Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time

by Jeff Sutherland

I first created Scrum, with Ken Schwaber, twenty years ago, as a faster, more reliable, more effective way to create software in the tech industry. Up to that point—and even as late as 2005—most software development projects were created using the Waterfall method, where a project was completed in distinct stages and moved step by step toward ultimate release to consumers or software users. The process was slow, unpredictable, and often never resulted in a product that people wanted or would pay to buy. Delays of months or even years were endemic to the process. The early step-by-step plans, laid out in comforting detail in Gantt charts, reassured management that we were in control of the development process—but almost without fail, we would fall quickly behind schedule and disastrously over budget.