Scrum in Practice: an Overview of Scrum Adaptations

Agile software development practices have gained widespread acceptance and application across all industries. Scrum, as one of the most widely used agile methods, has been adopted in countless organizations. However, while there is an understanding that practitioners rarely apply Scrum "by the book", only little research addresses the actual adaptations and modifications that are made to fit Scrum to real world requirements: whether it is to solve methodological drawbacks, to fit the method to specific contextual constraint, or to add additional value to the method by augmentation or combination with other tools and methods. To get an overview of the proposed adaptations and their implications, this study presents a systematic review of literature reporting on challenges and motivations that lead to modifications of the Scrum method. Based on 31 relevant studies we extract seven distinct motivations for modifying Scrum, as well as six generic solution strategies to adapt the method.