Software development is very complex, it is extremely hard if not impossible to know how an ideal solution to a problem would look like upfront. On top of that what’s “ideal” tends to change over time.
Therefore choosing an iterative approach of developing software to leverage information and insight gained on the fly is very pragmatic. On top of that most of the software that is written today is never ‘finished’. This is especially true for successful software. It is rather improved and maintained for extended periods of time
Scrum is a better fit for the way we think of software today than other methodologies. Scrum is a framework to develop software using self organized teams with clearly defined roles, artifacts, and events so that you might be agile.
The first step in Scrum is for the Product Owner to articulate the product vision. Eventually, this evolves into a refined and prioritized list of features called the Product Backlog. This backlog exists and evolves over the lifetime of the product; it is the product road map. The subset of the Product Backlog that is intended for the current release is known as the Release Backlog, and in general, this portion is the primary focus of the Product Owner.
At the beginning of each Sprint, the Sprint Planning Meeting takes place. It is divided into two distinct sub-meetings. In Sprint Planning Part One, the Product Owner and Team Product Backlog get together and define the “Scenario of Done”. In Sprint Planning Part Two, contingency plans are discussed and analysed.
Once the Sprint has started, the Team engages in another key Scrum practices: The Daily Scrum. This is a short meeting that happens every workday at an appointed time and place. Everyone in the team attends. In the Daily Scrum, one by one, each member of the team reports three things to the other members of the team:
(1) What they were able to get done since the last meeting.
(2) What they are planning to finish by the next meeting.
(3) Any blocks or impediments that are in their way.
Every day, the team members update their estimate of the amount of time remaining to complete their current task in the Sprint Backlog. Following this update, someone adds up the hours remaining for the Team as a whole, and plots it on the Sprint Burndown Chart. This graph shows, each day, a new estimate of how much work remains until the Team’s tasks are finished.
One of the lesser known, but valuable guidelines in Scrum is that 5-10% of each Sprint must be dedicated by the Product Owner and the team to refine the Product Backlog. This includes: detailed requirements analysis, splitting large items into smaller ones, estimation of new items and re-estimation of existing items.
After the Sprint ends, there is the Sprint Review, where the team reviews the Sprint with the Product Owner. The Sprint Review is an inspect and adapt activity for the product. It is a time for an in-depth conversation and collaboration between the Team and Product Owner to learn the situation, to get advice, and so forth.
For applications or products, either for the market or for internal use within an organization, Scrum moves groups away from the older project-centric model toward a continuous application/product development model. There is no longer a project with a beginning, middle, and end. And hence, there is no traditional project manager. Rather, there is simply a stable Product Owner and a long-lived self-managed Team that collaborate in an “endless” series of two-or four-week Sprints, until the product or application is retired.
We can assist you in managing your critical business projects with definitive SCRUM methodologies.
Scrum depends on maximum transparency for success. We utilize tangible progress and process metrics and offer custom dashboards that make it easy to keep tabs on the development velocity, instantly view blockers, and predict team performance at a glance.
Scrum allows getting started fast. During sprint 0, we process the initial high-level requirements for sprint 1, and set up the project infrastructure. For maximum speed, we automate project environment provisioning, including issue tracking, reporting dashboards, code repositories, development servers, and more.
Unlike the traditional Waterfall approach, Scrum welcomes change, even late in development. We implement well-defined procedures for transparent requirements management, efficient scope breakdown, and backlog refinement and control.
Contact us today for some brilliant SCRUM implementation and services!
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