Microsoft Lauds Scrum

under_score writes "According to eWeek.com Microsoft is adopting the agile methodology called Scrum to get software built faster. Is it working? They seem to be claiming that Scrum and Extreme Programming have helped them get recent releases such as SQLServer out the door faster with better quality. Many other large organizations are also adopting agile methods including Yahoo, and Google. Are agile methods the next big thing in software development?"

So let's get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft is lauding scrum for assisting them in delivering a product late and with a smaller featureset than originally planned? Ok, that's certainly an interesting approach. Now we can hear about how scrum is responsible for bringing Longhorn out earlier and with more features than ever expected.

Ob. The Office Quote

[chman]

"Whaddya say? Let's gangbang this thing and go home."

Microsoft lauds Scum

[Frankie70]

How many people are going to read this as Microsoft lauds Scum?

"Scrum", eh?

[__aagctu1952]

So... does that make Microsoft a hive of scrum and villainy?

Debian?

[Commander Spock]

Any word on whether Debian plans to adopt this development method?

In certain languages, such as Romanian.

[DaedalusHKX]

"Scrum" means ASH... I guess... perhaps they refer to burning their products to the ground? Or what will be left of M$ once this latest FAD fails?

Please God let it be so!!

~D

PS - don't you love being well traveled, and multilingual? Makes the world shine in new colors. (Now I need to learn french since they have really hot women.)

Re:This is a new thing?

[Spit]

No, Scrum is different. Scrum is a daily meeting that is EXTREME TO THE MAXX!!

duke4

[yaiba]

rumor has it that the dev guys at 3drealms are also adopting scrum.

I prefer this definition

[ColourlessGreenIdeas]

http://www.scrum.com/rugby_guide/scrums.asp [scrum.com]

Do that every time you need to make a decision. Clear all furniture out of the way first.

Bah. That's nothing new

[Anonymous Coward]

Rugby's had scrum [wikipedia.org] for years.

Death by Buzzword

[RAMMS+EIN]

Ok, so what's this scrum thing? According to Control Chaos [controlchaos.com] (the first related hit I got on Google):

Scrum is an agile, lightweight process that can be used to manage and control software and product development using iterative, incremental practices. Wrapping existing engineering practices, including Extreme Programming and RUP, Scrum generates the benefits of agile development with the advantages of a simple implementation. Scrum significantly increases productivity and reduces time to benefits while facilitating adaptive, empirical systems development.

Lots of buzzwords, little information. So let's Learn more [controlchaos.com]:

- Scrum is an agile process to manage and control development work.

  - Scrum is a wrapper for existing engineering practices.

  - Scrum is a team-based approach to iteratively, incrementally develop systems and products when requirements are rapidly changing

  - Scrum is a process that controls the chaos of conflicting interests and needs.
Scrum is a way to improve communications and maximize co-operation.

  - Scrum is a way to detect and cause the removal of anything that gets in the way of developing and delivering products.

  - Scrum is a way to maximize productivity.

  - Scrum is scalable from single projects to entire organizations. Scrum has controlled and organized development and implementation for multiple interrelated products and projects with over a thousand developers and implementers.

  - Scrum is a way for everyone to feel good about their job, their contributions, and that they have done the very best they possibly could.

At this point, my head exploded. This note is a post-mortem plea to press murder charges against the person who wrote that crap.

vapor style

[opencity]

So Scrum is the idea that teams meet once a day for half an hour, figure out what they're going to do then go off and do their work very quickly.

Wow, genius.

(from what little I know) Extreme programming is testing constantly and having people work side by side? Well I Am Not A Professional but I figured this out after my first project got too big. Am I missing something here?

I've got a new methodology: It's called: "Inning". Your programming team works for an 8 - 14 hour period and then takes a break when they sleep. I like to combine it with "Lunch" where the team, either together or seperately, eats food periodically during the day. My book is available to preorder.

Re:Why XP works when it works.

[AndroidCat]

Have you considered adopting eXtreme Posting methodology? ;)

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

This will be useful...

[merc]

on talk like a pirate day...

arrRRR. scrum.