International Conference on Computing, Communication and Automation (ICCCA2016)
A Comprehensive Study on State of Scrum
Development
Shruti Sharma
Amity University,Uttar Pradesh
Noida, India
shrutisharma18692@gmail.com
Abstract The software industry has moved from the
traditional software development to the agile software development
model. Under this umbrella there are many methodologies which
are Scrum, Extreme Programming, Crystal, FDD (Feature-driven
development), DSDM (Dynamic Systems Development Method),
etc. This paper investigates about the current state of Scrum, its
popularity and its evolution in the recent five years. We have taken
into consideration the published literature and industrial survey.
Our result reveals that among various agile methodologies, Scrum
is a popular software development methodology used by industries
and it is also the area of interest for the research community.
(Abstract)
Keywords Agile software development; Traditional software
models; Agile methodologies; Scrum Framework (key words)
I. INTRODUCTION
Agile, in the world of software development industry have
emerged out to be a beneficial development technique which
help the organizations to complete their projects fast. It is
capable to overcome the limitations of the traditional software
development approaches in terms of providing easy and better
implementations, better customer satisfaction and their
involvement, faster delivery rate of the product, easily
adaptable to new changing environment and so on. Today, it
has become so popular that every software industry is trying to
adopt this approach in their organization in order to get
maximum benefits. There are several agile methods which are
being used by many development industries namely Scrum,
Extreme programming (XP), Feature-driven development
(FDD), Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM),
Agile modeling, Agile Unified Process (AUP) and many
more. Our focus of study is Scrum methodology. It is a
framework which is best suited for the projects with the
changing requirements and gets the feedback from the
customers. Extreme programming is one of the adaptive agile
methodologies which emphasizes on team work in order to get
efficient and effective software products. It focuses on
business values with the customer involvement. The extreme
programmers work in pair or group keeping their design
simple and clean. The Feature-driven development is a
practical model for object oriented software engineering. It is
a client-centric approach. It is highly recognized due to its
short iterations, frequent delivery, simple to understand and
better review. Dynamic Systems Development Method is
ISBN: 978-1-5090-1666-2/16/$31.00 2016 IEEE
Nitasha Hasteer
Amity University,Uttar Pradesh
Noida, India
nitasha78@gmail.com
robust delivery framework that is capable to deliver the right
solution at the right time. It focuses on early delivery from the
perspective of business benefits. Agile modeling is a practice
based methodology which is a collection of values, principles
and practices for effective modeling and documentation. Agile
Unified Process is similar to the rational unified process which
is simple to understand and deliver its software at the end of
each iteration. It focuses on high value activities.
The aim of this paper is to investigate how Scrum has
evolved and what is its acceptance percentage. The rest of the
paper is organized in the sections as follows: Section II shows
how the traditional approach is different from agile approach
in the software development industry. Section III describes
about the Scrum methodology and its framework. Section IV
illustrates the Methodology used. Section V is Review and
Analysis. Section VI presents the conclusion.
II. TRADITIONAL VS AGILE
Today, Agile is a buzzword in the software development
industry which is based on an iterative and incremental
software development. It is paradigm introduced in the
software industry that defines itself differently from the other
traditional software development modeling techniques as it
works on the work break-down structure technique. It is value
driven technique which focuses on customer involvement with
their needs, customer satisfaction, team work, easy adaptation
to changes in software, flexibility, faster delivery of working
product over documentation, feedback and inspection. The
traditional model fails to have all these aspects as it follows
up the fixed and sequential plan made at the starting phase,
linear development, emphasizes on documentation ,rigid to
any new changes, customer involvement is very less, slow and
a time consuming process.
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 International Conference on Computing, Communication and Automation (ICCCA2016)

At the end of each sprint cycle there is sprint review in which

the product is well inspected by all the stakeholders including
customers, Scrum team and all associated members. They
visualize the product and give feedback. Then comes sprint
retrospective which is followed by the sprint review. Sprint
retrospective is done before next sprint planning in which the
scrum team is involved that focus on further improvements in
order to get better results in the next sprint phase [1] [4].

