An Overview Of Scrum Methodology

Scrum framework

Scrum is a unique framework specially designed to build a versatile product.  The framework supports a dynamic design, which allows the features and functionalities linked with the product to be changed, along with the real time changes occurring in the ongoing market conditions. Generally, a scrum project is started when the stakeholders or the investors desire to develop a product for marketing and selling purposes.

Scrum roles

Scrum is basically a team process. There are three important roles in scrum:

·       The Product Owner

Responsible for the work to be done in the scrum project.

·       The Scrum Master

Plays the servant-leader role, ensures that scrum is properly implemented in the project, and acts as a facilitator.

·       The development team members

Undertakes the product development in the form of sprints and actually gives “birth” to the product.

Daily sprints

A sprint is the fundamental unit of developing the product in scrum methodology. Actually, the entire product is developed in short bursts of development activity known as “sprints”. Each sprint generally lasts for two weeks. It can, however, extend up to four weeks if required, but in practice it generally lasts for only two weeks. A fully functional, or a “shippable” product feature or functionality is delivered at the end of each sprint.

Scrum artifacts or objects

Scrum includes three important artifacts which facilitate the scrum process. They are:

·       The Product Backlog

It consists of the user stories, or the list of features and functionalities which actually define the entire product to be developed.

·       The Sprint Backlog

A certain portion, or a subset of the product backlog, is transferred to the sprint backlog for development purposes during the sprint.

·       The Product Increment

It constitutes the list of features and functionalities which have been developed successfully by the development team, and is ready for “shipping”.

Scrum meetings

Scrum also requires five team activities or meetings, which are:

·       Product Backlog Refinement

The meeting includes updating the product backlog items or the user stories with the latest updates and feedback availed from the stakeholders, and resetting the priority of the backlog items on the basis of their importance.

·       Sprint Planning

Scheduled just before a sprint is to be carried out, the meeting is used to plan which tasks should be taken up for development by the team, and to clear the doubts or issues concerning the development.

·       Daily Scrum

The meeting is held just before the sprint commences for the particular day. The purpose is to discuss three important questions associated with daily sprinting:

-        What was done yesterday?

-        What is to be done today?

-        Are there any difficulties?

·       Sprint Review

Once a sprint is carried out, the product owner compares the user stories developed by the team, whether they fulfill the acceptance criteria. The review functions as a “learning” activity, and the team uses the prior experience to avoid potential pitfalls from occurring in the future sprints.

·       Sprint Retrospective

Once the development is carried out in sprints, and the product owner accepts the tasks as “Done”, it is required to demonstrate the successfully completed user stories to the stakeholders and the end users. The retrospective also helps to obtain a feedback from the individuals who are actually going to use the product.

Source:- https://www.apsense.com/article/an-overview-of-scrum-methodology.html

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Why Certain Businesses Fail To Benefit From Scrum – Part 1

Scrum may be difficult to understand and follow

Despite the fact that scrum framework helps to provide solutions for the drawbacks prevailing in traditional project management methodologies, in many cases, the company implementing scrum for the first time may face certain issues associated with scrum itself. Scrum methodology is highly adaptable and powerful. It can cater to changing market conditions, and successfully incorporate the changes within the product development cycle, even while the product is currently being developed. There are several advantages, which makes Agile scrum a much desired development methodology. However, implementing scrum in a successful manner can prove to be very challenging for first timers. The impediments faced are generally related to the transition process, as the company starts migrating from its current development methodology to scrum. For majority of people new to scrum, the environment may appear to be complex, rigid, and difficult to understand and follow. This is a misconception since scrum can be almost everything but not rigid in the truest sense. In the initial stage, the team may find it difficult to understand how scrum works, and what kind of roles the product owner and scrum master play while implementing scrum. In addition, there are certain artifacts or objects such as the product backlog and the sprint backlog which figure prominently in scrum. Moreover, scrum events such as the daily sprint meeting, sprint planning meeting, sprint retrospective meeting, and the sprint review meeting may confuse novices why they exist, or are needed in the first place. Scrum can be quite different when compared to traditional waterfall project development methods, and people often start developing a negative attitude towards it simply because they fail to understand it.   

