Is Scrum Just For Software Development

Hello and welcome back to my YouTube channel. My name is Helena and I have been coaching project managers, Scrum Masters, and product owners for the past 10 years. In today's video, we are going to be talking about, is Scrum just for software development? This is a common question that I get asked a lot. So before I answer this question, let's talk about what is Scrum and how it works. Scrum was invented back in the early 1990s by Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schreiber to help organizations that are struggling with complex software development projects. So yes, Scrum did originate from the software and IT space. So according to Jeff and Ken, Scrum is a framework within which people can address complex adaptive problems while productively and creatively delivering products of the highest possible value. Scrum is especially helpful for managing projects that have the following 3 characteristics: emergent requirements, capabilities that don't necessarily exist yet, and unforeseeable uncertainty. Let's break down each of these 3 characteristics right now. So let's start with emergent requirements. There is a general vision or direction but the detailed goal of the project are not 100% known at the start of the project. In other words, the stakeholders don't know exactly what they want the project to look like at the start of the project, and the requirements will change throughout as they get to know more and more information. All right, let's look at the second characteristic now, which is capabilities. These don't necessarily exist. So how exactly the project will be completed is not known at the beginning, as some research and innovation will be required along the way. And thirdly, we have unforeseeable uncertainty. These are risks that could come up during the project that can't be anticipated at the start of the project. Now, Scrum should not be used for every single project. Let's say you are putting up a new skyscraper out in Manhattan. You want to use traditional construction techniques. You don't want to use an adaptive Scrum framework. However, if you have requirements that are likely to evolve over the course of the project, and at least some technical unknowns about how exactly the work will be completed, then Scrum framework will make your life a lot easier. So it's not really the industry that determines whether Scrum should be used or not. It's the type of project that determines whether Scrum is a good fit or not. Let's look at this chart right over here. If you have requirements that are well-defined and technology that is pretty certain, use to complete this project. So in other words, the technology used to complete this project has been defined before and the requirements have been defined before. Great analogy for this is construction. Then in this case, you do want to use the simple traditional waterfall methodologies. However, if you have projects where the requirements are more undefined and the technology more uncertain, So in other words, if you move into the complicated and complex territories, then you do want to use frameworks in the Agile methodologies, Scrum in particular. Software development projects are a particularly good fit for Scrum. This is one reason it becomes so popular and at such a rapid rate. In short, software is eating the world. Although Scrum has its origins in the software development industry, it has now been used to manage any complex and complicated type of projects, and they can be from a variety of different industries, including automotive, schools, marketing, law, and even aerospace development. It is not the industry that determines whether Scrum is used. It is more the type of project and the complexity of the requirements and the technology that determines whether Scrum would be a good fit or not. So I hope this now answers the question of whether Scrum is only used for the software industry or not, and the answer is no. Thank you so much for joining me for today's video, and if you haven't done so already, make sure you like and subscribe for more videos on project management, Agile, Scrum, and Kanban. Thank you so much, and I will see you soon.