The Scrum Development Process

This is the original paper (updated on April 5, 1996) on Scrum, based on the presentation at OOPSLA 1995 where the concept of Scrum was initially introduced.

The stated, accepted philosophy for systems development is that the development process is a well understood approach that can be planned, estimated, and successfully completed. This has proven incorrect in practice. SCRUM assumes that the systems development process is an unpredictable, complicated process that can only be roughly described as an overall progression. SCRUM defines the systems development process as a loose set of activities that combines known, workable tools and techniques with the best that a development team can devise to build systems. Since these activities are loose, controls to manage the process and inherent risk are used. SCRUM is an enhancement of the commonly used iterative/incremental object-oriented development cycle.