Setting up the stage...

A scrum often restarts the game. I am not joking. But yes, I am referring the game ‘Rugby’.

And the term Scrum has been borrowed from Rugby.

Let us understand the other terms used in Rugby, I mean in Scrum practices. 

We will start with the roles, artifacts and activities used in Scrum.

Roles in Scrum: Three 

• Product Owner
• Scrum Master
• Development team

Artifacts: Three

• Product backlog
• Sprint backlog
• Potentially shippable product

Activities: Seven

• Product backlog grooming
• Sprint planning
• Sprint
• Daily scrum
• Sprint execution
• Sprint review
• Sprint retrospective

Let us have a glance on the Roles in scrum team:

Product Owner is a central point of product development. He works in two directions, collaborates with the stakeholders (internal & external) as well as with the development team.

In addition to it Product owner creates and grooms the product backlog, plans for sprints and releases (…of course with the help of scrum master and development team).

ScrumMaster acts as agile coach for the development team and the product owner. ScrumMaster helping everyone understand and embrace the Scrum values, principles, and practices. A ScrumMaster provides process leadership, helps the Scrum team and the rest of the organization develop their own high-performance, organization-specific Scrum approach.

As a servant leader of the Scrum team a ScrumMaster is an impediment remover for the team.

Development team is a cross-functional collection of people which includes architect, programmer, tester, database administrator, UI designer and others. The development team has T-Shaped skills and thus such diversity typically leads to better outcomes in terms of faster solutions and higher-quality deliverables.

Here go the Artifacts:

Product backlog is a list of desired product functionalities. Priority of these functionalities is determined by Product Owner. Product backlog provides a centralized and shared understanding of what to build and the order in which to build it. Product backlog consists of Product Backlog Items (PBIs).  The PBIs are represented in the form of User Stories.

We will discuss the User Stories in length later.

Sprint backlog is another list to ascertain what it can get done in sprints**. Development team breaks down each targeted feature into a set of tasks. The collection of these tasks, along with their associated product backlog items, forms a second backlog -Sprint backlog.

** A sprint is timeboxed duration generally from 2 to 4 weeks in length.

Potentially shippable product is one that can be released if found appropriate at the end of each iteration. At the end of sprint execution the team produces a potentially shippable product increment that represents some of the product owner’s vision. Potentially shippable means that there isn’t materially important undone work that needs to be completed before we can ship the results from the sprint. It is not necessary to have release after every iteration. A set of features from multiple iterations can be released together.

A brief description of Activities: 

Product backlog grooming refers to creating and adding details to PBIs, estimating PBIs, and prioritizing PBIs. Only Product owner is the decision maker in grooming though scrum team significantly participates in this activity.

Sprint planning is the activity to finalize the PBIs on those the Scrum team will work in next sprint. Sprint planning occurs at the beginning of each sprint. In this activity the team generates a sprint backlog of the tasks that has to be completed in a sprint.

Sprint is iteration of up to a calendar month called sprint. Sprints are timeboxed, have a short and consistent duration, have a goal that shouldn’t be altered once started (except the extreme urgency), and must reach the end state specified by the team. Usually sprints are planned for 2 weeks to 4 weeks.

Daily scrum is a timeboxed activity (15 minutes max) referred as the daily stand-up to inspect and adapt the big picture plan for that day. ScrumMaster facilitates daily scrum and each team member takes turn answering three questions for the benefit of the other team members:

1. What did I accomplish since the last daily scrum?
2. What do I plan to work on by the next daily scrum?
3. What are the obstacles or impediments that are preventing me from making progress?

Such communications are helpful to identify obstacles and enable a better flow through sprint execution.

Sprint execution is an activity towards the work necessary to deliver a potentially shippable product increment by the scrum team. This is the work the Scrum team performs to meet the sprint goal.

Sprint review is a very important learning activity where a scrum team inspect the result of the work (the potentially shippable product increment). The sprint review occurs near the end of each sprint cycle, just after sprint execution and just before the sprint retrospective.

The sprint review provides a close look at the current state of the product. It is the time to ask questions, make observations or suggestions and have discussions about how to best move forward.

Sprint retrospective is an opportunity for scrum team to examine what’s happening, analyze the way team work, identify ways to improve, and make plans to implement these improvements. It is important because it gives teams the chance to customize Scrum to their unique circumstances.

In our next posts we will explore all these one by one at length.