Chapter 1. Setting the Stage: Agile and Scrum

Like many people, we are excited about the adoption of Agile (adaptive) project management and development in general, and about the adoption of Scrum in particular.

Unlike many people who are so dogmatic about Agile or Scrum, however, we do not believe that the current corporate world has been reorganized completely for Scrum. Maybe some commercial software companies have done that, but the large majority of corporations have not fired all their specialists or given them a new generalist title as some Scrum dogmatists believe they should. Most of these companies still have their current organizations the way they are, with many separate functions in their IT departments. CapitalOne, one of the companies that has adopted Agile often cited by many Scrum trainers, is still hiring business analysts, business systems analysts, and project managers. This is also true of many large companies known for having transitioned into Scrum, such as Sabre, Verizon, NBC Universal, General Dynamics, Texas Instruments, and American Airlines.com, just to mention a few.