The Scrum Approach

From Kent Schwaber’s paper in 1995 Scrum is an enhancement of iterative and incremental software development approach

Characteristics of Scrum methodology (by Kent Schwaber, 1995) Planning and Closure phases are well-defined processes Processes in Sprint phase are undefined and uncontrolled; accordingly, controls such as “risk management” are included in each iteration Sprints are non-linear and flexible They mostly use tacit knowledge and trial-and-error approach The deliverables during Planning and Sprint phases can be changed at any time

© Kenneth Rubin, Essential Scrum, 2013

Current Status of Scrum (from wikipedia) Roles Product Owner Represents the customers; responsible for defining requirements; may keep changing them at any time Development Team Responsible for the deliverables Scrum Master A coordinator between product owners and development team Not a project manager because Scrum Master does not manage people but only manages the project activities

Definitions Product Backlog Sprint An ordered/prioritized list of high-level requirements Created and maintained by Product Owner Editable (and hence can be changed) at any time Usually kept in the form of “User Stories” Sprint Basic unit of development Usually completed within a week or a month at most At the end of each sprint, a portion of the final product is implemented, reviewed and shipped to the customers

Definitions (continued) Spring Backlog A subset of items from Product Backlog, selected by the Development Team in order to implement in the next sprint Each item in the subset is broken down into implementable tasks User Stories  Implementable tasks These tasks are assigned to team members May use a “Task Board” to monitor the progress/status of each task during a sprint

Definitions (continued) Daily Scrum meeting Portion of a sprint As name indicates, held daily by the development team Each member must briefly report on the status of the task assigned to the member Product Increment Features added by each sprint following the review of that sprint Grows continuously during development

Definitions (continued) User Story The form of input given by the Product Owner Expected to be independent of other stories Must be testable Added to the Product Backlog when created Velocity Total efforts of the development team measured in between sprint cycles Typically represents the number of user stories completed between sprints

References Kent Schwaber, “Scrum Development Process”, Workshop on Business Object Design and Implementation, held as part of OOPSLA’95, 1995. Kim Pries and Jon Quigley, Scrum Project Management, CRC Press, 2011, ISBN: 978-1-4398-2515-0. Kenneth Rubin, Essential Scrum, Addison-Wesley, 2013, ISBN: 978-0-13-704329-3.