Reading bank

Unit 3
1 Read the article quickly. Match the names (1–3) with the information (a–c).
1 Kristine Van Cleve a creators of Scrum
2 Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland b a business academic
3 Hirotaka Takeuchi c head of a dental lab in the USA

2A Complete the diagrams about the project management process with Agile
or Waterfall.

waterfall
1 : each department works in sequence
department 1 completes part of task and sends product/documents to department 2
➞

department 2 completes task and sends to department 3

➞

send final product to customer

2
Agile
daily update meeting
: teams from various departments work together
➞

develop first stage in period of less than one month

➞

send latest version of product to customer

➞

customer gives feedback

➞

work on product continues

➞

daily update meetings

➞

send to customer again

B Read the article again and answer the questions.

1 Which project management method was used first?

waterfall was used first

2 Which method does the article suggest is more successful? What factual information
helped you to decide on your answer?

agile is more successful, 3 Which method takes less time between the start of making a product and when it is
delivered to the customer?

3 Complete the table with the words in the box.

budget collaborate done individual progress retrospectives stand-up users

A successful Waterfall project is completed: Scrum stages on Post-it notes:

• in a reasonable time period. • To do
• within 1
. • In 3
• to the satisfaction of 2 . •4

Three types of Scrum/Agile meeting: Reasons some team members resist:

•5 • they don’t like to 7
• planning (before Sprint) • they like to be the stars
•6 • less room for 8
heroics and rewards

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 Reading bank

4 Match the words from the article (1–5) with their definitions (a–e).
1 signed off a things that make progress difficult
2 top-down b make something better
3 obstacles c manager says what to do and team follows orders
4 improve d work closely together
5 collaboration e officially approved

5 Complete the summary with words from Exercise 4.

Some company managers prefer a 1 approach to project

management, where team members take orders from the project leader and give progress
reports at each stage of the project. With this method, every stage of a project needs to
be 2 as each department completes their part of a task. More
modern methods of project management encourage regular meetings that help the group
to discuss their work on the project and explain any 3 that could
delay deadlines. Rather than wait for a finished product, the teams work in
4
with customers and clients. They share the work while it is in
progress and discuss developments with the client and use their feedback to
5
the product before it is finalised.

How project management turned into a Scrum

By Lisa Pollack
The performance gap between the newer Agile ways of working and more traditional styles of top-down,
plan-driven project management is huge.
The most commonly used old approach, Waterfall, has a success rate of just eleven percent. A successful
project is defined as one completed in a reasonable period, within budget and to the satisfaction of users.
5 Waterfall involves a lengthy process of gathering and documenting all aspects of the new product. The
documents are passed through assorted departments to be signed off.
In 1986 two professors, Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka, wrote a paper in the Harvard Business
Review which declared that ‘the old, sequential approach to developing new products simply won’t get
the job done’. The ‘relay race’ wasn’t working – this is where departments completed their part of a task
10 and then handed over the project to the next department. Instead, they recommended that people from
different parts of a company work together like a team in sport.
Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber are the co-creators of Scrum, an Agile approach to project
management. According to research, projects that use Scrum or other Agile approaches have a thirty-
nine percent success rate.
15 The term Agile came from seventeen software engineers who got together to write down their ideas
in a ski resort in Utah in 2001. They highlighted the need for close collaboration with customers and
responsiveness to change. Sometimes it could take months between the start of a project and product
delivery. Instead, they suggested that teams from different departments worked on the product together
for short periods. The aim was to be able to quickly show the unfinished product to the customer, who
20 could make suggestions. The team would use the comments to improve the product for the next stage.
Scrum calls its development cycles ‘sprints’. These often last less than a month. Instead of detailed
requirements, there are very brief descriptions of what a user wants from a feature and why. This
information can be shown on Post-it notes arranged on a board in columns labelled To do, In progress
and Done.
25 There are daily ‘stand-up’ meetings where members give updates, including any obstacles others might
help with. There are also planning meetings before a sprint, and ‘retrospectives’ afterwards to discuss
process improvements for the next sprint.
An example of a company which uses Scrum is DPS Dental, a small dental lab in Iowa. Kristine Van
Cleve, the lab’s president, says it was difficult at first. ‘We have pockets of resistance,’ she says. ‘Some
30 don’t like to collaborate. They like to be the stars.’ With the focus on the team, there is less room for
individual heroics and rewards. Nonetheless, Ms Van Cleve thinks Scrum will be useful for her business.

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