An Introduction to Agile Development, Part 2: Getting Started with Scrum

TL;DR: To get started with Scrum, grab one of the popular tools (e.g., Jira), implement all the Scrum artifacts and fill your gaps with some experienced people. It is not all too important to have the right task estimates, sprint lengths, etc. from the beginning or to follow the methodology dogmatically. The crucial part is to have a team that commits to the process, reflects critically, is eager to learn, and improves incrementally.

Originally published on Twenty Oh Eight.

It took us a little while to get the second part of our series about agile development done, but Andreas and I had some pretty good reasons for it (or at least we hope so). While I moved back to Germany from the U.S. and started a new position as a UX Manager, Andreas is now not only the Head of Research at DATEV, but also started as a full professor of Web Engineering at Anhalt University of Applied Sciences.

But anyway, we somehow managed to also talk a little bit about Scrum. In this part of the series, we want to specifically focus on how to get started with it. There are many tutorials and introductions describing Scrum, such as Atlassian’s brief introduction to the topic. However, some questions that both Andreas and I have encountered over and over are often poorly addressed or not addressed at…