Scrum in Accounting?

[John Miller]

A friend of mine asked if I know of any Accounting teams using Scrum or Agile?
Anyone know of any they could share?

Thanks,
John

[ashish...@gmail.com]

D
Sent on my BlackBerry® from Vodafone

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[George Dinwiddie]

John,

On 1/10/13 11:40 AM, John Miller wrote:
> A friend of mine asked if I know of any Accounting teams using Scrum or Agile?
> Anyone know of any they could share?

It seems to me that "Accounting" covers lots of different types of work.
Forecasting, bookkeeping, auditing, etc. Can you tell us what sort of
work these Accounting teams are doing?

- George

--
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* George Dinwiddie * http://blog.gdinwiddie.com
Software Development http://www.idiacomputing.com
Consultant and Coach http://www.agilemaryland.org
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[Steve Berczuk]

On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 11:40 AM, John Miller <agiles...@gmail.com> wrote:
> A friend of mine asked if I know of any Accounting teams using Scrum or Agile?
> Anyone know of any they could share?

I wonder why the person is asking? Are they considering it for their
project/workplace, or are they doing a survey of types of projects
that use agile?
If the former, would a better question be "what would agile look like
for a team of accountants?"

Steve

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Steve Berczuk | steve....@gmail.com | http://www.berczuk.com
Twitter: @sberczuk
ADN: @spb
SCM Patterns: www.scmpatterns.com

[Ron Jeffries]

Well, there was this payroll program …

:)

R

On Jan 10, 2013, at 11:40 AM, John Miller <agiles...@gmail.com> wrote:

A friend of mine asked if I know of any Accounting teams using Scrum or Agile? 
Anyone know of any they could share?

Ron Jeffries

www.XProgramming.com

Wisdom begins when we learn the difference between "that makes no sense" and "I don't understand". -- Mary Doria Russell

[Derek Davidson]

Was it for a well-known vehicle manufacturer …. ?

 :)

-- 

Derek Davidson

[John Miller]

Ron, it is DOS based : )

The simple background story:

My friend is an IT Manager (a CSM) and noticed some of the accountants doing something similar to a standup. He wondered if the  were using some Agile, so asked their manager about their standup. 

They were not doing Agile, but, the manager of accounting was interested and wanted to know more. Hence, the question to me about if I knew of any Agile Accountants out there. 

Thank You,

John 

Sent from my iPhone. It likes to sabotage my grammar. 

[John Miller]

Now I get it. Chrysler connection?

Thank You,

John 

Sent from my iPhone. It likes to sabotage my grammar. 

[Kurt Häusler]

Well Scrum is fairly specific for developing products, starting with a backlog of things that a team can build into a fully integrated product in short increments of time. That doesn't really sound like the sort of work that accountants do.

Agile is mostly related to developing software, although sometimes by looking at the manifesto and principles, and squinting so that the word software looks like the word product you can imagine it being used outside software development. I still couldn't really see it applying to what I think accountants do though.

If we look at some of the other similar ideas out there similar to and compatible with agile software development then I could definitely imagine something like Beyond Budgeting being interesting for accountants.

[Joe Blauer]

Kurt,

Accounts have products (e.g. financial statements), don't they?

Joe
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[Mark Levison]

Well there is Dave Barrett (sp?) the agile lawyer.

Cheers
Mark

[Yves Hanoulle]

Mm, What you say is true about building a product if you look at
software the way we do.

If I look at my accountancy for the year 2012, that could be seen as a
release of a project.

The way a dual accountancy system works, looks from a meta level a lot
like how unit tests work.

One thing that helps to create software, is to have acceptance criteria.
That is easy to do with accountancy system .

You can burn down ( or up) the number of incomming invoices recorded,
outgoing invoices generated , and nr of invoices paid.

I'm not sure, how accountants can do teamwork.
Yet I'm sure they can be a team.


Y

Scrambled by my Yphone

Op 10-jan.-2013 om 20:01 heeft "Kurt Häusler"
<kurt.h...@gmail.com> het volgende geschreven:

[John Miller]

My personal experience of Scrum outside of software is that it is
great for any team with complex work. Scrum helps provide an
empowering team experience that harnesses deep collaboration and
creativity of it's members, through a focused shared goal, that adapts
fast. That is a need most knowledge and conceptual age teams have
today. Scrum is one of the best frameworks for teams in our
Conceptual Age, regardless of industry/field of work.

