When was Scrum invented?

It is well-known that the ear­ly start of the agile move­ment began in the Japan­ese man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor. Long before those famous group of soft­ware design­ers and devel­op­ers who devel­oped the Agile Man­i­festo got togeth­er, the Japan­ese were already com­bin­ing their lean think­ing with iter­a­tive and incre­men­tal deliv­ery approach­es to cre­ate process­es that should be rec­og­nized as being the ear­ly pre­cur­sors to the lat­er agile methods.

In a 1986 Har­vard Busi­ness Review arti­cle, two Japan­ese researchers — Hiro­ta­ka Takeuchi and Iku­jiro Non­a­ka — first used the term “scrum” to describe prac­tices that we con­sid­ered today as being tight­ly relat­ed to the agile move­ment. Their arti­cle is refer­ring to new prac­tices that were being used at that time in prod­uct devel­op­ment ini­tia­tives in Japan.

I invite you to read this doc­u­ment and dis­cov­er by your­self the rel­e­vance of their obser­va­tions, which are sur­prin­sigly valid until today.

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