Scrum is an agile framework that, if applied properly, can boost the efficiency of teamwork. It is known to be versatile enough, so it could be applied in basically any sort of productive teamwork, even beyond IT (e.g. bakeries, government organizations, etc.)
However, I’ve never ever seen it being used anywhere else other than in software development, therefore I’ve always been curious if Scrum is actually being used outside of IT somewhere.
I like using a variation of it to keep track of my projects at home.
We just started using a kanban board with monthly “sprints”. We have a backlog of things to choose from. Then we pick out a few that we know we can complete this month. Move them to in progress when we start working on them. Then move them to complete so we have something to “show for it”.
I worked for a big commercial real estate company years ago. Think buying and selling whole apartment complexes. We adopted scrum in our IT department, then saw the sales support team start doing it. Each sale was treated like an epic and each task a story. Actually worked pretty well for them.
Because a project management framework does not work for operations jobs.
How does Susan and Emma in accounts express their work as a sprint? How does Steve or Sarah running a bakery express their work as a sprint?
A proper project management framework should work for all types of projects, not just IT.
Steve or Sarah launching a new bread product can make use of the framework. Renovating the bakery can use the framework.
The point is that most of their job duties are operational, not part of a project.
Project management does not only apply to IT tho. Some example:
- other engineering product development
- event organizing
- construction
- sales
- shipping
I wouldn’t want to live in a house that has been designed using agile methods.
Neither would we want to use software built in such a way, but here we are…
How does Susan and Emma in accounts express their work as a sprint? How does Steve or Sarah running a bakery express their work as a sprint?
Probably much the same way anything non-trivial gets split into sprints in IT: Just fudge it to keep the PM from moaning too much while you try to actually get some work done in between all the fucking “rituals”.
Rugby.
I work in IT … scrum and devops is just some bullshit middle managers made up to justify their existance.
I understand scrum, but DevOps? Are you joking? There’s so much benefit to having more cross-functional IT people.
Yeah, you can make fewer people do more jobs.
You can make your team better at more kinds of technology. If management sees that as an opportunity to cut people then that’s management being dumb. But DevOps is still fundamentally a good thing.
I’ve seen agile in design of electrical and mechanical hardware. We have one person in our company who knows wtf she is doing with it and can lead an ok agile project. Personally, I think a spiral design process works better for physical hardware than agile does generally.
The others I’ve witnessed struggle to maintain discrete sprints. Everything becomes top priority with some reason to deviate from the structured schedule.
The Operations floor has Tier meetings everyday, which is the closest thing I can think of to scrums and still useful for an Ops environment. A work cell (tier 4) meets first thing in the morning to go over the production schedule for the day and any problems. The leader of the cell takes the schedule and problems in need of escalation to the product line (tier 3) meeting. And out of those, to Operations leaders and the GM at tier 2. All tier meetings are standup, on the floor in front of the area’s metrics/schedule board. Where I currently work, the tier 4 and 3 are pretty short most days, maybe 10 min. Tier 2 does drag on. I don’t think there’s a tier 1 and don’t know why the numbers were picked as they were.
Any time I’ve heard of Scrum being implemented, it’s usually a negative thing. I’ve had a few friends where their workplace tries it, and the smart ones usually drop it. The others just lose people instead. Biggest complaint I’ve seen is the daily meetings that 110% could have been an email. I think it just doesn’t get applied “correctly”.
Why we don’t see it elsewhere is it’s not really applicable elsewhere in a lot of ways. I work in healthcare and I do not know how that would be implemented into my job. It’s not like we have team goals or projects even, we’re just out here scanning patient’s and processing their images. I’m sure management has goals but we’re so short staffed that I don’t pay any attention to it. I’ve got more important things to worry about than patient satisfaction scores or how many open appointments we have.
I’m in healthcare and education, and find morning huddles are very helpful. We run the patient list, identify who might need us to track some results down, and assign learners to patients they know or who appear to have presentations they should prioritize for their learning. Reception joins to see if any changes are needed to make sure patients have the right amount of time allocated, or if we have room for some squeeze ins. If there are any priority issues (patients we MUST see that day) that gets shared so no matter who gets the call, we are able to react appropriately. Whole thing takes well under 10min, and is hugely helpful.
