How to get management buy in for introducing scrum?

Question

developers want to do scrum. But how can we make our management let us do it?

Answer 1

"Make" is definitely the wrong word. Try to tell management how you are going to change everyday work processes and things will definitely get off on the wrong foot.

Instead, try to find some intermediaries to help sell your case. At the end, it's all about politics (and the good-ole-boy network). Have product/project managers that want to give scrum a try too? Great - ask them how you can both approach upper management to make the sales pitch.

Leave some good scrum books lying around in well used portions of the office. Talk to your managers if they've heard of other companies/colleagues that are successfully implementing scrum.

You can begin incorporating various XP practices in your local teams - pair-up some times, write more tests, focus on delivering customer value. These aren't necessarily scrum features - just good software engineering.

Probably the most important piece of advice - stay committed...This process will take _years_ to get rolling in a company (even a small one) from bottom up. But the rewards are definitely worth it!

Answer 2

You can try to pitch it in a structured way: Situation - Complication - Solution. If you get a slot for a short presentation you can try to describe how you do things today, what issues you see with the current approach and how you think you can fix those issues using Scrum (or any other Lean or Agile methodologies).
Make sure you communicate advantages for the overall company or your managers - don't focus on what's nice for you only. Good luck!