Dave West presented on the past, present, and future of Scrum and agile software development. He discussed how Scrum originated from experiments in lean product development in the 1990s. Today, Scrum is widely used, though often not fully implemented, and challenges remain in adopting agile practices at scale within large organizations. For the future, West envisions focusing on measuring outcomes to drive improvement, emphasizing agile values and professionalism, scaling Scrum for multiple teams, and establishing dedicated agile product delivery organizations separate from traditional IT structures.

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by Scrum.org – Improving the Profession of Software Development
Past, Present & Future
Dave West
CEO / Product Owner Scrum.org
Dave.West@scrum.org
@Davidjwest

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Who am I and what are we going to talk about
Agenda
1. The Past
2. The Current
3. The Future
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DaveWest
Product Owner / CEO Scrum.org
Dave.West@scrum.org
@DavidJWest

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Our Genesis…
Experimentation
The New New Product
Development Game
Manifesto for Agile
Software Development Founded 2001
Founded 2004Founded 2009

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Improving the profession of
software development

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1,146,000+
Open Assessments
Taken
95,000+ Professional Scrum
Certifications
The Home of Scrum
90% Agile Teams Use Scrum
167 Professional Scrum
Trainers
Taught
Practiced everywhere
60,000+
+12M Using Scrum Daily
ONE Scrum Guide

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Because of You – Scrum has Reached the Age of 21
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Scrum forms the basis of the
majority of Agile approaches

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Scrum is the bike, not the training wheels..
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Not Scrum Scrum

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The Past
The Rise of Agility and Scrum
Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be
lived forwards.
Soren Kierkegaard
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Let me take you back 21 years…
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The Software Crisis…In the 80’s
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The non linear nature
of software
development was
driving teams mad !
By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1403039

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The drive to a different way of working..
• Built in instability – clear goal
but nothing else – no detailed
project plan
• Self organizing teams –
Autonomy, pushing the limits,
cross functional
• Overlapping development
phases – iterations
• Multi-learning – Learn by doing
• Subtle control – Minor process
controls
• Organizational transfer of
learning

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Empirical Process Control
DefinedProcess
Control

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Which approach makes more sense for software ?
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Activity
….
Activity
1
Activity
2
Problem IN Out IN SolutionOut
Problem
Experiment
IN
Solution
Role A Role B Role X
Team
Repeat

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Scientific Method
• Ask a question
• Research it
• Construct a hypothesis
• Test your hypothesis by doing an
experiment
• Learn from your results
• Iterate until happy
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• Got a problem to solve
• Do some requirements analysis
and design
• Decide on a solution
• Build some software
• Deploy and measure your
success
• Iterate until happy
Traditional Applied to Software
And don’t waste your time doing big chunks of work!

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What should you maximize for ?

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Scrum Framework

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• Learning = business value
• Speed is vital for learning
• Failure is a key part to learning
• Team must be empowered to learn
• Business must be part of the solution
• Team must have all the skills to deliver the experiment
And…
• Impossible to prescribe a prescriptive process
• Inspection and adaption through transparency is key
Implications of doing Scrum

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The Present
What is really happening with Scrum and
Agile ?
Nowadays people know the price of everything and the
value of nothing.
OscarWilde
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Software is increasingly the most important organizational commodity
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Agile adoption is growing too
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Agile is the new
normal for building
software
And Scrum is the
standard approach
to Agile

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And the results are promising..
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But when Agile fails…

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The Reality of Scrum Is…
Water Scrum Fall

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Enterprise Agility is Disappointing
The need for large scale organizational Agility through
Scrum product development is largely unfilled.
Scrum Adoption approaches:
1. Subsume Scrum within the traditional organization
2. Paste an Agile approach on top of the current
organization, intermingling cultures.
3. Gradually and incrementally change traditional
culture into an Agile organization.
Exceptions are
organizations that
have done this the
hard way, through
continuous
improvement on
their own.
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What we have learnt from the Assessments
• Scrum Masters is 10 times more
popular than the other assessments
» Everyone wants to be a master
• Mechanics of Scrum are becoming
universal but many have forgotten
the reason why we do it
» Inspection and adaption
» The values are forgotten
• Self directed, managed teams still
seems beyond most people
» Want to be a specialist doing a job they
are told to do
• Product ownership is a universal
problem
» Seems to be an IT role
» Not focused on value, but instead
requirements
• Scrum Master does not seem to be
empowered to drive change or even
support it
» Limited support by executives
» Can not make things happen
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Issues we hear from our community
At the Macro Level
• Business is does not care about
Agility
• Legacy software gets in the way of
our Agility
• Cost is more important than value
• Outsourcing and other
organizational models stop us
• Rewards are based on following a
process
• Risk is to avoided at all costs
At the Micro Level
• I can’t get access to the tools needed
to deliver in an Agile way
• I have to create documents for
compliance
• The customer expects a detailed
plan
• The customer does not want
software frequently
• We don’t have a PO, SM or the right
people to deliver software
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The Future
Building on today and driving the future
Act the way you’d like to be and soon you’ll be the way
you’d like to act
Bob Dylan
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What the community is focused on
• Better measures to drive better understanding and
improvement
• A focus on values and professionalism
• Scaling Scrum for multiple teams
• Putting in place an Agile product delivery organization
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How can we
separate the
valuable from the
wasteful?
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Direct Evidence

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Measure Outcomes. Measure Direct Evidence.
Release frequency
Release Stabilization
CycleTime
InstalledVersion Index
Usage Index
Innovation Rate
Defect Density
Revenue per Employee
Product Cost Ratio
Employee Satisfaction
Customer Satisfaction

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Released 7th of July:Values Added…
Professional Scrum is MORE than knowledge
• COMMITMENT
dedicated to delivering working software
• FOCUS
on what is the most important
• OPENNESS
frequently inspecting through delivering
• RESPECT
cross-functioning, self-organizing team
• COURAGE
we admit we do not know everything
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“Scrum Values” Illustration
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One ScrumTeam doing work

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Scrum Framework

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Nine ScrumTeams doing work

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Nexus™

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Scrum is a Key Part of ANY Scaling Strategy
• Building on the success
of Scrum at the team
level
• Adopting
methodologies such as
SAFe, LeSS

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Time for a new
approach to
enterprise Agility

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Time is right for
Scrum Studio

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Traditional Software
Development Organization
• Traditional hierarchical structure based on:
» evolved best practices
» functional structure
• PMO based project initiation, funding,
planning and management
Agile Software Development
• Networked structure of products, unique
services, and services shared with
traditional organization.
• Value based management
• Rapid delivery of increments of
functionality
• Modern software practices and tools
• Scrum based
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Scrum and Agility Crippled By Shared Culture

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Completely Separate from Existing IT organizations
Scrum Studio1. Agile Culture
2. Product-oriented
3. Planning through Operations
4. All services and administration provided
5. Onboarding qualified products
6. Value based measurement and management
7. Persistent team and tribal culture
8. Consistent, practice driven development
9. Modern, proven tool sets and infrastructure
10. Professional software

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Improving the profession of
software DELIVERY
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Closing
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“Success in management requires learning as fast as
the world is changing.”
-Warren Bennis

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Thank
You
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