MIS41020 - Scrum + Engineering Practices: Experiences of Three Microsoft Teams

Module - Design, Development and Creativity

Class or Article - Article

Lesson or Name - Williams, L., Brown, G., Meltzer, A. Nagappan, N., (2010) Scrum + Engineering Practices: Experiences of Three Microsoft Teams. 

Additional Info -  1-9

Precis 

In this article ' Scrum + Engineering Practices: Experiences of Three Microsoft Teams. ' by Williams, Brown, Meltzer and Nagappan we are presented with the breakdown of Scrum within Microsoft. They present scrum as a methodology in agile that works as a wrapper with existing engineering practices. There has been few quantitative research results published on scrum. Equally for the purposes of their investigation case study research was conducted in order to gain a deeper more intrinsic understanding of the application of scrum and its impacts in combination with engineering practices from Microsofts Engineering excellence department. Williams et al observed 3 teams utilising scrum across a range of Dimensions from Team size, location experience, programming language and even test run frequency. Again Williams et al are conscious to provide the limitations of their research.

Reflection

I feel as each article I read my knowledge deepens but it also opens up another caveat I have not considered. Through all the papers I have read in regards to agile, scrum, extreme programming and even waterfall I have not once considered the engineering implication that these pose. The engineering teams is another level of complexity and this observes it well and draw caution to ignoring it. I feel that the methodologies and frameworks are now overlooking key skills and people in their design such as the developer and engineers in pursuit of a great framework. This approach leaves gaps as it is not considering the people and skills central to its deliver and in turn is taking them for granted. Scum of course can provide improvement the context it is applied within holds a very large part of its success (Krutchten, 2007). When reading the limitation of the research and understanding that this research is only applicable to Miscrosoft under the same set conditions I find myself asking why the Authors' did not make it more applicable as a whole to the industry.

More research of this kind needs to be done and completely reinforces my viewpoint that methodologies and frameworks need to provide a method for presenting their effectiveness in application. Blind trust cannot be adovcated when there is such high stakes. Standards hold themselves to high esteem when looking to rebuild and enhance their standard and as a result drive continuous development.

Quotes