{"id":329,"date":"2006-08-25T10:15:31","date_gmt":"2006-08-25T17:15:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.redmonk.com\/cote\/wp\/?p=329"},"modified":"2006-08-25T10:15:31","modified_gmt":"2006-08-25T17:15:31","slug":"enterprise-scrum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/2006\/08\/25\/enterprise-scrum\/","title":{"rendered":"&quot;Enterprise Scrum&quot;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Rather than just <a href=\"http:\/\/www.del.icio.us.com\/bushwald\/agile\/\">bookmark the links<\/a>, I thought I&#8217;d call out a few interesting threads around &#8220;Enterprise Agile,&#8221; or, in this case, Scrum. In the past year or so, as large companies have adopted Scrum and other Agile techniques, there&#8217;s been some adaptation on both sides. The chief notion, as new people pick up the practices and ideas is to somehow prefix the word &#8220;Enterprise&#8221; in front of &#8220;Agile&#8221; or one of it&#8217;s implementations, like Scrum.<\/p>\n<p>There are some interesting posts about the tension around this in <a href=\"http:\/\/groups.yahoo.com\/group\/scrumdevelopment\/\">scrumdevelopment<\/a>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/groups.yahoo.com\/group\/scrumdevelopment\/message\/10548\">From Ken Schwaber<\/a>, on the topic of BigCo people like Microsoft and IBM &#8220;taking Scrum to the next level&#8221;:<br \/>\n<blockquote><p>\nI knew that there would be those who would not get Agile and Scrum.<br \/>\nHowever this type of marketing and facile representation of what we do<br \/>\nis very disappointing. Yet, watch for more of the same as IBM (with<br \/>\ntheir recent donation of parts of RUP and documentation of Scrum) gets<br \/>\ninto this through the Eclipse foundation and Microsoft gets into this<br \/>\nwith VSTS. One has to wonder at the mismatch between large,<br \/>\nhierarchical, command and control organizations providing guidance on<br \/>\nAgile.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/li>\n<li>And <a href=\"http:\/\/groups.yahoo.com\/group\/scrumdevelopment\/message\/15656\">this recent thread on &#8220;enterprise scrum&#8221;<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/groups.yahoo.com\/group\/scrumdevelopment\/message\/15662\">Ken again<\/a>:<br \/>\n<blockquote><p>\nIf the people at Microsoft that are using Scrum to build product contributed, I&#8217;d be delighted. If the process people at Microsoft get piling on to Scrum to prove their importance, I&#8217;ll continue to regard it as irrelevant but potentially disruptive.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>The Checked out Enterprise<\/h2>\n<p>In a seemingly unrelated post the other day, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.annezelenka.com\/2006\/08\/enterprise-20-web-20-a-proof-in-four-steps\">Anne charted out some reasons why Web 2.0 won&#8217;t be an easy fit in the Enterprise<\/a>. In essence, I think she captured in a much more concise way <a href=\"http:\/\/www.redmonk.com\/cote\/archives\/2006\/08\/dysfunctional_a.html\">the &#8220;problems&#8221; I was trying to get at in my last Agile-related post<\/a>. In summary:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Most enterprises are top-down by design and desire.<\/li>\n<li>You get power in most enterprises by withholding information and using it when it most profits you.<\/li>\n<li>Specialization at the person, not role, level is norm in most enterprises, and new specialization rarely &#8220;win.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>As <a href=\"http:\/\/groups.yahoo.com\/group\/agilemanagement\/messages\/3568?threaded=1&#038;m=e&#038;var=1&#038;tidx=1\">Ed Daniel pointed out in a post<\/a> on <a href=\"http:\/\/groups.yahoo.com\/group\/agilemanagement\/messages\">agilemanagement<\/a> about the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.redmonk.com\/cote\/archives\/2006\/08\/dysfunctional_a.html\">Dysfunctional Agile post<\/a>, I&#8217;m more interested in the &#8220;transformation to agility and the issues around that in relation to entrenched legacy models that are looking at being transitioned focused on large orgs&#8221; than the &#8220;happy-path&#8221; discussions of Agile. I think Anne&#8217;s line of thinking provides a high-level outline of the causes of those &#8220;issues.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Now, the two questions are:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www-128.ibm.com\/developerworks\/rational\/library\/aug06\/pollice\/index.html#N100F1\">What scope do we need to draw around the application of Agile in large organizations<\/a>? How far into the rest of the organization do we need to worry about? Put another way, how <a href=\"http:\/\/www.joelonsoftware.com\/articles\/LeakyAbstractions.html\">leaky<\/a> is Agile outside of development?<\/li>\n<li>For whatever vertical and horizontal depth the first question asks, what is the current state of practice and what works for changing it to Agile&#8217;s favor?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>To my mind, the chief problem hinges off the specialization problem. Due to specialization, very few people are allowed, or want to think that they have responsibility for the entire project: delivering and, implicitly, making sure the software sells and brings profit to the organization and, thus, each person.<\/p>\n<p>So much in Agile-think hinges off every person involved <a href=\"http:\/\/safari.oreilly.com\/0201604566\/part01\">&#8220;checking in,&#8221;<\/a> being open, up-front, and <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/TCB\">TCB<\/a>&#8216;ing without being told to. In my mind, large organizations are anathema to &#8220;checking in.&#8221; I don&#8217;t think the problem is intractable, but I certainly think that there&#8217;s plenty of tools yet to be documented for going up against the checked-out enterprise.<\/p>\n<p>(As a side-note, check out <a href=\"http:\/\/groups.yahoo.com\/group\/agilemanagement\/\">the huge jump in messages on agilemanagement<\/a>: from the 50-100 range for most of 06, to 372 in Aug. 06.)<\/p>\n<p><b>Update:<\/b> right after posting this, I came across <a href=\"http:\/\/www-128.ibm.com\/developerworks\/rational\/library\/aug06\/pollice\/index.html\">this post from Gary Pollice on process in software development<\/a>. In it, he outlines many of the goals and purposes for process in large organizations. That exploration of the simple question &#8220;why?&#8221; is great.<\/p>\n<p><b>Disclaimer:<\/b> IBM is a client.<\/p>\n<p><!-- technorati tags start --><\/p>\n<p>Tags: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.technorati.com\/tag\/change\" rel=\"tag\">change<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.technorati.com\/tag\/enterprise\" rel=\"tag\">enterprise<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.technorati.com\/tag\/ibm\" rel=\"tag\">ibm<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.technorati.com\/tag\/msft\" rel=\"tag\">msft<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.technorati.com\/tag\/peopleware\" rel=\"tag\">peopleware<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.technorati.com\/tag\/scrum\" rel=\"tag\">scrum<\/a><\/p>\n<p><!-- technorati tags end --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rather than just bookmark the links, I thought I&#8217;d call out a few interesting threads around &#8220;Enterprise Agile,&#8221; or, in this case, Scrum. In the past year or so, as large companies have adopted Scrum and other Agile techniques, there&#8217;s been some adaptation on both sides. The chief notion, as new people pick up the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-agile"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}