Implementing Lean Principles in Scrum to Adapt to Remote Work in a Covid-19 Impacted Software Team

摘要

Agile Frameworks are a mainstay of Software Engineering teams, with Scrum having risen to prominence over the last decade. Teams are experimenting more with variants of Scrum, with inspirations coming largely from other process improvement methodologies. However, the prevalent mode of executing Scrum assumes that the team are in colocation. In early 2020, a global pandemic has shifted the world unexpectedly into remote work. The heavyweight nature of Scrum is leading to fatigue within teams, as the remote nature of video conferencing and asynchronous communication bring an overhead not experienced before. The result is a weakening of the Scrum fundamentals in teams, with modifications being made to accommodate the new normal that teams are experiencing. Not all of the changes are positive and a lot of waste has emerged within teams. Lean principles can be applied to Scrum with minor adjustments and minimal friction. The end result is a variant of Scrum designed with remote teams in mind. This paper will explore some of the challenges remote teams are facing, the modifications proposed and the result of those changes in a remote Software Engineering Team.