An action research study on the use of Scrum to provide agility in data warehouse development

Abstract

Data warehousing is a new and emerging field. Projects tend to be complex and time consuming. Because of this complexity, teams tend to commit to more than they can deliver. This causes delayed delivery. Applying Agile development styles to data warehousing is one of the alternative methodologies that are being investigated to help teams to accelerate the delivery of business value. Scrum is one of the frameworks that falls within the Agile stream. Scrum focuses on project management and makes use of iterative and incremental development. It tries to deliver the smallest piece of business value the fastest. The paper evaluates the implementation of Scrum in a data warehouse team of a financial investment company. The researcher did an action research study on the team to see if Scrum can be used as a viable alternative framework to bring agility to Data Warehouse development. She examined the changes that the team experienced during and after the implementation of Scrum, focusing on team structure and roles within the teams. The researcher defined a framework to evaluate how well the team implemented Scrum. The researcher also evaluated the quality of work delivered, and the predictability and productivity of the team as metrics to see if Scrum made a difference within the team. The research paper examined why the implementation failed and what issues Scrum highlighted within the team as well as within the way that the company implemented it.