Hi! Ken Schwaber here. Jeff Sutherland and I developed the Scrum process for complex product development over the last twenty years, and have been friends and co-workers over the last thirty years. We both had become somewhat discouraged as waterfall ate into our pleasure of bringing sophisticated products to market, and Scrum became our effort to redeem our professional lives and professions. I still remember the epiphany I had at DuPont's Advanced Research Facility, when I discovered that our research not only had legs, but was based on first principles .... complex processes require empirical process control!
Over the last ten years, I’ve developed and signed the Agile Manifesto, and founded and chaired first the Agile Alliance and then the Scrum Alliance. These have all helped Agile and Scrum become accepted as successful alternatives to waterfall and predictive processes, and have been excellent community focal points. We’ve sometimes floundered, such as during certifications, but our profession is a better place to be now than it was ten years ago.
Agile is now used in more development organizations than waterfall, and in 2009, 86% of all Agile development was based in Scrum. Does this mean that Scrum is superior? No, it simply means that Scrum is simple, well-explained, and easy for people to understand as a community and Scrum teams. However, Scrum is not a silver-bullet. It does not bring success. Intelligent, hard working people can use Scrum to overcome waterfall habits and build the best possible products, but the effort is great and those that succeed will be in the minority. I predicted five years ago that only 25% of all organizations that embraced Scrum would fully benefit, and I see now reason to change my projections.
This fall, I’m leaving behind my community based work with the various Alliances. I’ve enjoyed the experience and the company. However, I think I can best serve my profession by focusing on working just with those that have the determination to do better, regardless. Those that embrace change to reach excellence. Accordingly, I’ve started Scrum.org. A small number of those with a similar determination and mind-set to mine will be working with me there to help those who are want to reclaim their profession, marketplace dominance, and professional excellence. We will focus on self-assessment, training, coaching, consulting, and superlatives.
This site, the first home of Scrum, will remain standing with a library of materials that I’ve created on the journey so far. Also, I’ll publish a list of sessions when I will work with the general public in workshops. I look forward to our continued journey, For now, I refer you to www.scrum.org.
Best regards,
Ken Schwaber