For those who are not fans, the four yearly rugby world cup is
currently being played out in France.

Before the tournament began, the England rugby team were ranked ninth
in the world. They had been universally written off as not having a
chance of progressing beyond the quarter finals, indeed on recent
form getting out of the group stage would have been a reasonable end
goal and indeed early on they were humiliated by a South African team
losing 36-0. However, following that record defeat they won the next
four matches and have now reached the rugby world cup final to be
played next Saturday.

Following this astonishing turn of form the England coach, Brian
Ashton was asked by a BBC journalist whether he agreed that "he'll go
down as a miracle worker."

His response struck a chord - "No I won't, I'm not that sort of
coach, I facilitate the players, I help the players, I set a
framework for the players, they're the guys that go out on the field,
they're the guys that do the business, they deserve all the plaudits.

This got me thinking. Does a true team sport like rugby offer more
than just a useful name (Scrum) for the agile approach to software
development.

There seem to be some striking parallels between teams in sport and
the principles behind scrum teams. For example:

Coach – In rugby the person in charge is a coach and as Brian says
he's a facilitator, he helps the players, he sets a framework. Scrum
itself defines the framework which the scrum master acting as a
facilitator helps the team to follow, he acts as a coach not a
manager.

Field of play – in rugby the point the players go out onto the field
of play and execute the game plan is where the players are judged and
as Brian says, they do the business, they deserve all the plaudits.
In scrum (to me) the field of play is the sprint review.

During the sprint all the work has been put in (training in rugby) to
translate the selected backlog into a working product increment. I've
noticed teams really enjoy being actively involved in the sprint
review, this is their field of play. When the review goes well and
the feedback from the stakeholders is positive the lift in the team
is palpable and brings with it a momentum which goes straight into
the next sprint.

Could it be that sports have learnt over many years what is takes to
make high performing teams and only recently business and
particularly software development have begun to take notice?