Fig. 1. Traditional development versus Agile development

III. SCRUM FRAMEWORK Fig. 2. Scrum Framework

Scrum is a light-weight framework which is simple to
understand and capable to manage complex product
development with some deadline. This framework consists of
Scrum team, their associated activities, artifacts and rules.
Scrum team consists of a product owner, Scrum master and
development team. In Scrum, the software product is delivered
in the series of iteration or increments within a predefined
time-box (typically 30 days) called sprint [1].
The product owner has the responsibility to formulate the
plan according to the problem and dividing them among the
development team in such a manner to get better functionality
and results [2]. The Scrum master plays a vital role as the
Scrum master is a person who leads the development team and
keeps an eye on them, guide them, help them, resolves issues,
make necessary improvements etc. It acts as the bridge of
communication between the product owner and development
team. The Scrum master also conduct the daily meeting in
order to get the status of the project [3]. The development
team is the group of highly qualified members (typically 5-9
members) who help in achieving the goals of the project and
releasing product at the end of each sprint [4].
Scrum process flow starts with the vision that product
owner has regarding the product that he wants to create and on
that basis a prioritized list is made containing product features
called product backlog. Then a sprint starts with the sprint
planning and sprint backlog which includes the tasks to be
done by team. In sprint planning, the team makes the decision
IV. METHODOLOGY
In order to get a thorough perspective of the current trends,
research and adoption for Scrum framework, we followed a
systematic approach to collect the relevant data.
In this methodology the following tools were used:
A. Industrial surveys
There are many organizations that are publishing Industrial
surveys and reports. For our study, we have used the
VersionOne in State of Agile Survey [5-10]. Studying these
reports from the year 2010-2014, we were able to compare
Scrum with other methodologies on the basis of their adoption
in the industries over the period.
B. Relevant Literarture Published
There is enough relevant published literature available to
form a thorough understanding on the current state of Scrum
in todays scenario. For our study, we considered 30 relevant
papers. We have used the two search repositories namely
IEEE and ACM. The detailed statistics of the year wise studies
is illustrated in Table I below.
TABLE I. RELEVANT PUBLISHED STUDIES
DIGITAL
2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

Total

of choosing a task from the product backlog which they LIBRARY

believe that they can complete it within a sprint cycle. Then IEEE 8 5 4 - 4 - 21
come sprint backlog in which task is broken down into units
that is carried forward by the team who determines the best ACM 3 1 - 4 - 1 9
way to accomplish the goal within each sprint cycle. Daily Total 11 6 4 4 4 1 30
Scrum meetings (typically 15 minutes) are also organized so
that we get the direction of our project as well as its progress.

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C. Study Focus Area annual state of agile survey 2011(22nd July- 1st Nov, 2011),
We have categorized the published literature on the basis 52% software developer use Scrum while other methods
of the focused areas of the study. decrease by 4% i.e to become 21% [6]. In 7th annual state of
agile survey 2012(9th Aug - 1st Nov, 2012), this report shows
Search Keywords 54% Scrum users in industry whereas others remain at 18%
only [7]. Likewise in 8th annual state of agile survey 2013(4th
The search keywords uses in this review for scrum are:
Aug - 16th Oct, 2013), the Scrum users increased to 55%
while others decreased to 17% [8]. Now according to the latest
TABLE II. SEARCH KEYWORDS 9th annual state of agile survey 2014(July - Oct, 2014), it is
Keywords Synonyms shown that Scrum methodology got increased to 56% while
other methodologies remain at 12% only [9]. Through these
Scrum Software Development surveys we can conclude that as the survey goes further, there
SCRUM Scrum framework implementation is a continuous decrease in the trend of other agile
methodologies while the use of Scrum increases every next
Scrum adoption year by the development industries
B. Based on Relevant Literature
We have observed that scrum has taken its position not
V. REVIEW AND ANALYSIS only in the current development industries but also in the field
of research work. Many researchers and practitioners are
A. Based on Survey investigating about the practices of agile methodologies in the
The survey conducted by the organization VersionOne in current scenario resulting in the increase trend of publishing
State of Agile Survey gives the clear picture of scrum in articles or papers in this field. Figure 4 shows the number of
industries. No doubt today agile has become very popular and studies in the field of Scrum methodology over the last six
has been adopted by many development industries. According years.
to recent years reports from 2010 - 2014, as the results of the
2015 survey has not been out yet, we can see that how Scrum
methodology has become very popular leaving other agile
methodologies behind. Figure.3 shows the comparison of
adopting agile methodologies by industries over the span of
five years (in percentage).

