Scrum in 90 Seconds, an introduction

Scrum is a loosely regimented software engineering methodology that maximizes developers' effort toward feature development without dwelling on how the work gets accomplished.  It is a structured agile methodology that leaves the developers to self-organize and leverage their talent and individual motivation to achieve a common goal.

Scrum runs in 30 to 90 day cycles called Sprints.  Software is delivered in partially-functional stages that build upon the previous stage.  Each Sprint has a set of feature goals defined by the Product Owner.

Team Members are Developers that  self-organize into teams and work on the features for the current sprint.  Features are defined in terms of User Stories (AKA Use Cases), Interface Requirements or Functional Requirements.

Quality Assurance and other interested parties may inspect the work product at each sprint milestone and provide feedback and new feature direction to the Product Owner or Scrum Master.

The Scrum Master is like a project manager and handles staff issues, insulates the development team from outside politics and other distractions and collaborates with the Product Owner to define the set of goals for the next stage/sprint.  The Scrum Master faciliates, collaborate and keep status on the team's progress toward goals.

The Product Owner is responsible for defining the product features and determines whether the goals for each sprint have been met.  The Product Owner work closely with the Scrum Master to define the goals (in terms of featuers) for the next sprint and they collaborate with the Business Analysts and others to incorporate feedback and new feature direction.

Scrum leaves the developer Team Members to leverage their talent and individual self-motivation to find their way.  Of course there is always room for the more experienced to mentor other team members and help determine the route as the project moves forward.

Scrum enables innovation since it allows for adjustments and decisions on the fly.  It allows the team to explore scenic routes and detours that usually add significant value to the project outcome.

Scrum Ceremonies

To make quality software engineering a repeatable process, we conduct recurring meetings to form good work habits, identify project risk and communicate progress.

Daily Meetings should last only fifteen minutes.  Team members report their status in terms of 1) recent accomplishments  2) next steps  and  3) challenges encountered or foreseen.  No project planning or problem solving is allowed at the Daily Meeting.

Sprint Planning meetings codify innovative ideas for potential future implementation.  The Product Owner, in conjunction with other stakeholders or Business Analysts, defines the broad goals and business requirements for the project in an Outline Format.  The Outline can then be refined and fleshed-out to define various features in terms of a User Story (Use Case).

The set of defined features constitute a Project Backlog that can be recorded on a Wiki or Service Request ticketing system, or in a Spreadsheet.  The Product Owner and Scrum Master, along with the rest of the Team can prioritize and sequence the features by determining where in the sequence of cycles/stages/ sprints they belong.

Sprint Review meetings serve to implement a feedback loop in the Scrum process.  All agile methodologies generally highlight the importance of continuous, incremental improvement.  This is how value is consistently delivered.

Scrum Reports

At any time, the Project Backlog report can be created from a query of the system/spreadsheet used to store the full history of features or User Stories (both incomplete and completed) for the overall project.

For any given Sprint, a Sprint Backlog report would show the User Stories related to the given work cycle.  

A Change Report may be represented as the difference between the Project and Sprint backlogs.

A Burndown Report has time on the x-axis and feature count on the y-axis.  It is a type of trending report and ideally illustrates a decreasing number of outstanding User Stories as time marches on.