Well, the holiday's over now and today is the first day back in the office.

I wasn't sure what to expect after having been away for a month but I was pleasantly surprised and very happy with things. The scrum process continued to work well while I was gone (two sprints completed while I was away) and the teams managed themselves really well to meet the needs of the business without requiring a lot of direction or prodding.

The number of crisis' waiting for me when I got back was zero. No burning problems, nothing falling down around my ears and no processes gone off the rails that needed to be brought back on track. Just a normal, calm, productive environment and a happy team that can take pride in doing a fantastic job and providing real visible progress in the product.

I don't know for sure what would've happened if I hadn't been using scrum as part of the development process but I'm pretty sure that things wouldn't be in the shape they are now if I was trying to do things using any of the traditional waterfall methodologies.