Five Lessons Learned Using Water-Scrum-Fall in South Africa

The term Water-Scrum-Fall was coined by West et al. in 2011 to describe a hybrid methodology which is a by-product of attempting to introduce Scrum into an organisation which usually operates with a Waterfall Methodology. Water ScrumFall typically appears in an organisation which had been using the Waterfall Methodology and in which a development team attempts to migrate to Scrum (or some other Agile Methodology). In such a hybrid, the first few phases (such as feasibility studies, funding exercises, requirements gathering, etc) are executed using a Waterfall Methodology. Then the development and possiby testing phases are executed using Scrum and are broken up into small sprints. The actual deployment, however, is then executed using again the Waterfall Methodology. This paper looks at a specific project in a South African listed company in which the development team implemented Scrum for the development phase and a large portion of the testing phase. This hybrid methodology was not necessary successful. This paper describes five of the lessons learned using Water-Scrum-Fall.