Eleven Lessons Learned about Agile Hardware Development

Eleven Lessons Learned about Agile Hardware Development presents a case study of an organization’s experience applying Scrum to the development of analytical chemistry equipment. The project was deliberately selected as a medium-sized, important project that would allow the organization to experiment with Agile hardware development while accepting the risks associated with being an early adopter. A new nine-person team was trained in Scrum and used Sprints, Release Planning, Backlog Refinement, daily stand-ups, Sprint Reviews, and Retrospectives throughout the development effort.

The case study examines where conventional Scrum practices needed to be adapted for hardware development. Among the lessons were that hardware products naturally decompose around physical components rather than user-facing functionality; most hardware requirements are therefore expressed as Technical Stories rather than User Stories; hardware Product Owners may also need to participate as hands-on engineering team members; and time-based estimation can be more practical than Story Points because of the specialized skills required by hardware teams.

The paper also describes how Release Planning was adapted to accommodate the longer development cycles and higher cost of change associated with hardware. The project mapped Release Cycles to major product-development phases and used Person-Week estimates to develop a rough forecast of achievable scope. During Sprint execution, the team demonstrated strong collaboration and visibility, while Sprint Reviews focused primarily on design artifacts that collectively represented the developing product.

The experiment was considered a success. The Product Owner reported stronger team involvement in technical decisions, effective daily coordination, improved visibility into work, and significant value from Release Planning in keeping the team focused on larger product goals rather than individual engineering activities.