Scrum - Getting Started without Getting Burned

Scrum is one of the most well known agile methodologies. It has several characteristics which make it very attractive; some of them are:
1. Simplicity. Its basics can be learned in less than a day
2. Flexibility. It can be customized to fit the needs of the project
3. Scalability. It has been used in projects with up to hundreds of developers
4. Visibility. All the issues that may arise during the project lifetime become immediately visible. This makes their solution easier.

However, its implementation can sometimes be difficult. Scrum, like all other agile methodologies, is heavily based on teamwork, communication, trust, and on delegating responsibility and authority. All these things together represent a major cultural shift especially for companies used to more traditional methods which, usually, requires time and hard work to be fully accepted.

In this presentation I will give an in-depth introduction to this methodology and of some of the problems that may happen during its implementation, along with some hints and tips for their solution. I'll also give some references for the ones willing to know more. The goal is to give the attendees enough knowledge to get started without getting burned.

Giovanni Asproni is a freelance consultant with more than ten years of professional experience in which he had the opportunity to work in several different roles, from Programmer to Senior Architect and Technical Project Leader, in a variety of application domains including CASE tools, telecommunications, bioinformatics, and banking. He is an expert in Object Oriented Design and Development, Agile Software Development, and a Certified Scrum Master. He is a member of the conference committees for the London XPDay and the ACCU spring conference and also member of the ACCU, the AgileAlliance, the ACM, and the IEEE Computer Society.

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