprint demos on Thursday afternoons, disuse the sprint progress with stakeholders on Friday, officially end the sprint that day and then start sprint planning on Monday.  There can be problems with people being off for long weekends or holidays, but in general that's not been too much of a problem, and by doing the demos on Thursday afternoons that helps a bit.  We realize that the demos might not have all the features in place, but we try and reserve Fridays for lower priority bug fixes or loose ends to tie up to finish off the sprint.  A weekend break is also nice as a Scrum Master or Product Owner/Manager, because you can use the weekend to react to stakeholder priorities as needed. 

Most importantly, what do the teams think?  Let them have a significant say in when your sprints start and end.

Other teams have found that starting in the middle works better for them. These links pose that a mid-week start can be helpful:

http://www.agilebuddha.com/agile/when-is-a-good-day-to-start-a-sprint

http://blog.agilebuddy.com/2010/01/sprint-start-and-stop-days-whats-best.html

What's your best practice?