"Bootstrapping an Agile Team", an LA Scrum Club gathering, took place at the Gorilla Nation corporate offices. The event featured three highly experienced Scrum professionals: Scott Downey, ScrumMaster and Technical Project Manager at Myspace.com, George Schlitz, Principal Coach at BigVisible Solutions, and Christophe Louvion, CTO of Gorilla Nation. The speakers were well matched in terms of character and personality. Christophe's harsh, although comedic, realism was offset by Scott's compassionate, corrective disposition, which was further offset by George's crisp, analytical, professionalism. All were intelligent, well-spoken, and clearly strong leaders.

One common thread was the reality that Scrum is hard to implement, hard to maintain, hard to persuade others to adhere to...in short, Scrum is hard. With truisms such as, "you are either doing Scrum or you are not," and varying messages regarding the likeliness of success with companies that show resistance to a full adoption of the Scrum methodology, we were left with the concept that Scrum is not a good fit for all companies. It seems one of the best and worst results of Scrum is the quick and honest reflection of a team's weaknesses within weeks of beginning the process. With a talented team that can correct and adapt, this is an amazing opportunity to improve, but with a more rigid, or poorly-structured team, what you get is a glimpse into the inevitable failure of the company.

The 15 minute presentations, while seeming needlessly brief at the time, allowed the attendees to cover a lot of information in a very efficient manner (could we expect anything less from Scrum masters?). The hosts from Rally Software provided an amazing spread with kebabs, wraps, and a well-attended bar. The audience was attentive, full of questions, and I was surprised to see almost no one buried in a laptop! How un-tech and refreshing.

Some books recommended at the event:
Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit
Fearless Change: Patterns for Introducing New Ideas
User Stories Applied: For Agile Software Development

Visit LA Scrum Club's Ning site for more info about the Scrum Club.
You can view my Flickr photos here.