Internet Tech Boston

The company at work at, PermissionTV, has been using the Agile Software Development with Scrum methodology since January of this year. Our engineering team, the group responsible for the overall development of our Video 2.0 online platform, first introduced PTV to this way of organizing and prioritizing software requirements, in order to bring some order out of the sometimes-chaos that envelops a start-up company’s product roadmap.

After observing some good results, I went to a training workshop to receive my own ScrumMaster Certification. I’ve brought an Agile Project Management Scrum Methodology to the Professional Services team – an attempt to deliver multiple projects with shifting deadlines and changing priorities. While not completely geared for client-side development work, Scrum has brought transparency of my group’s day-to-day activities to the senior management team. These are the guys that always seem to think that projects are “easy,” “will be done very soon,” and that our overall work troubles aren’t a “big deal.”

I am pleased with the early returns that Scrum has provided. As soon as the team broke out each project into discrete chunks of work (aka “stories”), the rest of the company started to see just how much work we had to do. Now, if they want to horse-trade and shuffle priorities, they at least know, in excruciating detail, the trade-offs they are making with respect to all other client deliverables.

Turns out that maybe my team’s job is so easy after all . . . .