Chapter 8
Scrum at the Enterprise Level
Many organizations are deciding to switch to Scrum. As with many other types of organizational transformation, the results depend on many factors. Some actual results are described in this chapter, along with the conditions that created each of them.
We have worked with many organizations, large and small, to help them transform and gain these benefits. The first publication about these efforts was “The Playbook for Achieving Enterprise Agility,” produced through collaboration between Ken Schwaber and Rally Corporation in 2005. It was never published, but it was used frequently during Scrum rollouts. It can be found in Appendix 3.
Ken later wrote a book about enterprise adoption of Scrum in 2007, The Enterprise and Scrum.1 He describes the strategies and tactics for doing so. The tactic of employing Scrum to manage the transformation itself is also described.
Profound but Transient Change
The type of adoption we have seen is usually extremely gratifying. The organization regularly puts out quality, valuable releases of software that are welcomed by their customers. The development and product or customer organizations work well together to formulate and deliver new releases.
In the transformation to Scrum, the entire organization is in upheaval, working in controlled chaos for several years. Ultimately, software releases become better and better, the employees are happy to come to work, and customers begin to love working with the organization. ...
