Our story

ScrumDesk has been actively involved in agile development since 2008 as the first company in Slovakia.

The history of ScrumDesk starts in 2007, when we were looking for a process for a development team that had grown quite rapidly. Our natural communication was starting to fail, people were looking for processes, worried about failure, and asking for a process that would allow them to work efficiently.

Rational Unified Process seemed like a good candidate, but on closer examination revealed its complexity and cost.

However, we liked the possibility of continuous customization and so, at least initially, we started with RUP. We were particularly interested in the application of iterative approaches.

But after a few months, a turning point came in the form of the book Scrum and XP from the Trenches. The Kanban board drawing on the cover caught our eye.

It was the transparency, the visibility that appealed to us. The idea that a physical whiteboard could replace Microsoft Project was incredible until we tried it in a team. All of a sudden, the AHA moment!

Download

Since we were distributed, we wanted to have the board available to everyone on the team regardless of location. We wanted to simplify our lives without the need for tedious hourly counts and chart updates. And so, in conjunction with a great technology outfit, over the course of a few evenings we built the foundation of our product, the ScrumDesk app – a project management tool for agile teams. At the time, the product was called ScrumBoard. Right from the start, we deployed it to internal projects and started improving it.

After a few months, we took it to the global market, where we were one of the first tools to support Scrum and Agile. Our app was the fifth app in the world to provide support for the Agile practices that were so new at the time.

Over the course of several years of operation, we began to notice a new phenomenon. People started to apply Scrum, but they didn’t understand the principles, the philosophy of Agile. They started using new terms without understanding their deeper meaning and the importance of change. So we started to support clients through consulting services. First in countries outside Slovakia, later also in Slovakia and Czech Republic.

Our mission

Enable people to become meaningfully more Agile.

Empower people to become meaningfully Agile.

We see the reason for our existence as enabling people to survive in a volatile environment where they need to be able to create meaningful products.

We don’t want to become the next preachers of Agile We have personal experience of how Agile practices and mindsets have helped people navigate, manage change and sustain themselves in a space whose conditions are constantly changing.

Our values

Meaningfulness

We believe that Agile must be set up in a meaningful way. Agile can’t help everyone, all the time.

We believe that in order to successfully implement Agile practices, you need to know the current state of the client, their business, products, processes, tools. The people who work for the client. Know the customers the client works for.

We want to know your vision, goals and strategy. To be able to select meaningful agile practices, to be able to design that change for you, and to help you with the transformation itself.

Fairness

We are fair to the client. We do not want to mislead anyone with false promises. At the same time, we also expect this from our clients and co-workers.

Agile is based on close collaboration. Our collaboration within the team and with our clients is also very close. Many times on a personal, sometimes even friendly level. Only in a trusting environment can difficult changes be overcome easily.

The implementation of agile practices cannot be drawn and planned to the last dot. The process is about continuous change.

For such long and challenging changes, it makes sense to be fair to each other. Our programs and trainings are always designed so that we don’t unnecessarily drain your resources, either financial or capacity.

Empathy

We understand that change is not easy. After all, how many of us, like change. Change takes energy, time, resources. Moreover, we produce fewer results during change.

Not everyone has the space to change and implement agile practices. Our goal is to understand your current situation, help you find approaches that fit, or completely change and adapt our approaches to help you through the change process.

We are also ready to assist you in building trust in front of your clients and management.

Courage

If you become our client, we won’t leave you in your comfort zone. We will try to improve you, to move you to a higher level of functioning of a company that listens to its clients, that knows how to surprise them positively with its more valuable products. You will become a firm that knows how to create these products more efficiently and, above all, transparently in confidence.

We’re not afraid to tell even unpleasant information. It’s better to acknowledge the problem and react to it. That’s why we will openly tell you with courage about your potentials for improvement. We hope you will gladly accept the feedback.

If we keep doing things the same way, we will only get the same result.

What makes us different?

Agile project management applications combined with Agile consulting and Agile coaching create a symbiosis that are unique in their meaningfulness.

The ScrumDesk product is designed for project management of development through the Scrum method. It was created as a result of learning about Scrum and Agile itself and with the help of many experts in the field of Agile. The products are used by more than 40,000 companies (commercial and non-profit) in the EU, USA and BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and more than 400 universities.

The experience gained in its development and in working with our customers was later extended to include consulting services dedicated to Agile issues.

During our operation:

• We’ve helped over 1000 people get started with Agile, Scrum, Kanban, Scrumban, DevOps, SAFe, and LeSS.

• We’ve been teaching Agile through hands-on workshops for over 15 years. Our trainers have been active in countries such as Slovakia, Czech Republic, Austria, Germany, France, UK, Switzerland and the United States.

• We have been part of the lives of more than a hundred teams that have implemented Agile. Teams working in startups, small companies, as well as international and offshore companies operating in Europe, USA and India.

• We have actively supported Agile conferences in Europe (ScrumImpulz, Agile Eastern Europe, Agile Lean Europe, Agile Processes, Agile Prague).

• We have also built partnerships abroad that allow us to assist distributed teams within the EU, USA, Canada and India.

Last but not least, we strive to support the evangelization of modern product development practices by supporting the Slovak agile community Agile@Slovakia.