Scrum makes life easier for software developers

Does Scrum make the work of your software developers easier?

Yes, scrum is good, it helps things go smooth… but those regular daily stand-ups are just too much for my employees, especially the software developers who are preoccupied with thoughts and ideas on how to create the next genius invention in the vast developing high-tech world of web development…

This is just an example of what most managers would think when they need to follow a PM’s approach in a rapidly changing environment in the world of web technologies, even though the communication during the whole software development process is important.

While many teams working on IT projects consider to implement Scrum – and this is actually what drives the success of their projects – it turns out that some minor variations of Scrum are typically better for the team. These variations are the only way to create their web app or SaaS systems in a smart way and to make the scrum approach work for them.

Thus a project manager would confess that scrum is an irreplaceable approach, but...

The burden of rules is too heavy

In today's world, which is taken over by software, resilience and versatility are musts in a web development process. So, no time to waste on following literally the written textbook lessons on agile specifics.

I'm pretty sure that every software agency aimed at being competitive on the market would apply a scrum approach clinging to Agile. I would also keep in mind that time is one of the most important and valuable parts of project management…

It is always about time against money to get the best quality as a result. Therefore hearing the following scenarios should not be a surprise:

• We use Scrum with each of our projects… but with this software project we would use retrospectives to track the work of every single contributor rather than to review what has been done by the team as a whole.
• Scrum is our PM approach on our projects for different clients… but unfortunately due to client specific requirements of this web app, a time-box of 1 month is a short sprint for completing all sprint tasks.
• Time spent on custom development is always the most important thing for us as it gives us an advantage over our competitors and Scrum is our winning PM line… but the review at the end of the sprint won’t give us new information about the project progress and will slow down the progress, therefore we choose to avoid it as much as possible.
• We are very successful with implementing Scrum in project development…but for many years we used our project manager to assign tasks to our software developers according to their defined skills because in this way we reduce their time to review and consider the upcoming tasks.

What if Scrumbut is the key to successful software development?

Let's imagine the chaos that may arise out of irregular discussions on a project with all the team members – the progress, the tasks, the issues arising and their solutions… Or just imagine how long a development cycle on a project might take without specific deadlines that need to be observed, regularly tracked and discussed in a team environment.

Actually this sounds familiar to project managers as well:

"You know that retrospectives after each sprint is an important milestone in the scrum methodology. If we had a sprint before the end of the initial project stage, then we would identify that this framework would not work for the rest of the project, then we would consider another work tactic to achieve our goal in a timely manner"

This is actually the reason why the scrum followers are supporting the clean version of the scrum approach and abuse the Scrumbut definition considering it mostly as dysfunctional rather than something that may add value to the process.

No deviations of the precise line are acceptable for them because the full advantage of scrum will not be achieved during a software development process. This way of thinking and acting may actually lead to problems that are difficult to be fixed.

There is no doubt that planning, communication, tracking and issues resolution are a must, but implement it in a more flexible way that fits your company the best.

Nobody wants to be trapped in those A-to-Z rules. Scrumbut's purpose is to offer a responsive course of action. This makes it possible for each company in every single case to choose and implement the best techniques out of scrum that would fit them perfectly for each case according to their specifications and client's requirements.

Our conclusion

The best result of working in a scrum environment is achieved by applying all the pros of the scrum approach while considering and adjusting all the cons according to specific needs.

In this way you become the best scrumbut in the software development business which may be against the rules of the scrum supporters but will work in the most efficient way for your software development agency.

How do you like scrum now? Are you fully Scrum or you are scrumbut? If you don’t know it – we have created a questionnaire for you to see how scrum you are at this moment.

Start measuring how scrum you are.