The Yellow Kid, a 19th century hand-drawn provocateur, was all heart, embodied the anarchy of the slums and is tied to the phrase “Yellow Journalism.”

Scott Bellware, a 21st century development provocateur, is all heart, embodies the anarchy of Alt.Net, and is tied to the phrase “Soluble Code.”

Here the similarities end.

Scrum became necessary when our biggest problems were no longer within the team but in how we took on work from the business.

I started thinking about that at the last XTC-NYC when Mike Roberts wondered aloud if Scrum software development can work when a team doesn’t practice at least some aspects of XP. In a similar vein, Scott Bellware has a post about XP deserving more credit for Scrum’s success.

At XP-Spin, Jeff Sutherland said the success you build on is delivering working code at the end of each iteration. To even begin you need work described in achievable stories with acceptance criteria and daily builds.

Mike and Scott are definitely right when I look at my team.

Our present challenge is aligning our development with a clear and achievable business objective. Scrum is the tool for that. One of the things about Scrum is that you can use it for almost any kind of work requiring cross-functional teams.

But that challenge only exists because we were highly productive at creating quality software. The team’s XP practice with its low formality and high discipline gets the credit for that.

I saw Simpsonize Me on Scott Bellware’s blog. Thanks Scott.

A description is on Scott Bellware’s blog.

Our team consistently pair programs both in the office and remotely. Oksana and Wendy’s introduction to this practice made enough of an impact at NYC CodeCamp that they were urged to repeat it at DevTeach.

I’m not surprised. They are smart and talented and a blast to work with. Such engaging personalities you might see them on Oxygen online sometime.