Research studies of scrum

According to the figure 4.From 30 total relevant studies ,in
2010 we have only 3% of studies which got increased in 2011,
2012, 2013 by 10%, in 2014 there is a gradual rise by 7%
becoming 20% and in 2015,we have maximum number of
studies which is 36% at the total.
Now we have classified our study on the basis of abstract
Fig. 3. Scrum popularity and conclusion of the paper to give the simple overview of
work done by various researchers under the Scrum. This is
From figure 3 we can clearly see that how Scrum has been illustrated in the Table III.
adopted by most of the industries while the other
methodologies like XP, agile unified process, feature driven
development, scrum/XP hybrid, DSDM, agile modeling
techniques are relatively less adopted.
According to the 5th annual state of agile survey
2010(11th Aug - 31st Oct, 2010), the most widely used agile
methodology was Scrum (58%) while others methodologies
that have been used by industries was only 25% [5]. In 6th

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TABLE III. STUDIES UNDER SCRUM METHODOLOGY 2013 basis of effort estimation in
Agile software projects.
YEAR AUTHORS WORK
Amani Mahdi Review and Analysis of
Ashish Kumar Developing Test
Mohammed Hamed Popular Agile Approaches
Sultania [12] Automation Software
et al. [22] in Software Development.
Based on Agile
Methodology. Michele Gannon [4] Implementing
Alan Braz, et al. [13] Comparing efficiency of fundamentals of scrum
new process with plain methodology on a project.
Scrum for developing
better quality software. Maria Paasivaara et Implementing Scrum on
Breno Lisi Romano Use of Scrum within small al. [23] distributed scrum projects.
et al. [14] business enterprise.
Christelle Scharff et To elicits the difficulties
AlanR. Santos et al. An empirical study of 2012 al. [24] encountered by the
[15] applying CBL and Scrum Students new to Scrum.
2015 in a Charles Wallace et al. Scrum in the curriculum of
mobile application [25] computer science and
development software engineering.
Course.
Meryem Elallaoui at An algorithm for the Sune Wolff [26] Use of formal specification
al. [32] transformation of user techniques in agile
stories management process
Into sequence diagrams in Eva del Nuevo et al. Integration of RUP and
the Scrum process. [27] Scrum in distributed
Daniel Pauly [33] Adoption of Scrum environment
principles in e-commerce. Hu Guang-yong [28] Implementing Scrum
development in Vehicle
Glaydson Luiz Adaptations of Scrum spare
Bertoze Lima et al. practices to Integrate the 2011 parts management system
[34] development of Co-based Eduardo J. Quaglia et Improving project
hardware design with the al. [29] management performance
software. using Scrum.
Violetta J. Wawryk et Critical changes
al. [35] influencing Tomohiro Hayata et To propose a hybrid model
Distributed Scrum team. al. [2] to
apply Scrum into the
traditional software
Ivana Bosnic et al. Introducing Scrum into a development process
[36] Distributed Course.
2010 Christelle Scharff et To evaluate the use of
Erica Weilemann Impact of Females in Agile al. [30] Scrum in mobile
[37] Software Development application development.
Teams
Abdul Rauf et al. [38] Comprehensive review of
the Agile practices in C. Based on the focus areas of study
projects.
. Pogaj et al. [10] Implementing Scrum in We have categorized our study on the basis of focused area
teaching model. in scrum. This gives the idea about the type of work that has
been done and the focus area of the study as shown in Table IV
Quan Wei et al. [16] An approach of combining
the Scrum methodology
[31].
with the UML modelling
methods. TABLE IV. CATEGORIZATION OF SCRUM BASED STUDIES
2014 Julian M. Bass [17] Activities of Scrum Master
in Large Enterprise Study Focus No. of References
Projects. Papers
Review & Analysis Papers 5 [11], [18], [19], [22], [38]
Georgia M Kapitsaki Instructive view into the
et al. [18] Scrum development. Proposed Model/ New 15 [2], [4], [12], [13], [16], [20],
implementation of Model [26], [28], [29], [30], [32], [33],
Markus Hummel [19] To identify general state of using Scrum [34], [35], [37]
research on agile.
Anupriya Tuli et al. The significant roles of Implementing Teaching 3 [10], [25], [36]
[20] Agile methodologies. Model on Scrum
Implementing Scrum on 4 [14], [17], [23], [27]
Veli-Pekka Eloranta To identify broken core Distributed Teams
et al. [21] principles of Scrum in Challenges/Difficulties of 3 [15], [21], [24]
industry. scrum
De Tran-Cao et al. Systematic
[11] Reviewing the current
research literature on the

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 International Conference on Computing, Communication and Automation (ICCCA2016)
VI. CONCLUSION
We investigated the Scrum methodology on the basis of
relevant literature, adoption and popularity. Every year there is
an increasing trend of Scrum adoption in software
development industries as well as in research areas. Our work
reveals the current trend of study areas of Scrum as we have
found that the implementation of Scrum in existing models has
the highest number of studies compared to others. This could
be helpful for the upcoming researchers and practitioners. We
have not focused more on the models because there is already
a lot of work that has been done. We conclude that Scrum
methodology is widely used technique as compared to the
other agile methodologies.
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