Stop Thinking, Just Do!

Agile Processes: Scrum

Introduction

• The two dominant Agile approaches are Scrum and eXtreme Programming (XP).
• XP was arguably the first method deemed to be “Agile”.
• We will start with Scrum – very popular and in very wide use today!

Project Management Emphasis based on a Standard 30-day Sprint

• Scrum: a definite project management emphasis.

• Scrum Master: A Scrum project Is managed by a Scrum Master, who can be considered as much a consultant or coach as a manager.

• Sprint: Scrum has a fundamental 30-day development cycle called a Sprint, preceded by pre-Sprint activities and post-Sprint activities.

• Daily Scrum: A short (less than 30 minutes) daily Scrum Meeting allows the team to monitor status and communicate problems.

Product Backlog for Planning

• Project planning is based on a Product Backlog, which contains
  • functions and
  • technology enhancements

• envisioned for the project.

• Two meetings are held –
  • one to decide the features for the next Sprint and
  • the other to plan out the work.

Scrum and Scalability

• Scrum: one of the few agile methods used to scale up for larger projects.
• How done?
  • Accomplished the same way as organizations handle integrated product teams.
  • Individual Scrum team coaches - part of a higher echelon team of coaches spanning several products.
  • This provides for communications to avoid conflicting development issues

Scrum - Queues

• Product Backlog -> Sprint Backlog -> Sprint -> Working increment of the Software

• Scrum uses lightweight queue-based management and work-breakdown mechanisms.

• Product Backlog queue: a low-tech customer-managed queue of demand requests for products.

• Sprint: At launch time, a Sprint (30-day time-boxed iteration) does just-in-time planning

• Sprint Backlog: queue for Sprint work-management.

Scrum - Management

• Daily Scrum: Very notable and very visible
• Is a daily standup,
  • except that it is the team that is participating and sharing coordination information not a central project manager.
• Scrum Master
  • holds daily scrum and acts more as a facilitator and runs interference for the core team when blocks or issues arise. (Kennaley, SDLC 3.0, p. 31)

References

[1] Agile Processes: Scrum, Web Presentation Material, 2012.

[2] Project Research, VISUAL PMO & VISUAL PM 코칭 전문 기업 – 프로젝트리서치(주), “고객가치 중심의 Agile 프로젝트 실무” 과정 후기, 2012.