Thank You,
John
Sent from my iPhone. It likes to sabotage my grammar.

[Dan Rawsthorne]

Actually, scrum is for managing complex work, so I bet it's great for accountants.

Dan Rawsthorne, PhD, PMP, CST
3Back.com
Author of Exploring Scrum: the Fundamentals

[Christopher S Linde]

Oh I disagree. I used SCRUM in an LSS process analysis/optimization effort for a well known package delivery firm. The project was very successful and the client was extremely happy.

Thank you,
Christopher

[Joshua Partogi]

Hi Dan,

In what way is accounting work complex? Unlike software development, isn't all of the work to be done in accounting already known?

--

Kindest Regards,

Joshua Partogi

http://scrumtraining.asia

[John Miller]

I am sure some accountants might say the same about software : )

Thank You,

John 

Sent from my iPhone. It likes to sabotage my grammar. 

[Kurt Häusler]

Ah ok. I stand corrected. Considering how little I know about accounting, I shouldn't really have commented in the first place.

[Yves Hanoulle]

It's complex in a sense that laws change every year; it's complex because there are about x% of the incoming and outgoing invoice are from different countries with different laws etc etc.

It's complex because what is a best practice from financial point of view last year, is not this year. or if the government want, maybe it is even illegal next year...

So sometimes they take long term decisions , that will be impacted by new rules that are invented between now and when the impact of that decision is ending.

It's complex because you don't know when your clients will pay you or when your suppliers want to be paid.

Scrambled by my Yphone

[John Miller]

So, I take it as a no if anyone knows of Scrum being used by Accounting teams : ) 

Thank You,

John 

Sent from my iPhone. It likes to sabotage my grammar. 

[Michael James]

That's what I got from this.

--mj

(Michael)

[Joshua Partogi]

IMHO they can just use Kanban. Using Scrum for accounting may be an overhead as they do not need that kind of frequent inspection and adaptation. The business do, but not the accounting teams.

[Mark Levison]

On Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 7:38 PM, Joshua Partogi <joshua....@gmail.com> wrote:

IMHO they can just use Kanban. Using Scrum for accounting may be an overhead as they do not need that kind of frequent inspection and adaptation. The business do, but not the accounting teams.

That's one possibility and another: No one who knows Scrum well has tried it or they have and aren't on this list.

All we know is that we don't know.

Key (but not sufficient tests) for:

- What is the arrival rate for new work? Can new work wait a few days before its tackled?

- Will a rough plan made on Monday morning survive mostly intact the week?

These questions ask is Scrum viable? If not why - this may indicate disfunction.

Next set:

- Is the work collaborative in nature? Would it benefit from being made more collaborative?

In other words - is the team building capacity of Scrum going to help.

Oddly if Scrum wasn't a fit because of the tight rules, I might consider OpenAgile which is a sibling of Scrum. 

Yes I would also consider Kanban, but until I well understand the problem domain the choice isn't at all obvious.

Cheers
Mark Levison
Agile Pain Relief Consulting | Writing
Proud Sponsor of Agile Tour Gatineau Ottawa Nov 28, Toronto 26 and Montreal 24

[Stefan Roock]

Hi John,

we use Scrum practices for sales and financials in our company (35 employees).

Any special questions?

Stefan

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[Bryan Bartels]

John, 

We have used a Scrum + Calendar mashup for the last year on our accounting team and it has work really well. We increased our efficiency and decreased the number of days it took to close the month. We started with a whiteboard and post-it notes… but it worked so well we turned it into a digital tool. Feel free to check it out at BusinessDay for Accounting Teams. It is different from other Scrum/Kanban tools online because it incorporates a calendar day into the board. We found it works really well for our team. Below is an example of the column headers.... rather than the typical back log, to do, doing, done columns, we used calendar days. Feel free to reach out if you or your friend have any questions. 

Bryan

[John Miller]

Bryan,

Fascinating. Thanks for sharing this!

Thanks,

John Miller, CEC, CSPP, SDI, PMP

AgileClassrooms.com | Rightshifter.com

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