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Scrum Is an Innovative Approach to Getting Work Done
Scrum is an agile framework for completing complex projects. Scrum originally was formalized for software development projects, but works well for any complex, innovative scope of work. The possibilities are endless. The Scrum framework is deceptively simple.
The Scrum Framework in 30 Seconds
- A product owner creates a prioritized wish list called a product backlog.
- During sprint planning, the team pulls a small chunk from the top of that wishlist, a sprint backlog, and decides how to implement those pieces.
- The team has a certain amount of time, a sprint, to complete its work - usually two to four weeks - but meets each day to assess its progress (daily scrum).
- Along the way, the ScrumMaster keeps the team focused on its goal.
- At the end of the sprint, the work should be potentially shippable, as in ready to hand to a customer, put on a store shelf, or show to a stakeholder.
- The sprint ends with a sprint review and retrospective.
- As the next sprint begins, the team chooses another chunk of the product backlog and begins working again.
Core Roles
The core roles are those committed to the project in the Scrum process—they are the ones producing the product (objective of the project). They represent the scrum team.
Product Owner
The Product Owner represents the stakeholders and is the voice of the customer. He or she is accountable for ensuring that the team delivers value to the business. The Product Owner writes customer-centric items (typically user stories), prioritizes them, and adds them to the product backlog. Scrum teams should have one Product Owner, and while they may also be a member of the development team, it is recommended that this role not be combined with that of ScrumMaster.
ScrumMaster
Scrum is facilitated by a ScrumMaster who is accountable for removing impediments to the ability of the team to deliver the sprint goal/deliverables. The Scrum Master is not the team leader, but acts as a buffer between the team and any distracting influences. The ScrumMaster ensures that the Scrum process is used as intended. The ScrumMaster is the enforcer of rules. A key part of the ScrumMaster’s role is to protect the Development Team and keep it focused on the tasks at hand. The role has also been referred to as a servant-leader to reinforce these dual perspectives.
The ScrumMaster differs from a Project Manager in that the latter may have people management responsibilities unrelated to the role of ScrumMaster. The Scrum Master role excludes any such additional people responsibilities.
Development Team
The Development Team is responsible for delivering potentially shippable product increments at the end of each Sprint. A Development Team is made up of 3–9 people with cross-functional skills who do the actual work (analyse, design, develop, test, technical communication, document, etc.). The Development Team in Scrum is self-organizing, even though they may interface with project management organizations (PMOs).
Ancillary Roles
The ancillary roles in Scrum teams are those with no formal role and infrequent involvement in the Scrum process - but nonetheless, they must be taken into account.
Stakeholders
The stakeholders are the customers, vendors. They are people who enable the project and for whom the project produces the agreed-upon benefit[s] that justify its production. They are only directly involved in the process during the sprint reviews.
Managers
People who control the environment.
Sprint
A sprint is the basic unit of development in Scrum. The sprint is a "timeboxed" effort, i.e. it is restricted to a specific duration. The duration is fixed in advance for each sprint and is normally between one week and one month.
Each sprint is preceded by a planning meeting, where the tasks for the sprint are identified and an estimated commitment for the sprint goal is made, and followed by a review or retrospective meeting, where the progress is reviewed and lessons for the next sprint are identified.
During each sprint, the team creates finished portions of a product. The set of features that go into a sprint come from the product backlog, which is an ordered list of requirements. Which backlog items go into the sprint (the sprint goals) is determined during the sprint planning meeting. During this meeting, the Product Owner informs the team of the items in the product backlog that he or she wants completed (the ones with the highest priority). The team then determines how much of this they can commit to complete during the next sprint, and records this in the sprint backlog. The sprint backlog is property of the development team, i.e. during a sprint, no one is allowed to edit the sprint backlog except for the development team. The sprint goals should not be changed during the sprint. Development is timeboxed such that the sprint must end on time; if requirements are not completed for any reason they are left out and returned to the product backlog. After a sprint is completed, the team demonstrates how to use the software.
Scrum enables the creation of self-organizing teams by encouraging co-location of all team members, and verbal communication between all team members and disciplines in the project.
A key principle of Scrum is its recognition that during a project the customers can change their minds about what they want and need (often called requirements churn), and that unpredicted challenges cannot be easily addressed in a traditional predictive or planned manner. As such, Scrum adopts an empirical approach—accepting that the problem cannot be fully understood or defined, focusing instead on maximizing the team’s ability to deliver quickly and respond to emerging requirements.
