Scrum Alliance Support

[Ron Jeffries]

I may have understated the Scrum Alliance's support for the Agile Atlas:

There is still some ongoing financial contribution from the Scrum Alliance to the Atlas effort.

More important, in a phone conversation with Carol this afternoon, we covered these points:

• Carol, for the Scrum Alliance, supports the broad focus of the Atlas on all things Agile, because:
• Teams doing Scrum need to understand a wide range of ideas and practices;
• Teams trying to do Scrum need to understand all the paths to Scrum, not just the preferred one of setting up Scrum teams and learning to do it.
• Teams will not all start doing it correctly, so they need to learn ways to improve and ways to "compensate" as they progress.
• We wish there was some magical way to know what practices are "common". However, Ron and Chet are plugged into most every Scrum- and Agile-related community and know what's going on. In case of doubt, they ask for advice from the community.
• Matters where serious well-intentioned people may disagree are opportunities for additional articles listed under Controversy: that's the point of the indication. 
• The Core Scrum page is the only page that reflects any "official" Scrum Alliance position. It does so in support of the test, based on the best input available from the CSTs and CSCs at the time of writing.
• All the other pages in the Atlas reflect the views of their individual authors and DO NOT represent the official position of the Scrum Alliance. 

We also discussed the future of the Core, and agree that when it is time for an update we need to form some kind of guiding committee to figure it out. We have not worked out precisely how to do that. My guess is that we'll invite a few people and let the community elect a few people. This is not a change: we agreed on that long ago and that fact has been reported here and elsewhere more than once. It's probably coming up on time to do that. Right now, no one has the action item to do it.

I made the point with Carol, and make it again here: Our general practice is to accept all reasonable articles and shepherd them to successful publication. We do not require articles to adhere to any particular orthodoxy, Scrum or otherwise. They merely need to be germane to people finding their way along the Scrum or Agile pathways, and they need to be reasonably well written.

The Atlas is curated. It is not required to publish everything that is offered. That said, the Atlas has never turned down an article as far as I can recall. In principle, we might turn down articles which are:

• not strongly related to Agile, Scrum, Lean or similar related topics.
• thinly-disguised sales pitches.
• abusive toward individuals, organizations, or even ideas.
• poorly written (but we would do our best to shepherd these first).

In particular, we help authors for whom English is a second language to express themselves effectively in English. (We help those for whom English is a first language, as well.)

The Curators will determine whether an article should be listed under Common Practices, or simply as a Contribution, or under other headings such as we may from time to time create. We will link articles to related articles (and welcome feedback on which ones need more links). We will indicate whether articles are Controversial based on our own understanding of the space, and on feedback from other experts. We accepted early articles almost without any feedback. Our current process is to work with authors on formatting and language, until we are all satisfied that the article is as good as it can be.

We are trying to make the Agile Atlas be a central location for Scrum Alliance members, would-be members, and interested people, to find information about Scrum and related practices and how to find their place in that world. 

To do so, we need the help of thoughtful community members everywhere. Our recent request for advice asks you to help us understand what else we can do to make the site do what the Scrum Alliance (and we) have in mind for it. We're always open to such advice, even if we haven't just asked.

And more important, we're always looking for more material to help you help the community.

Ron Jeffries

www.XProgramming.com

I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way.  -- Jessica Rabbit