If you are involved in software development and project management at any point in the process, then you are probably aware of the different frameworks and “ways of doing things” that people have used over time. In the past, the waterfall framework was the go-to way of doing things. That was until Agile methodology and its most popular framework, Scrum came along.
Scrum is perhaps one of the biggest and most important developments in the world of Agile and one of the most used Agile-based frameworks. Are you interested in enrolling in one of the many scrum courses there are out there? If you are, we’re not surprised, because of how many successful companies and teams use it these days.
One of the most interesting things about Scrum is how it came to be in the first place. This is a subject that is controversial as there is much debate about who should be credited with its development. In the following post, you will see that the reason why it is so controversial is that it can’t be contributed to just one person or even just two individuals. Let’s dig a little deeper.
Table of Contents
First Mention of the Word Scrum
NIkujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi are the first people to have recorded and used the word “scrum” concerning product development, as early as 1986 when they published an article called The New New Product Development Game in the Harvard Business Review. Takeuchi and Nonaka described the approach to product development for the commercial market that would improve flexibility and speed, using case studies they derived from the manufacturing firms in the printer, photocopier and automotive industries.
The word scrum refers to a rugby or holistic approach because the process is undertaken by a team comprising of many different sub-teams and overlapping phases, with complete the project as a complete unit while passing the product back and forth until it is ready.
The Development of the Scrum Framework
Many people consider that really Ken Schwaber and Mike Beedle. This is where it gets a little confusing. Basically, it is thought that Tunde Babatunde in collaboration with Schwaber conducted much of the research used to build on the Scrum framework. It was then during the first half of the 1990s that Schwaber with his company Advanced Development Methods used Scrum.
At the same time, Jeff McKenna, John Scumniotales and Jeff Sutherland took a similar approach while they were at a company called Easel Corporation and even referred to it by the single word, Scrum.
Joining Forces
Later, both Jeff and Ken joined forces and worked collectively to integrate their own ideas to form a single framework and gave it the name Scrum. They continually worked on and tested Scrum which led to their publishing their 1995 white paper, as well as contributions to the important Agile Manifesto published in 2001 and the spread and popularity of Scrum use since 2002.
About that Paper
The white paper that Schwaber and Sutherland presented as a team described the Scrum framework as part of a workshop held at the OOPSLA ’95 (object-orientated Programming, Systems, Languages and Applications 1995) called Object Design and Implementation Workshop in Austin. It was during the years following that that they worked together to combine their evolving good practices, experience and the material in the paper to develop what were the foundations of what we all know as Scrum in a modern sense.
Agile Software Development with Scrum Book and Scrum Alliance
Jeff Schwaber then joined Mike Beedle to release the first official book all about Scrum entitled Agile Software Development with Scrum. That was 2001 and the following year, Esther Derby and Mike Cohn joined with Ken Schwaber to establish Scrum Alliance, with Ken as the chairman for the organization. Over the next few years, Scrum Alliance created and officially launched the incredibly popular and hugely successful Certified ScrumMaster certification programmes and other connected courses.
From Scrum Alliance to scrum.org
By the time 2009 came along, Ken parted company with Scrum Alliance and established a new organization in the form of Scrum.org to work on the effectiveness and quality of Scrum, even more, developing the Professional Scrum series.
Scrum remains one of the most impactful and important forms of the Agile style of the product development framework.
