Is it possible to build houses using Scrum?

I was inspired to write the following short essay by a post on LinkedIn and some of my friends changing approach to scrum-centric:

„Is it possible to build houses using Scrum?

Recently (again) I heard the statement that Scrum is suitable for everything — even for building houses.

Well, no — it is not. (…)”

Of course, it’s possible, only the backlog will be screwed up. It is worth having one before the project starts to define the connection between the PBIs.

“It doesn’t mean you should just because you can.”

Scrum-centric would object that at the stage of building foundations there is no need to specify the color of the walls. Yes, they’re right, but… for what?

Everything is possible, but not everything makes sense in terms of time and money. The way the product is built and its specific approach depends on many factors. This choice affects the cost and it would be too expensive to build a house using scrum. I warn you against making such decisions without knowing well at least one specific Waterfall methodology. Loud and clear once again: Scrum only makes financial or time sense under certain circumstances (one is enough) and then we may suspect that it is appropriate in following cases:

• the product is undefined (it is known what is to be achieved, but it is not known how it should work and what is the scope),
• the product is complicated (we want to introduce it to the market in stages, where each new one is defined based on the feedback from the previous ones),
• the product is complex (changing one part made us to change others. Scrum is/should be System Thinking after all),
• the product is innovative (we want to be able to change the functionalities previously written — the independence of User Stories in the backlog).

In other cases, it is probably possible, but neither profitable nor quick. Building a house in the title is a good example here, although Americans may look at it a bit differently.