A quick introduction to scrum

Introduction

This is a quick introduction to scrum

What is Scrum?

Scrum is a framework to help small teams of around seven people develop complex products. Scrum can also be used for non-software projects. The work in scrum is done in short work cycles – for example, two weeks – called sprints. A key part of scrum is for the team to regularly inspect and adapt.

Artifacts

The main artifacts of scrum are:

• Features – features are the key things a product must support or do to make it fit for purpose. One or more features are packaged and delivered as a product release so that the product is delivered over a set of releases.
• Stories – Each feature will have one or more stories, each describing a piece of work needed to deliver the feature. All stories are put into a list called the Product Backlog. Each sprint is comprised of stories selected by the product owner. The Sprint Backlog is a list of the stories to be executed in a sprint.There are many other artifacts such as burn charts, test plans, test evidence, design notes – the scrum team uses these as required.

Key roles in Scrum

There are three main roles in scrum the Product Owner, Scrum Master and Team members.

• Product Owner The product is an empowered business leader who directs the team to the work that produces highest ROI.  Their key responsibilities are to control what goes in the product backlog, set priorities and be the definitive source of information about what the product needs to do. They typically determine the acceptance criteria, and agree that completed work meets the criteria. Note that the absence of day to day involvement by a product owner from the business is the harbinger of badly run scrum/agile processes.

• Scrum Master The scrum master is not in charge of the team; they bring expertise in scrum, facilitate and coach the scrum process, and remove obstacles and impediments that block progress.

• Team Members Team members may have different areas of expertise and form part of a self-organizing unit. They own the technical decisions, determine the task for each story, are committed to estimates and the sprint timeline and identify and use best practices and tools.

Product Backlog

The product backlog is a list of all the stories needed for the product. These stories can be in different states of definition; some may just have the title, others may be fully defined in terms of acceptance criteria and tasks. A regular meeting of the team and product owner – called grooming – is used to identify stories and get all the details in place so that they are “sprint ready”.

Sprint Backlog

The sprint backlog is the list of stories and defects to be executed in a sprint. Stories must be complete and sprint ready before adding them to the sprint backlog. Once the backlog is agreed for a sprint it should not be changed.

Story

At the heart of scrum are stories. Stories describe work that is needed to implement a feature, each story identifies who uses the function, what they are trying to do and crucially how it adds value to the business. A story needs to have clear acceptance criteria agreed with the product owner so that everyone knows when the story is done. Tools such as specification by example (SBE) may be used to provide concrete acceptance criteria. Stories have a size determined by the team, the method for sizing varies but often might be tee shirt sizes (S M L XL) or ideal days (1, 2, 3, 5, 8). Some teams will limit the size of a single story say to 5 ideal days. A story will have the tasks, test plans and any design or technical notes added by the team.

Sprint Planning

A sprint planning meeting is held with the team and the product owner to determine what stories will be executed in the next sprint based on the priorities laid down by the product owner.  Part of the planning is assess how much work capacity the team has during the sprint in terms of story points, to ensure that the number of stories will not exceed the teams capacity.

Daily Scrum

The daily scrum (or standup) meeting is held each day at the same time, the meeting should be short 15 minutes for an average team. It is focused on each team member saying what tasks they have completed, what tasks they expect to complete in the next day, and if there are any issues or impediments preventing them for working. It is normal that people have ideas, ask for help or technical guidance during the standup, these are encouraged. However, they should take place between the relevant people after the daily scrum and not during the scrum.

Sprint Review

The sprint review is a meeting with the product owner (and business stakeholders) to demonstrate and accept completion of the sprint’s stories, identify what was not completed, and to get feedback so that any changes are handled sooner rather than later. A typical sprint review would take about an hour.

Retrospective

The purpose of the retrospective meeting is to improve the process by identifying what went well and where improvement is needed. A goal might be to identify 1-2 process improvements that can be adopted in the next sprint.

If you found this useful take a look at: Scrum: a Breathtakingly Brief and Agile Introduction