What is the value of scrum for the boss?

This article is intended for project managers who are committed to promoting scrum. Many of my clients have asked me this question: they have been using scrum for a while and it is really a good thing to make scrum, it can effectively improve the team's productivity, boost the team's morale, reduce external interference with the team, and provide a lot of benefits, but the bosses, especially non-Software Development bosses, who are still indifferent to scrum, cannot get the support of the boss, implementation of scrum is difficult, and want to persuade the boss, but do not know how to impress them, in scrum, what do bosses get in scrum? What is the significance of scrum to the boss?

To answer this question, let's first look at what problems scrum has solved in software development? The most common problems for project managers are progress, quality, and cost. But to be honest, scrum does not solve any problem well.

All people who have worked with software know that software delays are essentially caused by limited predictive capabilities of human brains for complex problems (such as a software). Software is complex, as Ken schwaber said, the last simple software in the world was the last thing in the 1940s S. Scrum itself said it was the same as any other software method, not a silver bullet and could not solve the problem of delay, it can only make good predictions about the upcoming delay.

The cost of software development is basically the salary of the R & D personnel. If the progress problem is not solved, the cost problem cannot be discussed.

Those who are agile in quality problems know that it is indeed a good improvement, but how much is the credit of scrum? TDD, automated testing, continuous integration, and pair-based programming are not practices of scrum. The Quality Control in scrum is probably a review, but to be honest, I have seen many teams also use scrum, but they have also made software of a rather miserable quality.

However, are the project managers concerned about the progress, quality, and cost issues reported to their bosses every day? I cannot see it. The goal of a boss to start a company is not to get a good progress quality cost report. They want to make money to start a company. To make money, they need to invest money first and then generate value, if the output is higher than the input, it will make money. Otherwise, it will lose money. This is the most basic business operation principle, and software companies are no exception. Software development is a process of commercial operation. It is a process in which investors invest capital to create value for R & D teams. For investors, Shenma coding technology and Shenma management methods are full of clouds, only the input-output ratio is what they are most concerned about. Every penny they want to invest can produce more value.

What scrum can solve is the problem of the input-output ratio.

Scrum requires that every sprint should end with a working software. Why is it a work-ready software, not a design document or a batch of code? That is because only the software that can work can create the maximum value for the company, and any intermediate process documentation or product can hardly create any value for investors. As stated in the agile declaration,Working software is better than complex documentsThis is actually a warning to the development team. Don't look at the thousands of pages of documents you have written and tens of thousands of lines of code. These are all cloud games, no one can take the money to sell, so when the project manager sees the boss with a well-prepared design document, it never gets any good looks. No matter who, after a few months of hard work, don't want to see something that can't be sold at all. The requirement must produce workable software. I am afraid only agile development can have such requirements. What other waterfall models, primitive methods, RUP, or the popular cmme, all forget the basic requirements of this business operation.

Scrum requires that the product backlog be strictly sorted by value, starting from the story with the highest sorting. Why? A theory called 20/80 tells us that 20% of functions can create 80% of commercial value, while the actual situation in the software field is: 7% of functions can create 80% of commercial value! The above data is derived from a survey on the use of software functions. An authoritative survey company investigated hundreds of commercial software products on the market and found that only 7% of the functions are frequently used by everyone, about 15% of the functions are occasionally used, and 33% of the functions are basically not used, and 45% of the functions are never used! I believe that the bosses of the company will be clear after seeing this data. Good guy, 45% of the money is completely wasted, and 33% of the money is spent on things that are basically not needed by everyone, only 7% of the money in the district is invested in the right place. This kind of asset utilization may make all the board of directors furious. However, this is the current situation of the software industry, which has developed 60 years later.

The boss is rational. It is not their goal to create perfect software to satisfy all the customer's needs. There are many methods in the software engineering field, they are all telling everyone how to make a perfect software. Programmers are also educated as perfectionists, And the irreconcilable conflicts between the company's boss and developers are also generated. Scrum educate everyone not to pursue perfection, but to provide maximum customer value in limited resources, which is consistent with the business goals of our elders, this also makes scrum the most accepted R & D management method for European and American software companies.

Businessmen often say that time is money! A mall is like a battlefield, and there is also a saying on the battlefield: high speed. It can be seen that speed and efficiency are the magic weapon to win the enemy in the mall. Scrum is also highlighting the word "fast". Scrum has set the Software Delivery cycle from several years in the waterfall era, in the iterative development era, the half year is shortened to one week to one month, and the delivery cycle is short, so the capability to cope with market changes is improved, while scrum manages changes, it creates a good balance between the ability to change and the ability to deliver continuously. In the era of customers' changing needs due to women's mood, scrum provides better continuous delivery capabilities and the ability to adapt to changes than any other method. This is what company bosses dream of. It is their ability to sleep and wake up naturally, the best way to count your money for hand cramps!