I recently wrote a short article for Redmond Developer News talking about the difficulty that teams commonly have using Scrum when tasked to re-write an existing application and it just got published.

At first glance, you’d think that a Rewrite Project would be easy but I see team after team get crushed by this kind of project.  The core reason why they have problems is that they get lazy breaking down the work or they forget to break down the work altogether.  In short, the Scrum process discipline that they might have on a “green field” project, is completely ignored and their project becomes a disaster.  They don’t estimate, they don’t maintain a good Product Backlog, and all the little changes between the original version and the new version get them into huge trouble.

It all comes down to Software Development Hubris vs. putting the team into a “we’re writing a new app” mindset.  Click here to read more.

-Ben

-- Looking for help taming your Rewrite Project?  Want to learn more about Scrum?  Drop us a line at info@benday.com.