Where did Scrum come from?

1.	Where did Scrum come from?
Answer» The development of the Scrum framework is not linear; different people did independent studies and experiments and gradually the ideas and concepts coalesced into what we know today as Scrum. Probably the first publication that compared product development to the game of rugby, moving the scrum down the field, was the white paper “The New New Product Development Game” by Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka, published in the Harvard Business Review in January 1986. In this whitepaper, the authors RESEARCHED the product development methods of prominent and successful companies and concluded that, in the main, success relied upon: Built-in instability Self-organizing project teams Overlapping development phases “Multilearning” Subtle control Organizational transfer of learning They called such processes ‘Holistic Methods’ as opposed to the waterfall ‘sequential’ processes. Some sources ATTRIBUTE the ‘invention’ of Scrum to Jeff Sutherland, John Scumniotales and Jeff McKenna in 1993 when they implemented Scrum at the Easel Corporation. Independently, Ken Schwaber, as a software product development manager in the 1980s and early 1990s, recognised patterns of failure in many product development initiatives that used ‘waterfall’ approaches. Ken tells the story that he approached a process engineering company, described the software development environment and ‘waterfall’ process; he was told that a ‘DEFINED process’ such as ‘waterfall’ was very unlikely to succeed consistently in a software development environment; what is needed is an ‘empirical process’ that allows process CHANGE from feedback from short experiments. You would need to ask Jeff or Ken how these 2 first came together to ‘compare notes’ but they collaborated to produce the first public presentation of Scrum at OOPSLA 1995. There have been many other people involved with the development of the Scrum framework; people such as Jim Coplien and Mike Beedle. Ken Schwaber and Mike Beedle published the first Scrum BOOK, ‘Agile Software Development with Scrum’, in 2001.

Answer»

The development of the Scrum framework is not linear; different people did independent studies and experiments and gradually the ideas and concepts coalesced into what we know today as Scrum.

Probably the first publication that compared product development to the game of rugby, moving the scrum down the field, was the white paper “The New New Product Development Game” by Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka, published in the Harvard Business Review in January 1986.

In this whitepaper, the authors RESEARCHED the product development methods of prominent and successful companies and concluded that, in the main, success relied upon:

Built-in instability
Self-organizing project teams
Overlapping development phases
“Multilearning”
Subtle control
Organizational transfer of learning

They called such processes ‘Holistic Methods’ as opposed to the waterfall ‘sequential’ processes.

Some sources ATTRIBUTE the ‘invention’ of Scrum to Jeff Sutherland, John Scumniotales and Jeff McKenna in 1993 when they implemented Scrum at the Easel Corporation.

Independently, Ken Schwaber, as a software product development manager in the 1980s and early 1990s, recognised patterns of failure in many product development initiatives that used ‘waterfall’ approaches.

Ken tells the story that he approached a process engineering company, described the software development environment and ‘waterfall’ process; he was told that a ‘DEFINED process’ such as ‘waterfall’ was very unlikely to succeed consistently in a software development environment; what is needed is an ‘empirical process’ that allows process CHANGE from feedback from short experiments.

You would need to ask Jeff or Ken how these 2 first came together to ‘compare notes’ but they collaborated to produce the first public presentation of Scrum at OOPSLA 1995.

There have been many other people involved with the development of the Scrum framework; people such as Jim Coplien and Mike Beedle.

Ken Schwaber and Mike Beedle published the first Scrum BOOK, ‘Agile Software Development with Scrum’, in 2001.

Where did Scrum come from?

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