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Greg Kitchin
Greg Kitchin
31,522 Points

Can Scrum (and Agile) be done by only one person filling in all the roles?

Quick explanation. I'm currently studying a distance-learning degree, and one module will be to do an IT project. I'll already be the stakeholder, as well as managing my own work, and obviously I'll be actually doing the work also.

The uni wants me to note milestones also, of where I've gotten with the work. So is it possible for me to work with all the roles in a Scrum methodology? I've got the idea of designing and building an app, so Scrum seems ideal to manage the workload, but I don't know how feasible it is for one person to use Scrum by themselves.

1 Answer

Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,236 Points

You could condense the process but still produce the same metric and decision points.

But certainly some aspects of the process don't make sense for a single person. You're not likely to hold "stand-up meetings", for example.

Other processes would be just abbreviated, such as converting a "sprint review" into a status report. But while you can emulate elements of scrum individually, I think the process overall is too team-oriented to call an individualized adaptation actually a "scrum" process. I'd might call it the "scrum inspired single individual functional upscaling system", or SISIFUS. :smile:

But seriously, if you find it to be helpful and effective, you might consider developing an instructional book or video for it.