Introducing Scrum to your Software Team

This chapter aims to get your new team up and running with an Agile delivery approach as quickly as possible. To do this, we'll use the Scrum framework to show how you can successfully transition a new-to-Agile team to this method of working. We’ll use a pragmatic approach, based on real-world examples, offering the steps that you'll need to take.

We will cover the following topics in this chapter:

• Why Scrum is an excellent place to start
• How to efficiently transition to Scrum from Waterfall
• Visible workspaces for managing software delivery
• Measuring and reporting progress with visualization
• Removing impediments
• Managing delivery as a team sport
• The importance of team retrospectives

In the last two chapters there was a lot of theory, now; it's time for the practical guide to begin, and for the navel-gazing to stop. In this chapter, we'll look at how to get your team up and running with Scrum. We'll go through the steps you need to take for you to transition from predictive to adaptive, and from gated to iterative.

At the end of this chapter, your team should have completed its first Sprint. You'll understand that to be successful, managing the delivery of a software product has to become a team sport and not just the responsibility of one person (the person we used to call the project manager). You'll also gain a clear idea of how visible workspaces will help you achieve that. We'll also describe several ways that you can measure the team's progress during the Sprint to help keep them focused and purposeful.