Not getting the desired results out of scrum implementation

A company or a business may decide to implement scrum to reduce the project turnaround time or increase the productivity and the ROI. There is always a reason why an ongoing process flow may be required to be replaced by a new one by the business owners. The management and stakeholders may have “heard” about the obvious benefits of using scrum, and how their business can possibly benefit from them. The management personnel may have high expectations, and might even plan their marketing goals and objective keeping in mind the benefits availed by implementing scrum in their ongoing projects. However, in many cases, due to various reasons scrum implementation may fail to produce the desired results for the particular business, and the entire project may go askew with no clear indication as to in which direction it is heading for. The reasons may be many and varied. It is important to know what they are if scrum is to be implemented successfully.  

·       Improper communication channels and feedback

Broken feedback channels and improper communication processes primarily lead to a void in the learning process which is so very important while implementing scrum. A major issue is the lack of feedback availed during the scrum meetings and important information not being transmitted to the team members in the correct manner, or at the correct time. In scrum, the entire project is developed in short bursts of development activity called sprints. Sprints are to be conducted on a daily basis. The daily stand up or the daily scrum meeting precedes the sprint activity. Three important questions are to be answered during the meeting. The product increment during the daily sprint can be affected by the answers availed during the stand up. After the entire sprint is over, a sprint review meeting is held to evaluate the development carried out by the team. The product owner and the scrum master evaluate the entire sprint during the review, and efforts are made to generate new findings based upon prior experiences. The findings need to be conveyed to the team.

Result

When the communication channel fails due to some reason and proper feedback is not transmitted to the team members, they may start with a new sprint and repeat the same mistakes they made in the prior sprint. Scrum supports self-learning and self-correction activities which are possible only when a proper communication channel is set in place, and feedback is made available to the entire team. If the team members do not receive any feedback or communications from the concerned personnel, they may proceed with future activities without any definite aim or objective.  This can be disastrous for scrum because everything is planned, and each activity is carefully regulated in scrum. The team members fail to perform in the correct manner and the entire project suffers as a consequence.     

·       Organization lacks sufficient scrum knowledge and experience

Project managers are more used to traditional waterfall methods and are familiar with their process flow. Scrum is very different, and the framework should be understood in depth before it can be used or implemented in any particular way or manner. It is essential that the entire team be educated in scrum and knows how it works. The team members should be well apprised about the importance of the scrum artifacts and the purpose of the meetings. They should be made aware about the importance of sharing information in scrum and collaborating with other team members. At times, the team may not be clear about how a scrum meeting should be ideally conducted, and what information ought to be availed from it. A lack of clear purpose may render the entire meeting as useless. The team members may fail to deliver productivity in a scheduled or effective manner. The entire scrum process could be hampered.Read more on http://blog.quickscrum.com/post/2014/03/31/Why-Certain-Businesses-Fail-To-Benefit-From-Scrum-%E2%80%93-Part-1.aspx

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Advantages Offered By Scrum Methodology – Scrum Benefits Explained For Scrum Beginners

The scrum methodology

The usage of the word “Scrum” is inspired by a Rugby game technique where individual team members form a group, and collaborate to fulfill a common objective – sprinting with the ball in hand, and covering a certain distance to “achieve” a touchdown. The concept used in scrum methodology is quite similar to the “scrum” used in Rugby. Just as Rugby players huddle together and make efforts to gain the possession of the ball so they can undertake the sprint to achieve a touchdown, in scrum, the individual team members too work in unison, and collaborate to develop a shippable product in short bursts of developmental activity known as “sprints”. Sprints are typically short and target oriented in nature, just as they are in Rugby. Generally, a scrum development team may consist of six to seven members working together under a common roof, or in certain cases, they may be located in different geographic locations. 

Initially, the main purpose of the scrum framework was to develop and manage software-based projects. However, over the years the pioneers who originally designed the framework put in efforts so the methodology could evolve to suit non-IT or software based projects. However, implementing scrum for non-IT based projects, and the fulfillment of project goals requires specialized training, the same case as in software-based projects. It is very important to understand that scrum is a concept – a methodology – and it needs to be enforced or implemented in a well-planned and organized manner for it to be effective.

The scrum team is headed by a product owner who represents the stakeholders and their interests while executing the project, and is accompanied by a scrum master who oversees that scrum is properly implanted at all times while the project is underway. The scrum development team carries out the project development in short bursts of iterations known as “sprints”. The development team is typically composed of trained professionals, who have specialized in a variety of IT disciplines. They can be software developers or programmers, software engineers, Q/A specialists, and individuals who have specialized in other branches belonging to the IT segment.

