How to learn & introduce scrum in small startup?
- by Jens Bannmann
In a few months, a friend will establish his startup software company, and I will be the software architect with one additional developer. Though we have no real day-to-day experience with agile methods, I have read much "overview" type of material on them, and I firmly believe they are a good - if not the only - way to build software. So with this company, I want to go for iterative, agile development from day 1, preferably something light-weight.
I was thinking of Scrum, but the question is: what is the best way for me and my colleagues to learn about it, to introduce it (which techniques when etc) and to evaluate whether we should keep it?
Background which might be relevant: we're all experienced developers around the same age with similar professional mindset. We have worked together in the past and afterwards at several different companies, mostly with a Java/.NET focus. Some are a bit familiar with general ideas from the agile movement. In this startup, I have great power over tools, methods and process. The startup's product will be developed from scratch and could be classified as middleware. We have some "customer" contacts in the industry who could provide input as soon as we get to an alpha stage.
