Scrum Basics

Scrum Basics

Scrum revolves around the philosophy of simplicity, resulting in delivery of something that moves the project frontward. It achieves this by offering the following questions (referred to as Scrum’s three questions).

Scrum asks…	Main Project Management issue
What have you done during the last 24 hours?	This is progress, it’s work completed to date
What do you plan to do in the next 24 hours?	This is forward planning, it is work you are about to do
What’s stopping you getting on with the work of the next 24 hours? (Impediments)	These are your impediments or obstructions, it might be things you need in order to work… more forward planning. It’s also identification of immediate risks.

Scrum Roles

• Scrum uses three "roles": Product Owner, ScrumMaster and Project Team.
• The Product Owner is possibly a Product Manager or Project Sponsor
• The ScrumMaster is key, he or she "represents management to the project
• The Project Team should consist of Team members (3-10). The team itself should be self-organizing, cross-functional, involving individuals from a multitude of disciplines: SMEs, Data Analysts etc.

Adaptive Agile in Action – A Case Study

 

Adaptive Agile in Action – A Case Study

Expectations from Team:

• Very basic of Agile is to have development at fast pace
• Handle the 6 months Project road-map in smaller 14 days sprints
• Adapt to frequently changing client requirements
• Client and Project Teams work closer than in any other Project Management Model

Challenges we had in project:

• Requirements were changing on daily basis and this could have affected the whole product so we decided to go for adaptive agile method
• End date to deliver the project was fixed
• Customer wanted to be a part of the Project closely
• Delivering lots of content with in fixed deadline was a challenge

How we handled those challenges:

• Daily SCRUM meetings, Project Road map broken down into Mini Projects or Sprints
• Framework per Sprint ensuring each Sprint should have appropriate “User Stories”
• Client, Product Owner and BA worked closely through meetings, walkthroughs, midpoints and progress reports

Everyone to follow the Daily Stand-up rule of answering three questions:

• What I accomplished yesterday?
• What I will be accomplishing today?
• Any Impediments

(Ground Rule: Daily SCRUM to be wrapped up within 15 minutes)

Key Learning

• Agile gives you the ready work product at the end of every sprint…Client can share the findings and recommendations at any time once a sprint is over and move towards the “BIG PICTURE” of completing the Project Road-map
• It gets easier to Ready to accommodate changes if the Project Teams follows the “Adaptive Agile Methodology”

Collaboration in Agile

How Collaboration is placed with in Agile Manifesto?

One of the methodologies in Agile Manifesto is very effective and famous for promoting “collaboration” and is better known as Daily Scrums AKA Daily Standups.

These meeting are very simple but very effective ensuring teams to communicate effectively. This methodology ensures that the team is committed to deliver short term goals to realize the Business Objective or the “Big Picture”.

There is a proposed format of the Scrum or daily standups where the team discusses 3 vital questions:

• What did you do yesterday?
• What will you do today?
• Are there any impediments in your way?

In a way if we look at the format it covers the Past/Present & Future of the Project ensuring that the team should have a 360 degree view of where they are heading towards

Who all should be involved in the daily Scrums:

• Project Team
• Scrum Master
• Product Owner
• Client

(I will touch upon Scrum Master/Product Owner in my future blogs)

How Daily SCRUM is placed with in the Agile Manifesto (SCRUM)?

Let’s understand what is SCRUM?

Scrum is an iterative process that demands a complete fully functional work product towards the end of the 3 or 4 week long Sprint (Mini Projects usually). Sprints will occur whenever there is still work defined in the Product Backlog (Project Roadmap).

Agile Benefits

Have we ever thought of why most of the projects lose their direction before their completion?

There could be several factors which can hamper the pace and the direction of projects to name a few:

• Indistinct Project Vision
• No framework around requirements gathering
• Inadequate Project Planning
• No or low client collaboration

So, the next logical question which comes to mind is how an ideal Project Plan and Execution should look like?

The best way to answer this question is “Go for Adaptive Agile Methodology”

Now let’s understand how each element with in the Adaptive Agile Model works?

Project Vision – Talks about the road-map and the goals of the project which provides a direction for the project.

Framework – A framework will act a one stop shop where the Project Team and the client can view the Business Objective and the Approach to realize the project vision with the help of well-defined and focused User Stories. (In my next blog I will touch upon user stories and its benefits)

The Plan – It is an integral part of the Framework ensuring that each Mini Project or Sprint (It is usually a part of a release plan, I will touch upon Sprints in my upcoming blogs) is well placed within the Framework to realize the Project Vision.

Let’s Collaborate – This is one of the most important pieces of this Model. So, let’s understand what do we mean by word Scrum?

SCRUM is a movable set of guidelines that oversee the progress of a project, from its plan stages to its completion. It is one of the sought after methodology of Agile manifesto which aims to overcome some common failure points with in a project by promoting:

• Communication in between the Project Teams and the end customer
• Effective Customer Problem solving techniques
• Structured approach to complete a particular task
• What the team learned from their previous sprints in a form of Retrospective Meetings

(Note: This is an Adaptive Agile Methodology and not a pure Agile Method of executing a project)