Scrum building

You're probably as tired as I am of hearing that we ought to be able to build software like we build bridges.

Nevertheless, I was reminded of this cliché while recently attending a scrum master course. Well actually, what I was reminded of was a report into the lack of efficiency in the Swedish construction industry. The research considered house building but that's close enough to bridges for me. The main conclusion was that building projects are actually very inefficient and savings of up to 50% could be achieved.

And the reason I was reminded of this report was that several of the recommendations made could have come straight from a scrum manual.

From focusing on delivering value to the customer and eliminating activities that don't deliver customer value.

To creating cross functional teams with customers and suppliers working in partnership.

And empowering and encouraging workers to improve their own processes.

If they're not already using scrum in building projects it sounds like they ought to give it a try. Perhaps its time to start suggesting they should be building bridges like we are now building software!