Scrum down
As a part of my job I find myself being introduced to all sorts of new ideas and the latest of these is using the Scrum methodology for running projects.
http://flickr.com/photos/jessflickr/163006527/
Scrum is an agile methodology that aims to empower the developers and also be flexible enough to realise that specifications change over time and creates a framework that can evolve with that but also regularly deliver solid outcomes. At Jiva I am going to take the role of Product Owner for Beanbag, which after some background reading seems to suit me fine. As far as I can tell the role of the Product Owner is to act as the voice of the user/customer and set priorities for each “sprint” (a short, in our case 3 week, period of work with deliverables at the end), then to get out of the way and let the developers do their work. To maintain the rugby theme its kind of a scrum half role, pointing the guys who do the hard graft in the right direction but leaving them to do the nitty gritty then grab the glory at the end!
Pete is going to take the role of Scrum Master - the main feature of this role as far as I can tell is to keep the Product Owner and any other stakeholders off the backs of the developers during the ’sprint’. The role has many more features but that was the one that struck me the most as I know how hard it can be trying to act as a firewall to protect a team from pressures from above and give them the space to get on and do what they were hired for.
I’m looking forward to seeing how it all works out and getting more directly involved in the evolution of Beanbag.
[this post was recycled and remixed from my personal blog if there is any deja vu occuring!]