AGILE and SCRUM project management. Any users?

[superatticman]

Hi all

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Thinking of the next step of my IT PM armory. Seems that waterfall methods are slowly but surely being phased out of IT projects and being replaced by more AGILE methods. Any Scrum masters or AGILE Practitioners here? If so has it benefitted your school projects in any way?

 

Cheers

[Ditto]

It's been a few years since I was in charge of software development. We used a in-house adaptation of Rational Unified Process (RUP), which in many ways took a blended approach and was part agile and part waterfall. Personally, I'd use the appropriate techniques based on circumstances.

 

A few years ago Agile and Scrum experience was a massive plus and I'd say they are still extremely useful in terms of building your armoury. However, although I'm less up to market speed than I used to be, DevOps has probably become more 'sexy' as a piece of armoury. Some argue DevOps is the logic evolution of Agile. Have I personally used Agile in a school environment? No, and I wonder how often it would suit a school given the very cyclical nature of the sector. One thing I have seen fostered in our direction a few times from outsiders is 'minimal viable product'. I'm very wary of this one as often it seems to be an excuse of a poorly thought through, lazy implementation. Continual improvement is a great concept, but starting with utter rubbish isn't the way to go!

 

I'm very interested to hear if others can add to the discussion and have direct experience of any development techniques within schools - or elsewhere.

 

Finally, and only because it hit my inbox a couple of days ago - this may be of interest as it specifically addresses agile and waterfall?

 

https://www.coursera.org/learn/introduction-to-certified-scrum-master