Showing posts with label scrum development. Show all posts
Showing posts with label scrum development. Show all posts

Wednesday 12 February 2014

Scrum Methodology Made Easy – Easily Understand The Basics

Scrum can be understood in simple terms as a loose set of rules or guidelines used to control or govern the process of development of a particular product. The method can be used to develop the product right from its inception up to its finished state of completion. The objective of the scrum methodology is to overcome the shortcomings offered by traditional development methods. Generally, what does scrum help to overcome?

Chaos and problems occurring due to varying or changing development environment
A major problem occurring during the development process is responding to the changes occurring in the product development cycle or requirements put forward by the clients. In case of traditional linear product development methodologies, it is not possible to make any changes in the development cycle once it is decided and put into practice. The entire development stage has to be carried out again after incorporating the new changes in the product design or client oriented requirements. That is not the case with scrum development. Changes can be immediately reflected in the development cycle. Moreover, the changes can be incorporated in live working environments “on the go”.

Responding late to product development impediments
It is very important to respond quickly to, and cater in time to the impediments occurring during the development activity. If large extent of time is required to be spent while responding to the solutions required to remove the problems, the development loses its meaning if it is going to exceed the predetermined product development time. With scrum it is very easy to respond to changes. Any problem occurring, or faced by the development team is dealt within the sprint time.  The daily scrum meetings are basically designed and conducted for this very purpose. This facility is not supported in traditional methodologies.

Uncontrolled development process

In traditional development methodologies such as Waterfall, it is not possible to evaluate the development status on a frequent basis. Generally the project manager is made aware about the development status after a particular stage is completed, and by then it is too late to rectify and errors occurring or unknowingly carried out by the development team. With scrum, the difficulty is overcome due to sprint planning meetings. At the end of each sprint, generally lasting up to two weeks, the status of development is identified, known, ascertained, discussed, analyzed, and rectified for any erroneous process occurring during the sprint. This ensures that the errors are not carried forwarded, but rather checked in time, and catered to.