{"id":7085,"date":"2023-04-30T12:26:35","date_gmt":"2023-04-30T10:26:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.bart.sk\/en\/?p=7085"},"modified":"2024-01-25T13:59:33","modified_gmt":"2024-01-25T12:59:33","slug":"scrum-almost-like-rugby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.bart.sk\/en\/scrum-almost-like-rugby\/","title":{"rendered":"Scrum is (almost) like rugby"},"content":{"rendered":"

In <\/b>rugby terminology<\/b><\/a>, “scrum” refers to a situation where players of both teams face each other after a foul and touch their heads. Then a ball is thrown between them and they try to catch it, pass it to a free teammate and kick or carry it to get into the opponent’s goal, where they put it down. The goal of a scrum in rugby is to work together in a team to win the ball and move it forward. Scrum has the same goal, i.e. teamwork, in development as well. There’s just a lot less physical contact ?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

The origins of the Scrum development framework date back to 1986. That’s when the Harvard Business Review published “The New New Product Development Game” by Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi (you can read it <\/span>here<\/span><\/a>). In it, the authors described Japanese companies such as Honda, Canon and Fuji-Xerox, which use “cross-functional teams” to develop products. Within them, <\/span>individuals with different knowledge work together on several parts of the project at the same<\/b> time to maximise productivity and minimise unnecessary time delays.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Development is not a relay…<\/b><\/h2>\n

Takeuchi and Nonaka used metaphors from the world of sports to describe the product development process. They compared the classic development process with a relay run, in which each competitor runs alone and passes the baton to the next runner at the end of their run. The authors of the article stated that this approach doesn’t necessarily lead to maximum speed and certainly not to flexibility. As an alternative, they introduced an approach in which the <\/span>team goes the entire distance together and the baton is dynamically transferred back and forth<\/b>. It allegedly promises more success in today’s competitive world. Today we know they were right.<\/span><\/p>\n

In software development, this then-new methodology was first used at Easel Corporation. In 1993, the company’s CTO<\/span> Jeff Sutherland<\/span><\/a> and his team combined ideas from the article by Takeuchi and Nonaka with concepts such as:<\/span><\/p>\n