Scrum is common in software development projects and myriad examples can be found through simple Google research. What is less obvious is the use of Scrum in non-software projects, so a few of these examples are cited in the following.
My colleague Stacia Viscardi and I used Scrum to manage our book project. Our product backlog consisted of the chapters we wanted to write for The Software Project Manager's Bridge to Agility, in priority order based on client inquiries. For example, because we seemed to get a lot of questions about scope management and very few regarding procurement, the chapter on scope was at the top of the backlog, while the procurement chapter was near the bottom.
We held a release-planning meeting and moved the backlog items onto flip chart pages that represented our sprints, which were one month in length. At the beginning of each sprint, we held a call to talk about the chapters we would be writing, set goals and expectations, and commit. During the sprint, we checked in with each other several times a week. As we completed chapters in the sprint we would exchange them to get feedback, and then incorporate that feedback into the final copy. Our sprint reviews consisted of a final review of the chapters, and any additional changes ended up in the product backlog to be planned in the next sprint.
As it was just the two of us, we rotated roles and responsibilities. For one section of the book, I was dubbed the Product Owner, and I had final feature authority. For other sections, Stacia had this role. Our ScrumMaster was our editor, even though he did not realize it. He still performed the ScrumMaster responsibilities, however, he reminded us of our deadlines, removed obstacles for us, and gave us the assistance and tools we needed to do our jobs.
And it's not just us using Scrum to write books. Lonely Planet uses Scrum in their travel guide development, “Prior to Scrum, the development of a book was very sequential and required many handoffs and took a long a time to get a book out from conception to publication. Now they involve all players needed to put a book together (writers, graphic artists, desktop publishing, marketing, editors etc) and incrementally develop the book chapter by chapter following the Scrum framework” (Scrum for Non-Software Projects, 2010).
Jeff Sutherland is a Senior Advisor at Openview Venture Partners, a venture capital company based in Boston, MA. In 2010, he wrote a paper for the Hawaii International Conference on Systems Science titled Organizational Transformation with Scrum: How a Venture Capital Group Gets Twice as Much Done With Half the Work that describes how Openview uses Scrum in the management of its portfolio.
Openview teams use Scrum in projects “in management, sales, marketing, finance, and customer support for portfolio companies,” as well as pushing Scrum out to their portfolio companies (Sutherland, 2010, p. 1). In one example of Scrum use, the Labs team use one-week sprints to execute operational value-add projects for their portfolio companies, perform due diligence, and institutionalize their value-add capabilities.
When the Labs team initially implemented Scrum, the increased visibility into projects underway made them realize that several of the projects were actually low-value. As a result, they cut 30 percent of their projects, which made room for more high-value projects and allowed them to focus on and finish these projects. In fact, this clarity of focus and the limit of the amount of work in progress in a sprint helped the team to become more productive, as projects no longer dragged out over long periods of time because too many were being worked simultaneously. The team has already doubled their productivity and is “on their way to the second doubling of productivity” as they continue to adapt (Sutherland, 2010, p. 8).
Rev. Arline Sutherland works as an interim pastor for the Unitarian Universalist church. She is also the wife of Jeff Sutherland, one of the co-creators of Scrum. In a 2009 paper for the Agile2009 Conference titled Scrum in Church: Saving the World One Team at a Time, Rev. Sutherland described her experiences using Scrum in churches in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Florida, Delaware, and Virginia.
Scrum is primarily used by office staff and volunteers to both “keep the engine running” and in “new initiatives” (Sutherland, 2009, p. 3). Projects under various programming areas such as pastoral care, children and youth, membership development, social justice, music, facilities, finances and fund raising were managed using Scrum.
Several adaptations were made in each instance to accommodate the needs of the team members and the constraints of their environment. For example, it was impossible to hold daily in-person stand-ups with more than half the team holding down day jobs. So Skype was used since “the largest demographic using Skype are grandparents, (and) even older less technologically sophisticated members are often skilled users” (Sutherland, 2009, p.4).
It is worth noting that Sutherland discovered “that each and every time Scrum is introduced into a system it has to be adapted” (Sutherland, 2009, p. 4). Originally discouraged that her implementations of Scrum never seemed to match the ideal of “real Scrum,” she quickly realized that the benefits of genuine adaptive change included the adaptation of Scrum itself.