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See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323379652 Scrum in Practice: an Overview of Scrum Adaptations Conference Paper · January 2018 DOI: 10.24251/HICSS.2018.679 CITATIONS 23 READS 3,383 2 authors: Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects: Organisational Cloud Implementation: Review, Synthesis, and Directions for Research and Practice View project Scrum Extensions View project Michal Hron Aarhus University 10 PUBLICATIONS 27 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE Nikolaus Obwegeser Bern University of Applied Sciences 47 PUBLICATIONS 214 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE All content following this page was uploaded by Nikolaus Obwegeser on 25 February 2018. The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file. Scrum in practice: an overview of Scrum adaptations Michal Hron Aarhus University michal.hron@post.au.dk Nikolaus Obwegeser Aarhus University nikolaus@mgmt.au.dk Abstract Agile software development practices have gained widespread acceptance and application across all industries. Scrum, as one of the most widely used agile methods, has been adopted in countless organizations. However, while there is an understanding that practitioners rarely apply Scrum “by the book”, only little research addresses the actual adaptations and modifications that are made to fit Scrum to real world requirements: whether it is to solve methodological drawbacks, to fit the method to specific contextual constraint, or to add additional value to the method by augmentation or combination with other tools and methods. To get an overview of the proposed adaptations and their implications, this study presents a systematic review of literature reporting on challenges and motivations that lead to modifications of the Scrum method. Based on 31 relevant studies we extract seven distinct motivations for modifying Scrum, as well as six generic solution strategies to adapt the method. 1. Introduction In the context of software development, agile development methods have been originally conceived with small, co-located teams of software developer generalists in mind. As agile development methods grew in acceptance, they were introduced to a multitude of different settings that depart from the original, idealized picture, and thus the methods had to be adapted to a variety of contexts. In addition, practitioners are continuously raising their expectations to what agile development approaches can deliver. That is in particular with respect to management-related activities such as estimation, reporting, or alignment of software development activities with business strategy. One of the most popular agile development frameworks is Scrum [45], due to its simplicity and consequent versatility. In a yearly conducted “State of Agile Report” [45], Scrum (and combinations of Scrum with other techniques) consequently occupies more than half of all agile techniques that are reportedly in use. In this study, we use Scrum as a window into the agile world, based on its high level of diffusion and practical acceptance. We aim to look for insights on the application of Scrum in practice: what are commonly faced limitations? What are typically suggested alterations of Scrum to those circumstances? Our goal is to get an overview of the motivations as to why one would modify, or add to, the Scrum method, as well as to understand the commonly used solution strategies applied to perform these modifications. Based on our analysis and synthesis of existing modifications we are able to provide a structured overview of the current body of knowledge and propose promising suggestions for future method development. 2. Background Agile development is a development philosophy standing as a counterpart to traditional, plan-based, “waterfall” approaches [2]. In information systems development (ISD), agility refers to “the continual readiness of an ISD method to rapidly or inherently create change, proactively or reactively embrace change, and learn from change while contributing to perceived customer value (economy, quality, and simplicity), through its collective components and relationships with its environment” [8:340]. The agile approach is attempting to account for the inherent unpredictability of the software development process by taking an incremental approach to development, minimizing planning, estimation, and other overhead tasks, and establishing continuous communication and interaction with the customer. Agile teams continually ship working features in order to maximize impact and reduce time-to-market of new developments. While a plethora of agile ISD methods have been proposed, agile development frameworks and methods are typically not implementable without being tailored to the unique circumstances of the specific development environment [12, 13]. Proceedings of the 51st Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences | 2018 URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10125/50568 ISBN: 978-0-9981331-1-9 (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) Page 5445 Scrum was first introduced in 1997 [40], and has since become the most widely applied agile software development framework [45]. At its core, Scrum splits development into iterations not longer than four weeks (called sprints). At the end of each sprint, a shippable product increment is delivered to the user. For each new sprint, a sprint-planning meeting is held, at which tasks for the sprint are selected by the developers themselves in collaboration with other stakeholders. In Scrum, the customer is represented in the role of the product owner. Requirements are captured in the form of user stories and are aggregated in a prioritized product backlog. The product backlog is a “living” document, as it is updated continuously and thus reflecting the current understanding of user needs. In its original form, Scrum is designed for small interdisciplinary teams of about six to nine developers. An important property of any Scrum team is self-organization: i.e., the team itself has the authority to decide on strategies to achieve the objectives of the sprint. To coordinate the daily work and the adherence to the Scrum process, the role of the Scrum master is required in every Scrum team. Quick pace of work is maintained by daily stand- up meetings, during which team members inform each other about their progress and tasks for the day. Learning is facilitated through so-called retrospectives, which take place after each sprint and provide room for reflection on the work practices of the concluded sprint. 3. Related Work In this study, we are interested in understanding Scrum in practice—i.e., why and how Scrum was adapted in real-world application. While some previous review studies pursued similar goals, we argue that the underlying research differs from prior work in two main aspects: contextual focus (i.e., limitations to a particular setting) and breadth of methods under investigation (i.e., agile methods in general). Previous literature reviews typically focus on exploring adopted practices under one specific set of circumstances, e.g., agile in the context of global software development, or they follow one specific motivation, e.g., incorporating user experience design (UX) practices into agile development. As much as they are narrower in the circumstance studied, they are broader in the methodologies in question. They typically look at agile software development globally without limiting themselves to a specific methodology. In contrast, this literature review presents a map of situations that motivated adjustments of a single method—Scrum. Due to its widespread use and dominant position among agile ISD methods, we focused on adjustments made to Scrum. However, we argue that Scrum may act as a window to the agile development world, and that our findings therefore may well be carefully related to other, similar methods. Among the previously conducted literature studies, the following stand out: Hossain, Babar, and Paik (2009) and Jalali and Wohlin (2010) have both mapped agile practices in global software engineering. They arrive at similar conclusions and identify comparable practices employed to counter those challenges. Such studies usually take the form of methodology guidance and discussion of best practices, which is consistent with our findings. Duechting, Zimmermann, and Nebe (2007) mapped studies concerned with combining software product lines with agile software development practices. They emphasized the explicit adherence to the principles of the manifesto for agile software development [2] and identify Scrum and XP (eXtreme Programming) to be the most commonly mentioned methodologies in relation to software product lines. To our best knowledge, a systematic review of the general circumstances to which Scrum-based development has been tailored is not available. This work therefore aims to close this gap and presents an overview of emerging themes identified in relevant literature. Previous reviews can be situated into the classification presented in this review. 4. Research Method We followed the widely accepted literature review guidelines outlined in [48]. As our research focus was to examine the literature on adaptations or modifications of Scrum, we defined several keywords to capture relevant studies. In order to increase our understanding of the subject matter and devise a meaningful search strategy [4], we first read and discussed a number of highly cited articles, in combination with insights from related literature reviews (as discussed earlier). We made sure to allow for inclusion of both problem-driven as well as solution-driven initiatives. To discover relevant literature, we used the Scopus database and followed an iterative process to construct a replicable research query combining the words “Scrum”, “agile”, and “software” as mandatory elements, combined with a range of optional terms targeted to find adaptations of Scrum Page 5446 both in negative and positive terms. An overview of our final search terms is given in Table 1. The first search returned a relatively large uploads/Management/ scrum-guide 1 .pdf