Scrum is the most popular framework among Agile teams; 58% of respondents to VersionOne's 11^th Annual State of Agile Report use pure Scrum. A further 10% are using a Scrum/XP hybrid.

The following timeline shows a brief history of Scrum:

The first mention of Scrum in the context of product development was in The New New Product Development Game-Takeuchi, Hirotaka, and Ikujiro Nonaka, Harvard Business Review 64, no. 1 (January–February 1986).

In the paper, the two professors describe efforts by companies to try to speed up their product development life cycles to decrease their time to market. They observed that companies that were successfully doing this were employing some interesting...

Extreme Programming (XP) is the second most popular framework, used by roughly 10% of Agile teams. XP stands out as one of the few Agile frameworks that prescribe technical practices.

The following timeline shows a brief history of Extreme Programming (XP):

The 1990s was the beginning of another paradigm shift for the software industry as Object-Oriented Programming began to replace Structured Programming. As a way to explore how they would use this new approach, the Chrysler motor company decided to build their payroll system in Smalltalk, an OO programming language.

Initially invited to performance-tune the system because of his knowledge of Smalltalk, Kent Beck was asked to lead their...

In this section, we look at Lean Software Development and its origins in Lean Manufacturing. We'll first discuss the thinking that led to significant breakthroughs in responsiveness and quality on the Toyota production line. We'll then look at how we can apply those to software development.

The following timeline shows a brief history of Lean and Kanban:

Lean Software Development and Kanban have their history in manufacturing and the work done by one company, in particular, Toyota Motor Corporation. In its effort to economically mass-produce affordable motor vehicles for people after the Second World War, Toyota made profound changes to the way it organized its production...

It's no surprise that most Agile transformations start at the team level. Agile is a grassroots movement led by a bunch of software developers who knew, through their trials and tribulations, that there had to be a better way to build software.

In choosing the right framework for your team it will depend a lot on where you are on your journey.

If you're a product/project team, Scrum is the place to start. Especially if you're new to Agile, or if you have a mix of Agile understanding in your team members.

Scrum is simple to pick up because the framework gives you everything you need to get started. Plus, once you begin to master some of the basics of Scrum, it's easy to add practices which enhance your agility.

This is the path that we will follow in this book, in it we will give clear guidance on how to build up our team's...

The modern Agile movement is the coming together of three different timelines from the software industry's industrial heritage: Product Development, Engineering, and Lean Manufacturing.

We looked at the three most popular Agile methods, and how they represent each of these timelines.

We discussed how all three methods have a degree of crossover or similarity. For instance, Scrum encourages a high degree of transparency, and Scrum teams often communicate this using a visible workspace. This is very similar to the concept in Kanban of making work visible.

We also discussed how many companies are improving their results by mixing and matching from two or more approaches.

In the next chapter, we're going to give a practical overview of how to get our team started with Scrum.