Some genius added another huddle first thing in the afternoon schedule, which is rather useless, but since we never get to eat lunch, this leaves a bit of time before the chaos of the afternoon strikes to grab a bite or run to the bathroom.
Yeah management types hear “daily meetings” and don’t realize that scrum meetings are meant to be less than 5 minutes.
“What did you do yesterday? What are you doing today? Do you have any blockers?” Done.
We used to have the meeting first thing in the morning.
“What are you doing today?”
“No clue, you decided to have a meeting instead of letting me check my email and Jira responses.”
“What are your blockers?”
“No clue, you decided to have a meeting instead of letting me check my email and Jira responses.”
I was part of a project that was run on a 5 minute standup and it was wonderful. Everything after that has been bad to awful.
If folks are discussing implementation details during the meeting, it’s awful.
One of the former managers wanted me to implement agile programming, as it would be so much better, he had heard. I am the only programmer in my specialized field in the company…
I swear some of these managers don’t even have two brain cells to rub together
I do two scrum-style a week and go daily if we’re busy. Team of 5, I set the time limit to 3 mins which means we’re realistically done in 4-5. I’ll also sometimes do sprint-style stuff for quick turnover projects with 2+. Usually this is a big chunk of analytics or report that needs to get done, so it’s best to break apart the requirements and designate people that specialise at different parts onto each job. I also use digital boards for projects and larger tasks since there can be a lot going on at once. This helps me clear blockers and re-prioritise upcoming tasks or redesignate someone’s capacity to assisting with other tasks if need.
My fav part is the team having everything cleared and all that’s left is blockers I’ve already actioned for movement. If anyone asks why we’re idle and doing a jigsaw puzzle or personal development, I can just show the board. The transparency is sweet justice for senior management which are often involved in the blocks.
I make sure to not go full agile because it’s just not really compatable. I pluck the basic parts and the general concept and use what works and ignore what won’t.
I have a friend whose team uses Scrum as an internal auditor at a utilities company. Their audits are treated as epics while specific deliverables or findings are stories. After a few weeks of growing pains, he likes it a couple of years after implementation.
Myself? I’ve had mostly bad experiences working in various IT and Dev roles both as a IC and team manager. Maybe it’s because I’ve been trained on using it, but I still believe in the methodology and blame greedy implementations. I see management/customers count or haggle points, sizes, or hours and it’s like staring down a speeding freight train.
I’ve seen it turn into utter disasters in tendering large construction contracts on both sides of the fence. I’m usually only peripherally involved, but every time I hear someone runs them in a scrum, it just breaks down.
You can’t place a bid with a few less features because you’re out of time. You can’t break down the process into stories you can close, because one detail can throw all your previous work away. You can’t summarize highly specialised work in a stand-up because most people aren’t event in the same field as you (listing blockers still works though).
The whole 9-5 realm is a joke. To give you an example, I noticed IT bois works on tickets like each email comms are tickets but same is not the case of any other department. If the same was across whole organization, people will be more productive and will be held accountable.
I’ve dealt with many IT managers, product owners etc and have noticed something that these guys are willing to bend over for smallest of things but with other departments managers, there will be a pushback.
I once heard of a sport called rugby
We had something like it in my previous job. Maritime electronics - outfitting ships with radars and navigation systems.
We had a very short meeting every morning to cover the status and the plan. Basically to sort out any blockers or if one project needed additional hands.
I had the unpleasant experience of being in a group that applied SCRUM to research. Yes, the work involved software implementation, but research is largely antithetical to SCRUM. Yes, you need good research practices but a key aspect is that you don’t know where you will end up. The stand up meetings became 30 minutes twice a week. Arrrg.
It’s a pretty common term on the rugby pitch.
In education there are self-directed learning centers that follow agile principles with some of the features of SCRUM.