Advantages of scrum

Scrum framework offers many advantages not found in traditional waterfall development methodologies:

·       Responding to the market changes

Perhaps one of the major factors which often affect, and which may also result into an abnormal termination of an ongoing project is the changes occurring in the market while the project development is underway. Quite often, a project may start successfully and proceed as per plan, but a subsequent release of more effective and functional product may render the current object obsolete and useless. This has happened many a times in the IT market, and many IT companies have suffered heavy losses, and even closed down prematurely. With scrum, it becomes easy to incorporate the changes occurring in the market. New changes can be easily introduced in the project life cycle, and existing development can be modified or “upgraded” to become more effectual and meaningful. In all, scrum helps to incorporate the changes occurring in the market related conditions as and when they occur in an easy and effective manner.

·       Increasing the ROI

Generally, when development is undertaken to manufacture a particular product, it is usually found that approximately 60% of the features associated with the product are rarely, or never really used. However, their development is still carried out simply because they “are there” and were planned to be developed when the project was intercepted. A lot of time, efforts, and cost are involved in developing the features and functionality linked with a product. If the functionality is not really useful, the efforts and cost involved in developing the feature is wasted since it may not have a business value attached to it. Scrum makes it possible to identify such features, and curtail their development, which makes it very convenient for the management to save money and human resources. In scrum, the business value associated with the features is easily identifiable, and their development can be regulated in a much better way as compared to other development methodologies. The investment returns are substantially increased if scrum is used.

·       Continuously improvising upon the project development process

Scrum supports continuous improvement in each project related aspect while the development activity is carried out. The framework is specially designed to identify problematic issues and resolve them as and when they occur. A built in “mechanism” constantly helps to monitor what is currently going on, and which of the issues are holding the organization back in delivering the desired outputs. This is an inherent feature of scrum.Read more on http://blog.quickscrum.com/post/2014/03/18/Advantages-Offered-By-Scrum-Methodology-%E2%80%93-Scrum-Benefits-Explained-For-Scrum-Beginners.aspx  

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True Meaning of Scrum and Pitfalls To Avoid At All Costs

Scrum, having its roots in Agile, can be effectively employed for almost any type of project. However, scrum is most preferred for software development purposes. The scrum process is ideally suited for rapidly changing project environments. It is most useful, and its potential can be tapped in the best manner, when the user related requirements are changed frequently, or randomly, due to various reasons. The methodology makes it possible to incorporate the changes easily and effectively within its development cycle, and still generate positive outputs.      

The true essence and working of scrum

According to scrum framework, development occurs in short bursts of activity known as “sprints”. Each sprint can generally last from two to four weeks. Each sprint begins with a meeting, known as a “sprint meeting”, and typically concludes with clearly defined and set out development objectives. “Stand up” meetings are very brief, and occur daily before the commencement of the sprint for that particular day. The main objective of the meeting is to apprise everyone about how much development progress has been made since the previous day, and what objectives are to be achieved on the particular working day. The main purpose of scrum is to aid the team members in inspecting and adapting to the changes, and providing transparency with regards the working of the project. Another main advantage offered by scrum framework is to increase the involvement, and the interaction of the client with the team members. The client remains apprised about the most recent development status, which helps him or her to undertake informed decisions about what further development activities are required to complete the project in totality, and what features and functionalists need to be omitted, or which have become redundant during the development cycle.   

Pitfalls while implementing scrum

Scrum is a framework based upon an organized thought process developed specially to cater to changing development requirements, and the main issue with Agile and scrum is that the method is to be implemented, or its rules enforced in a proper manner. Many a times, when organizations are not properly trained in the implementation of the framework, there is a tendency to fall back upon old development methods, consciously or unconsciously, thus making scrum redundant. Traditional development methods such as Waterfall have been in existence since a long time, and people are more familiar with them. Project managers have practiced these methods for a long time, and they are more conversant with them. Scrum can be difficult to implement, and if the manager is not properly trained, he or she may substitute some of the scrum related processes with Waterfall methods. The objective is to provide a specific solution during the development cycle, and when the person fails to implement scrum in a particular development related process, he or she “patches” up scrum implementation process with a Waterfall technique. This should be avoided at all costs. Scrum should be implemented in totality for it to be effective.    

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