SCRUM: Review of Agile Software Development with SCRUM

Slashdot review of best available book on SCRUM

Schwaber, K. and Beedle, M. (forward by Jeff Sutherland) Agile Software Development with SCRUM. Prentice Hall, 2001.

This book holds a remarkable ranking of 602 on Amazon's best seller list and gets five star reviews. Timothy Lord adds a great review on Slashdot:

"Anyone and everyone on Slashdot probably knows that business-driven software development efforts all too often end up as a mess. After a number of years of observation, research, and fine tuning, Ken Schwaber and Mike Beedle have released a book that makes a subtle but vital revelation about the nature of software projects and how to better run them. Learning what Scrum is and how to practice it is not all that profound. However, sitting back and realizing why Scrum works and how it addresses the fundamental flaws of the last 20 years of software engineering is. This book could be viewed as the "why" component to all of Extreme Programming's "how."

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CALL FOR PAPERS: XP Agile Universe 2003

XP Agile Universe 2003
August 10-13, 2003 - New Orleans

Following the success of last year's conference, XP Agile Universe 2003 will bring together experts, practitioners and novices in the field of Extreme Programming and Agile Methods. High-quality, peer reviewed papers will provide an overview on the latest trends and will allow the industry practitioners to find out when and how these approaches can improve their software development processes. A large number of tutorials will prove helpful to those who desire greater insight into agile software processes. Technical workshops will be forums for discussing latest insights.

SUBMISSION DATE
February 28, 2003
Deadlines for technical paper submissions, workshop proposals,
educator symposium paper submissions, tutorials proposals

TECHNICAL PAPERS
Chairs: Frank Maurer (maurer@cpsc.ucalgary.ca) Don Wells (Don@extremeprogramming.org)
We seek technical papers documenting research, experiences, and new approaches/practices in Extreme Programming and Agile Methods.
Topics include, but are not limited to:
. New Agile Methods and TechniquesAgile Modeling and Design
. Scalability of Agile MethodsAgile Software Engineering
. Dispersed Agile TeamsBeyond Extreme Programming
. Ad Hoc and Hybrid MethodsPair Programming
. Open Source and AgilityRefactoring
. Tool Support for Agile MethodsAgile Testing and Quality Assurance
. Adoption, Education, and TrainingIssues of Frequent Deployment
. Agile ManagementTime-Constrained Requirements Engineering
. Customers and ContractsKnowledge Management in Agile Processes
. Lightweight PlanningLong Term Implications of Agile Methods
. Adding Agility to an OrganizationEmpirical Results and Validation
. Teamwork and CollaborationExperience Reports

Papers must be original and not under consideration for publication elsewhere. Papers must be of high quality and well written. Papers may represent actual experience or fully researched ideas. Experience papers should be up to 6 pages. Papers reporting significant research results should be no more than 10 pages. Papers presenting opposing views are also strongly encouraged. All papers must be written in English. Papers will be peer-reviewed for originality, content, relevance, significance, and
correctness when compared to current trends in the field.

Each paper must include an title, author(s) address and email address, abstract, keyword list, body, summary or conclusion, acknowledgements, short
author biography, and well-populated bibliography. Please send submission electronically to xpu@extremeprogramming.org. PDF, Microsoft Word, or RTF formats are acceptable.

Conference Proceedings will be published by Springer as part of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Final manuscripts need to be formatted according to the Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science guidelines (http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/instruct/typeinst.pdf).

SCRUM: Keep Team Size Under 7!

Today, I wrote up an experience report on using SCRUM in large development teams for a new book that Craig Larman is writing. I described how a few teams in a 500 person development group generated production code at five times the industry average, while most of the teams who executed SCRUM well, only doubled productivity over industry average. One of the problems in the large organization is that it was culturally prone to a team size of about 15 people and there was a lot of internal resistance to reducing team size. I now think that this may be the primary reason only a few teams moved into hyperproductive mode. The hyperproductive teams would always split into subgroups of 7 or less, while the poorer performing teams insisted on working as a group of 15.

Jones, Capers. Applied Software Measurement, Second Edition. McGraw Hill, 1996.

There is plenty of data to show that team sizes over 7 result in significantly lower productivity. Any team over 7 in size should be split up into multiple SCRUMs.

Rubin, Howard (Ed.) A Metrics View of Software Engineering Performance Across Industries. IT Metrics Strategies V:9:3, September 1999.

