How Scrum in Particular Supports Work in Regulated Environments

Regulations can be slow to be updated. The regulated environment requirements I described in the previous lesson were initially created decades ago, at a time when software development amounted to the Wild West. An organization could have been using practically any approach to develop software, and most of the approaches didn’t work very well. Regulations are intended, in part, to avoid chaotic, ad hoc practices with unknown levels of efficacy.

U.S. federal regulations do not generally require a specific software development approach or lifecycle. They require that organizations choose an approach, define it, and document it, as described above. In addition, sometimes they require obtaining approval from the regulator.

Agile practices, especially Scrum, have been formalized and extensively ...