Like other agile development methodologies, Scrum can be implemented through a wide range of tools. Many companies use universal tools, such as spreadsheets to build and maintain artifacts such as the sprint backlog. There are also open-source and proprietary packages dedicated to management of products under the Scrum process. Other organizations implement Scrum without the use of any tools, and maintain their artifacts in hard-copy forms such as paper, whiteboards, and sticky notes.
Meetings
Daily Scrum
Each day during the sprint, a project team communication meeting occurs. This is called a daily scrum, or the daily standup. This meeting has specific guidelines:
- All members of the development Team come prepared with the updates for the meeting
- The meeting starts precisely on time even if some development team members are missing
- The meeting should happen at the same location and same time every day
- The meeting length is set (timeboxed) to 15 minutes
- All are welcome, but normally only the core roles speak
- What have you done since yesterday?
- What are you planning to do today?
- Any impediments/stumbling blocks?
Backlog Grooming
The team should spend time during a sprint doing product backlog grooming. This is the process of estimating the existing backlog using effort/points, refining the acceptance criteria for individual stories, and breaking larger stories into smaller stories.
- Meetings should not be longer than an hour
- Meeting does not include breaking stories into tasks
- The team can decide how many meetings are needed per week
- Each day normally after the Daily Scrum (larger companies can choose to have these once per week)
- These meetings allow clusters of teams to discuss their work, focusing especially on areas of overlap and integration.
- A designated person from each team attends.
- What has your team done since we last met?
- What will your team do before we meet again?
- Is anything slowing your team down or getting in their way?
- Are you about to put something in another team’s way?
At the beginning of the sprint cycle (every 7–30 days), a “Sprint planning meeting” is held.
- Select what work is to be done
- Prepare the Sprint Backlog that details the time it will take to do that work, with the entire team
- Identify and communicate how much of the work is likely to be done during the current sprint
- (1st four hours) Entire team: Dialog for prioritizing the Product Backlog
- (2nd four hours) Development Team: Hashing out a plan for the Sprint, resulting in the Sprint Backlog
Sprint Review Meeting
- Review the work that was completed and not completed
- Present the completed work to the stakeholders (a.k.a. “the demo”)
- Incomplete work cannot be demonstrated
- All team members reflect on the past sprint
- Make continuous process improvements
- What went well during the sprint?
- What could be improved in the next sprint?
Product Backlog
The product backlog is an ordered list of "requirements" that is maintained for a product. It contains Product Backlog Items that are ordered by the Product Owner based on considerations like risk, business value, dependencies, date needed, etc. The features added to the backlog are commonly written in story format. The product backlog is the “What” that will be built, sorted in the relative order it should be built in. It is open and editable by anyone, but the Product Owner is ultimately responsible for ordering the stories on the backlog for the Development Team. The product backlog contains rough estimates of both business value and development effort, these values are often stated in story points using a rounded Fibonacci sequence. Those estimates help the Product Owner to gauge the timeline and may influence ordering of backlog items. For example, if the “add spellcheck” and “add table support” features have the same business value, the one with the smallest development effort will probably have higher priority, because the ROI (Return on Investment) is higher.
The Product Backlog, and business value of each listed item is the responsibility of the Product Owner. The estimated effort to complete each backlog item is, however, determined by the Development Team. The team contributes by estimating Items and User-Stories, either in Story-points or in estimated hours.
Sprint Backlog
The sprint backlog is the list of work the Development Team must address during the next sprint. The list is derived by selecting stories/features from the top of the product backlog until the Development Team feels it has enough work to fill the sprint. This is done by the Development Team asking "Can we also do this?" and adding stories/features to the sprint backlog. The Development Team should keep in mind the velocity of its previous Sprints (total story points completed from each of the last sprints stories) when selecting stories/features for the new sprint, and use this number as a guide line of how much "effort" they can complete.
The stories/features are broken down into tasks by the Development Team, which, as a best practice, should normally be between four and sixteen hours of work. With this level of detail the Development Team understands exactly what to do, and potentially, anyone can pick a task from the list. Tasks on the sprint backlog are never assigned; rather, tasks are signed up for by the team members as needed during the daily scrum, according to the set priority and the Development Team member skills. This promotes self-organization of the Development Team, and developer buy-in.
The sprint backlog is the property of the Development Team, and all included estimates are provided by the Development Team. Often an accompanying task board is used to see and change the state of the tasks of the current sprint, like “to do”, “in progress” and “done”.
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