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The wide-spread adoption of the agile movement – culminating in many ways in the Agile Manifesto published in 2001 at the level of ideals – has taken off in the software industry in a rapid pace. Within a relatively short amount of time, an increasing number of organizations have adopted an agile way of working in their R&D departments. However, when inspected more closely and in more detail, by phrase “adopting agile methods into use in software development”, at least in Finland, companies often mean simply, “We’re using Scrum.”

At present, the adoption of Scrum has progressed in several organizations so far that it is possible to start collecting comparable data from a number of companies as the basis for empirical research. To consolidate accurate, practical knowledge that is relevant to companies developing software, it is crucial to gather data on Scrum practices in action for determining which parts of the methodology work well in different settings emerging in real life, and which are considered as the problem areas in adopting and practicing Scrum. With such data, an opportunity emerges to provide solid, real-life information to help determining the true face value of the practices associated with Scrum. Moreover, understanding the deviations from the standard, textbook Scrum – so-called ScrumBut – is also an important goal, as this provides information for refining and fine-tuning the methodology to fit the purposes of companies developing software.

In this paper, we examine the extent that basic Scrum practices are in use in companies developing software in Finland. Furthermore, we want to identify the problem areas in Scrum and practices that are hard to adopt in the organizations. This creates a basis for analyzing why some practices are harder to adopt than others.

To reach the above goal, we have conducted a survey on Scrum related practices in small and medium sized companies. We chose to target small and medium sized companies because in that way we could get an overview of the practices in the whole company. In large company, all departments would need to be interviewed to get the big picture. The survey is based on interviewing persons that play (or have played at the time) a major role in software development organizations using Scrum. Companies participating in the survey are of mixed background, some working for customer projects, and some acting in a more product-driven fashion. The range of systems includes embedded devices as well as more traditional applications, such as web-based software.

The results of the survey are presented in this paper in terms of Scrum problem areas and best practices that companies reported to work for them. The main results include widely adopted practices such as estimation using story points and self-organizing teams and why the Product Owner role seems to be hard to adopt. Advice on best practices such as choosing the correct sprint length and how to run a team sprint are also in the paper.