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So, some people have begun to understand the message about sustainable living. They are stirred on the inside and want to take their responsibility. They change their lifestyle and choose products in a conscious way. But is it enough? Can their individual contributions make a change and turn the ship? Isn’t it today’s powerful global institutions, multinational companies and governments that decide the rules? How can we make our voices heard?

I have been thinking a lot lately on how to make best use of the new social tools we have these days like blogs, newsgroups, email, mobile phones, etc. As never before we can connect and coordinate. Information can be spread in a moment’s notice to millions. Media coverage is no longer governed by professionals. Coordination is no longer only possible by well-managed organizations. These tools can be a real boost to democracy.

While looking for resources on this subject I stumbled over “Here comes everybody” by Clay Shirky. I finished reading his book today. In this very interesting book these things are discussed, with many examples of how the new social tools make a difference. The success of Flickr, Twitter, MySpace, Meetup, Wikipedia and Linux are examined. The author also compares similar stories that occurred some 10 years ago and again recently. He shows how amateur journalism totally changes the landscape of information distribution. Stories that for different reasons media or organizations decide to suffocate can spread in spite of that. The open software movement shows that complex cooperation is possible.

A big question in the past has been whether a task was best dealt with by the state, directing the effort in a planned way, or by businesses competing in a market. Now there is a third way; we can have action by loosely structured groups, operating without managerial direction and not motivated by profit. Clay Shirky puts it this way: “We used to have a world where little things happen for love and big things happen for money…Now though, we can do big things for love.”

I would like to explore and discuss these social patterns and tools. I work with software development and we talk about agile development. Agile means that we are quick to create a solution and, if needed, quick to modify it. I believe that with an agile attitude we can make use of social tools with the purpose of creating public opinion in environmental issues. Yes, we write in our blogs and forums, but I believe we can stretch further. If we are aware of the potential, we can tailor the use of tools according to our purpose and audience. Social software makes possible what 10 years ago was impossible. We can make our voices heard, multiply and create landslides.

After having completed a certification course at Citerus, I can now call myself a Certified Scrum Master. What is behind such a strange sounding title? It surely sounds mystical? But no, a Scrum Master is a project leader in software development according to the Scrum project model. They got inspiration from rugby when they chose the name Scrum. Luckily for a thin and lightweight guy like me, it is not about managing a project like a rugby game.

Scrum is about how to successfully manage projects in a complex and constantly changing world and challenges the present way of dealing with IT-projects. The project leader, the Scrum master, is more like a coach and does not control the details. The cross-functional development team has great freedom and responsibility and can decide how best to implement the specification. The product owner should be very involved in deciding and prioritizing the content of each increment. Development is done incrementally in short regular intervals, during which the specification is not allowed to change. This way, the developers can work undisturbed. The goal of the increment is to present a demo of the product with some real business value after the period.

As a preparation I read the books Agile Software Development With Scrum by Ken Schwaber/Mike Beedle and Agile Project Management With Scrum by Ken Schwaber. Both books describe Scrum theoretically and give a lot of examples. They are well worth reading.

The course was intensive, with many discussions and exercises. Many of the other participants were already applying Scrum, so I had many interesting discussions. I do believe in the foundational principles of the Scrum model and those days were very well invested time and money.

Having the right process control model when you develop software is of great importance. When I look back it seems that many of the projects I have been involved in have been very complex and most of them have had many areas of unpredictability. They have not at all been close to an assembly line. Treating them and controlling them like you would an assembly line would be frustrating and plain wrong. Sometimes projects are like assembly lines, we walk the path we have walked before and we know what will happen. We can predict the road ahead and estimate the time it will take correctly. But most of the times the projects are not like that. We estimate time, but that is just a guess and in the end the developer feels guilty because he could not estimate better.

We live in a fast changing and evolving time and we can only accept it. Requirements will change while we are building and the needs of management and customers will change. There is no time for the technology to settle, but in order to have competitive edge we constantly use bleeding edge technology. Wrong time estimates and unreached goals is not the developers fault. We must have a model that resembles reality.

I have been using the Agile approach for quite some time and lately been looking into Scrum. Scrum is a Process Control Model that fits the above scenario. It describes itself as an empirical model of process control and advocates a paradigm shift from the traditional view of process control modelling.