The history of Scrum and how it shapes the way we work

16 December 2025

Scrum is now one of the most widely adopted Agile frameworks in the world.

It helps teams deliver value iteratively, adapt to change, and collaborate more effectively in the face of complexity. While Scrum is most commonly associated with software development, its influence extends far beyond code, shaping how modern organisations design products, improve processes, and respond to customer needs.

At Blue Wren, Scrum principles underpin how we deliver Flight, our modular software platform for building bespoke business systems.

To understand why that matters, it helps to look at where Scrum came from and what it was really designed to solve.

1986: Origins

The foundations of Scrum were laid in 1986, long before the term itself was widely used. In their Harvard Business Review article “The New New Product Development Game”, Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka studied high-performing product development teams at companies such as Honda, Canon, and Fuji-Xerox.

Rather than following rigid, linear “waterfall” processes, these teams worked more like a rugby scrum:

• Small, cross-functional teams
• A shared goal
• Constant collaboration
• Progress made through short, overlapping phases

Most importantly, Takeuchi and Nonaka highlighted the power of self-organising teams and the role of management in enabling, rather than controlling, the work.

That idea that complex problems are best solved by empowered teams working iteratively is just as relevant to modern business software as it was to product development in the 1980s.

1993–1995: Scrum takes shape

In the early 1990s, Jeff Sutherland, John Scumniotales, and Jeff McKenna at Easel Corporation began applying these ideas directly to software development. By 1993, the first Scrum team was operating in practice.

In 1995, Ken Schwaber formally introduced Scrum to the public in his paper “The Scrum Development Process” at the OOPSLA conference in Austin, Texas. Around the same time, Scrum began to evolve alongside Extreme Programming (XP), with both approaches reinforcing lightweight planning, frequent feedback, and adaptability.

This marked a turning point. Scrum was no longer just a metaphor, but a practical framework for delivering working software in uncertain, fast-changing environments.

2001: The Agile Manifesto

By the late 1990s, frustration with heavyweight, documentation-driven software delivery was widespread. In 2001, 17 practitioners, including Scrum and XP pioneers, came together to create the Agile Manifesto.

Its four values and twelve principles prioritised:

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• Working software over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a plan

These ideas sit at the heart of how we deliver Flight at Blue Wren. Our customers don’t come to us with static requirements, they come with evolving processes, operational pain points, and future ambitions. Agile gives us the structure to respond to that reality.

2002–2010: Scrum matures

The following years saw Scrum formalised and scaled:

• 2002: The Scrum Alliance was founded, introducing structured training and certification
• 2006: Jeff Sutherland founded Scrum Inc
• 2009: Ken Schwaber founded Scrum.org
• 2010: The first Scrum Guide was published. A deliberately minimal definition of Scrum that focused on roles, events, and artifacts rather than prescriptive rules

The Scrum Guide has been refined over time (most recently in 2020), but its core philosophy remains unchanged: Scrum is a framework for tackling complex work where learning and adaptation are essential.

Scrum in practice at Blue Wren

While Flight is a powerful technology platform, its real value comes from how it is delivered and evolved.

Iterative, incremental delivery

Flight applications are not “big bang” implementations. We configure and deliver software iteratively, allowing customers to:

• See working functionality early
• Validate workflows against real-world use
• Refine requirements as understanding improves

This mirrors Scrum’s emphasis on delivering usable increments of value, rather than waiting months for a finished product that may miss the mark.

A living backlog, influenced by customers

Scrum introduced the idea of a prioritised backlog that evolves over time. At Blue Wren:

• Flight is built from configurable modules (CRM, workflows, events, reporting, access paths, dashboards, and more)
• These modules are continuously enhanced by our in-house team
• Customers can directly influence the development backlog and benefit from improvements at no additional cost

This is a practical application of Agile’s principle of customer collaboration over rigid contracts.

Built for change, not “Final Delivery”

Traditional software projects often treat go-live as the end. Scrum recognises that learning accelerates after something is in use.

That philosophy is embedded in Flight:

• Every customer has UAT and live environments
• Changes are tested safely before release
• Software can be updated and reconfigured over time at no extra cost

As business processes evolve, Flight evolves with them…exactly as Scrum intended.

Why Scrum still matters

Nearly four decades after Takeuchi and Nonaka first described the “rugby” approach to product development, Scrum remains relevant because the problem it addresses hasn’t gone away: complex work can’t be fully defined upfront.

At Blue Wren, Scrum isn’t a buzzword or a checklist. It’s a mindset that shapes how we:

• Work with customers
• Design and configure Flight applications
• Continuously improve both our platform and our delivery

Flight is not just software you buy; it’s a system that grows with your organisation. And that idea

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