There are no projects in Scrum. The term as used in project management usually refers to a work program that has a beginning, an end, and an expected objective. As such, projects have fixed scope and fixed budget. In Scrum, you always get another chance in the next Sprint, as is necessary on any complex development with unforeseeable requirements. So, in that sense, we do not use the term “project” in Scrum.
The pattern community, however, has adopted the term project in a different way. Christopher Alexander humbly called his original pattern collection “A Pattern Language” rather than “The Pattern Language.” His intent was that people pick and choose patterns from his book, add some of their own, and create their own language that communicated the vision of what to build. In the same way, you can choose patterns in this book that together will help you build the Scrum team that you envision. There is no single right path.
Hiroshi Nakano, an architect (and now professor) who worked with Alexander on the Eishen school project, calls these derived languages project languages. An organization starts to create a project language by going through the pattern book and putting yellow sticky notes on the patterns that “feel right.” Then the group arranges those in order to create a sequence to follow as they build their dream organization. Each pattern guides an act of growth or repair to your organization and its development process at successive steps of improvement. Adopt one pattern at a time: try one, and if it works, keep it; otherwise, discard it, and try another. You are likely to add your own patterns along the way. Revisit your sequence frequently so you are always applying a pattern that best increases the wholeness of the entire organization.
Others have gone before you and done the same. In the next section we'll look at one example from the co-creator of Scrum, Jeff Sutherland.