This years second Scrum Gathering was held in Stockholm organized by the Scrum Alliance. This was a good opportunity to see and talk to some of the guru’s in this specific area and also to talk to fellow colleagues in other countries to share ideas and thoughts. As we where also an industry sponsor of the event…we had attend of course.

The conference was held in the Stockholm City Conference Center in the middle of Stockholm.

The program was spread out over 3 days.

The first day was filled with sessions. Jeff Sutherland did the opening session in which he talked about the secret sauce for making Scrum hyperproductive.

He used some metrics from VersionOne’s survey on agile adoption on which we had a small article previously. He talked about Scrum which used to be the underdog, but nowadays being the topdog. I also saw the new term Scrumbut which stands for a not so well implemented Scrum. We are doing Scrum but…..! After that there where several breakout sessions of different topics. Selling Agile Scrum Based Services by Andy Brandt was about his company which was located in Poland. He talked about how they sell Scrum to customers and which type of contracts are possible and which they use.

After the lunch, the other co-founder of Scrum Ken Schwaber gave us a warm welcome and talked about the Scrum Alliance and this gathering.

After that, again breakout sessions. Hendrik Kniberg, which is known for his book: "Scrum and XP from the trenches" available here, talked about how to start up with Scrum.

As a final session, Jeff Sutherland’s talk about Distributing Scrum: outsourcing and scaling. He used two examples in his story: one of a team in the US and one in Russia and a second case of a team in the Netherlands and a team in India. Jeff was assisted by Guido Schoonheim from Xebia as he was extensively involved in the project for the Dutch Railway system which used the Dutch and the India team. A summary of the presentation can be viewed here as it kinda was the same presentation as the one given at Agile 2008.

The second day was all about open spaces. Everyone could bring in topics which could be discussed. Groups would form everywhere within the Congress Center to sit down and talk about the selected topic. During the whole conference, there was also an opportunity to beta-test the CSM certification. In the afternoon there where again some breakout sessions/presentations planned. Lean vs Scrum: Stop fighting start delivering by Simon Bennett was all about the differences between Scrum and Lean. The values of the Agile Manifesto vs the principles of Lean Thinking by Poppendieck. Also the lean Six Sigma strategy by Motorola was involved.

The last day was started by Ken Schwaber talking about: It is not Scrum if…. emphasizing the power of the framework and not to break that by leaving out certain elements. After that, I went to see an interesting talk about Retrospective Concepts by Boris Gloger. He talked about how to get the maximum out of your retrospective sessions by creating a secure environment, then look back and then look into the future.

As a closing session, the two founders answered pre-posted questions from the audience.

After the closing of the convention people had time to share thoughts with like minded people at the center. A good conference which showed that the Scrum community is still growing strong and more and more businesses adapt Scrum. A good thing in my humble opinion…

Hugo Hendriks