Average cost per function point across over 1000 projects in Rubin's Worldwide Benchmark database is $2970. For teams of size 7, the average cost was $566 per function point. Most companies productivity is (by definition) the industry average in function point analyses done by Software Productivity Research. We may spend about 6 times the necessary cost for each project we do on the average.

Smallpox@home: Global supercomputing grid project to find post-infection treatment launches

Today is your first chance to engage in a worldwide grid computing project to find a cure for Smallpox. Powerup those spare cycles!

Scientist article by Charles Q Choi

Researchers are once again tapping the power of the public's computers, this time to search for anti-smallpox compounds, with new downloadable screensaver programs. The Smallpox Protection Project, which debuted today, was created by an international consortium of companies and universities to analyze 35 million potential drug molecules by marshaling the idle processing time of more than two million participating computers worldwide.

Together, these computers represent a virtual supercomputer with peak computing power of more than 1100 teraflops - more than 30 times the power of today's fastest supercomputer at the Earth Simulator Center in Japan. Results from individual computers are returned via the Internet to United Devices' data center for analysis, and results will be delivered to the US Department of Defense.

CALL FOR PAPERS: Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics SCI 2003

(Professor Castellano is looking for someone to organize an object technology session. If anyone is interested, please contact me. - Jeff Sutherland)

THE 7th WORLD MULTI CONFERENCE ON SYSTEMICS, CYBERNETICS AND INFORMATICS SCI 2003

July 27 - 30, 2003, Orlando, Florida, USA, Sheraton World

http://www.iiisci.org/sci2003/

Honorary Presidents of Past Conferences: Bela Banathy, Stafford Beer and George Klir Program Committee Chair: William Lesso General Chair: Nagib Callaos Organizing Committee Chair: Belkis Sanchez

MAJOR THEMES

* Information Systems, Technologies and Applications
* Communication and Network Systems, Technologies and Applications
* Control Systems, Technologies and Applications
* Computer Science and Engineering
* Optical Systems, Technologies and Applications
* Image, Acoustic, Speech and Signal Processing
* Applications of Informatics and Cybernetics in Science and Engineering
* Systemics

ACADEMIC AND SCIENTIFIC CO-SPONSORS

WOSC: World Organization of Systemics and Cybernetics (France) · The Centre for Systems Studies (UK) · System Society of Poland · Society Applied Systems Research (Canada) · Slovenian Artificial Intelligence Society · Simon Bolivar University (Venezuela) · Polish System Society (Poland) · Italian Society of Systemics · ISSS: International Society for the Systems Sciences (USA) · ISI: The International Systems Institute (USA) · IFSR: International Federation for Systems Research (Austria/USA) · Cybernetics and Human Knowing: A Journal of Second Order Cybernetics and Cybersemiotics (Denmark) · Concurrency and Architecture Group of the Telematics Engineering Department of the University of Las Palmas of Gran Canaria (Spain) · CUST, Engineer Science Institute of the Blaise Pascal University (France) · The Tunisian Scientific Society (Tunisia) · American Society for Cybernetics (Canada) · Laboratory of Research in Computacional Intelligence department of Informatica Universidad Nacional de San Luis (Argentina) · ANS (Academy of non-linear Sciences, RUSSIA)

ACADEMIC/SCIENTIFIC/PROFESSIONAL AND FINANCIAL CO-SPONSORSHIP

· Wolfram Research, Inc. (USA)

TECHNICAL CO - SPONSOR

· IEEE, Computer Society (Chapter: Venezuela)
· Steacie Institute for Molecular Sciences
· National Research Council of Canada

ORGANIZED BY THE IIIS

The International Institute of Informatics and Systemics.

ACTIVE PARTICIPATION

Those interested in participating in:
· The Organization of Invited Session(s)
· The Organization of Focus Symposium
· The Reviewing Process
· The Conference Promotion
· Recommending Scholars/Researchers in order to have an active participation and/or submit the papers
· Proposing Organizations/Institutes/Universities as Academic/Scientific Co-sponsors.

Please, enter to the conference web page: http://www.iiisci.org/sci2003/ , and fill the respective form. If by any reasons you are not able to access the page mentioned above, please, try the following page: http://www.iiis.org/sci2003/ . If you have any problems linking to the conference web pages, or you need to send or receive additional information, contact: jcastellano@iiis.org