As explained in the previous article, there are several types of agile method. The SCRUM concept is one of the most popular agile methods, first introduced by Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber in 1996.
The agile method is widely used within companies. It enables better management of agile projects, with the overriding aim of coordinating small, independent teams and improving their productivity within the company.
The name “SCRUM” means “scrum” and is openly inspired by rugby, a sport in which teams must aim in the same direction.
Scrum establishes a framework that facilitates the rapid and efficient implementation of development projects. To apply this framework successfully, we strongly recommend that you focus on three basic principles:
- Transparency to ensure that stakeholders (project teams, managers and users) speak a common language and understand each other, while benefiting from all the information needed to understand the project.
- Inspection to apply regular assessments to ensure that development always meets customer requirements and does not deviate from them.
Adaptability is the final pillar, aptly named. - What is its purpose? If the inspection phase identifies deviations from the results to be achieved, modify the course of the project.
SCRUM roles :
To adopt this method, it’s essential to have a complete team with well-defined roles. Here are the three main roles:
- Product Owner: responsible for providing project requirements.
- Scrum Master: Leads the team towards successful product development, keeps the team safe and allows everyone to concentrate on their tasks without being disturbed.
- Development team: Each team member meets all the technical requirements needed to deliver the product (developed features).
SCRUM glossary :
Before getting to grips with the SCRUM agile world, it’s important to have an idea of the following concepts that make up the SCRUM lexicon:
- User stories: A simple, understandable, non-formal explanation of software functionality written from the point of view of the end user. The user story must respect a certain form.
The purpose of a user story is to define how a piece of work adds value to a customer, as shown in the following example:
“As A, I want B for the purpose of C”.
A represents a user type
B represents a feature
C represents the purpose of the feature, the benefit to the user.
- Sprints: iterations. These are generally short intervals of 2 to 4 weeks, during which the team designs, builds, develops and tests new product functionalities or user stories. At the end of the sprint, the product is potentially deliverable, but more importantly, it is demonstrable to stakeholders.
To monitor the progress of the current sprint, it is important to use a graphical representation to simulate the progress of the project, hence the term Burndown Chart.
- Burndown Chart: In the form of a graphical representation, it gives you an idea of the state of progress of the current sprint. The chart is simple: it represents the remaining workload, generally the hours left to do in a sprint, over the course of a day. To draw this graph, simply update the sprint backlog (for example, daily scrum). It’s a metric that shows how much work remains to be done over a given period.
- Definition of Done: A list of criteria to be checked, in order to determine whether user stories or tickets have really been completed.
- Definition of Ready: A list of elements to be included in the user story to be developed. It should answer the question: Why? Why? Or what? How much does it cost?
SCRUM ceremonies:
Scrum Ceremonies provide a framework that brings together the different members of the agile team, enabling them to work in a structured way, to define expectations and to work together effectively. They enable the team to share progress and ultimately produce results.
This paragraph focuses on how to perform the four Scrum Ceremonies and who is involved at each stage. We’ll also provide tips and best practices for success each time:
- Sprint planning: This is the most important step in every Scrum project. Scheduled for the first day of the sprint, it consists in prioritizing the tasks to be developed throughout the sprint.
This ceremony, which lasts 2 hours overall, consists mainly in determining the objective of the sprint. The product backlog is analyzed by the participants, who will exchange and decide on the functionalities they are committed to delivering at the end of the sprint.
- Daily standup: A daily standup meeting lasting no more than 15 minutes, its aim is to get every team member involved, by taking the floor to communicate three essential points to the rest:
1️⃣Yesterday’s work
2️⃣Today’s work
3️⃣Blocking points, if any.
One of the objectives of the daily is to have a global vision of the project’s progress, by circulating important information while ensuring responsiveness between the different team members.
It’s essential to adopt good practices to ensure that the daily runs smoothly. On the one hand, you need to respect the time allotted to each member, and on the other, it’s imperative that the whole team remains vigilant, maintaining its attention during the speech.
- Sprint review: this is the stage when the team presents a demonstration of its deliverables (developed functionalities) to stakeholders, to ensure that the final product perfectly meets customers’ needs.
This review is used to update the backlog by taking stock of the sprint just completed, and to add new user stories if necessary.
- Sprint retrospective: this is the last meeting to close the sprint. It takes place just after the sprint review, and before moving on to the next sprint, the team meets to identify the improvements to be made for the next sprint, discussing things that are going well, things that could go better, and a few suggestions for changes.
SCRUM artifacts :
The concept artifact refers to a product or service, at least part of which has been modified by someone else. SCRUM artifacts are based on a set of homogeneous values, principles and practices, to form the basis of the agile philosophy.
Three classic artifacts and 1 transparency artifact are generally cited:
- Product backlog: the product backlog is prepared during the first ceremony, and is a first draft listing all the customer’s requirements. The PO is responsible for the product backlog, but the project team is responsible for selecting the user stories to be executed during each sprint.
- Sprint backlog: This is a well-detailed version of the product backlog, with the aim of setting the objectives of the sprint and, in particular, the progress of the project. It can be managed in the form of a task management board, using a Kanban board for example.
- Product Increment: corresponds to a set of product backlog elements that have been completed during the current sprint,
Estimated requirements :
Once the product backlog has been defined, a way must be found for the development team to estimate the total number of functionalities, so as to enable future commitments. Involving several developers, this is where Planning Poker comes into play, in the form of a game that enables everyone’s experience to be put to good use, and quickly arrive at an optimal, objective estimate.
Before or during the estimates, the Product Owner can be called upon to answer questions from the development team.
At this stage, the need can be explored in greater depth, but without going too far (the aim is simply to estimate the cost of each requirement). Detailed design will take place during iterations (sprints).
The general advantage of planning poker is that everyone is free to express themselves as they see fit.
SCRUM tools :
Although there are many advantages to adopting Agile project management, the transition to a new way of managing projects can be difficult, which is why it’s important to make a good choice right from the start about which tool you want to manage your project with. In this article, I’m going to tell you about JIRA, one of the most powerful task management tools in the industry. And that’s one of the reasons why developers love it.
For this reason, various teams use Jira to track their projects using this agile development technique.
In fact, Jira is perfect for teams using Scrum.
Scrum boards are used to plan team work and manage the backlog. Scrum masters generally use boards to track current sprints and plan future ones.
The Scrum method is suitable for large projects where iterations need to be defined in the project section to achieve the final product.
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