Experience Scrum before you denounce it

I love it when people denounce things without knowing what they are talking about. If you think you have a problem with something, do the research, and make sure you have your facts straight before you rant against something.

Yesterday, Catherine Powell decided to critique Scrum. She liked it, but she claimed to find a fatal flaw...

"Scrum states that at the end of every iteration, the product should be 'shippable'. You may not choose to ship, but the option should be open. Back in the real world, where estimates are optimistic and tasks have complexities not known until they're implemented, well, dev often runs late. How is test to react in this case? There simply isn't time in a given iteration to perform all the testing you would like to be able to say the product is shippable."

Cathy got it wrong.

In Scrum, Quality Assurance teams are integrated into the Scrum teams. As much or more time is spent testing as coding. At the end of every sprint, we deliver code with zero new defects. That's something we were never able to accomplish with waterfall processes—or even the RUP.

In all fairness, she does close her denouncement with this disclaimer...

"All thoughts on processes are my own and are meant as reflections of my experiences with them, not with the theory of the process itself."

Here, Cathy is absolutely right. In the few shops where Scrum has not worked, it was because the process was not followed as intended. Do the research and actually experience the real-deal before you bash it.

Scrum will deliver more code with fewer bugs faster—every time.