PHP and Scrum: the dreamteam in agile web development

You may have heard about Agile Programming, eXtreme Programming and the like. I want to introduce to you Scrum, which is „an agile, lightweight process that can be used to manage and control software and product development using iterative, incremental practices.“. Not only big companies are using this toolset, but also some smaller ones, including us at Mayflower GmbH.

The main attributes of Scrum are (as seen on „About“ on controlchaos.com):

• Scrum is an agile process to manage and control development work.
• Scrum is a wrapper for existing engineering practices.
• Scrum is a team-based approach to iteratively, incrementally develop systems and
  products when requirements are rapidly changing
• Scrum is a process that controls the chaos of conflicting interests and needs.
• Scrum is a way to improve communications and maximize co-operation.
• Scrum is a way to detect and cause the removal of anything that gets in the way of
  developing and delivering products.
• Scrum is a way to maximize productivity.
• Scrum is scalable from single projects to entire organizations. Scrum has controlled
  and organized development and implementation for multiple interrelated products
  and projects with over a thousand developers and implementers.
• Scrum is a way for everyone to feel good about their job, their contributions, and that
  they have done the very best they possibly could.

So, delivering a fully-functional and running product every increment is the goal of every
Scrum sprint. In theory, a Sprint is time-boxed to 30 days, i.e. every 30 days the team
delivers a fully-functional and running product to the so called product owner (mostly your customer).

30 days? Isn’t that too long? We think: yes, it is in most cases. We love PHP and its ability to „Getting things done.“
very quickly. Usually, it’s possible to produce working results in a few days or one or two weeks instead
of a month or even months. Because of this „feature“ of PHP I decided that the Scrum team I’m leading delivers product
increments in Sprints of 5 days.

On February, 15th, I had the possibility to give a PowerWorkshop on the Entwicklertage,
called „Agile Entwicklungsmethoden: Scrum & PHP, das Dreamteam bei Webapplikationen“. You can find the PDF slides here.

I can recommend two Books: „Agile Software Development with Scrum“ explains the Scrum process in detail, and „Agile Project Management with Scrum“ explains more detailed the roles of the Scrum Master, Product Owner and „The Team“. Both are worth reading it!