Scrum

The Backlog System

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The product backlog is a feature list which has the description of desired functionalities determined by the end user. In scrum, features called as user stories. A scrum backlog has the following different types of items:

• Features
• Bugs
• Technical work
• Knowledge acquisition

The Scrum Team

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• Product owner : The Product Owner should be a person with vision, authority, and availability. The Product Owner is responsible for continuously conveying the vision and priorities to the development team.
• Scrum Master: The Scrum Master acts as a facilitator for the Product Owner and the team. The Scrum Master does not manage the team. The Scrum Master works to remove any impediments that are obstructing the team from achieving its sprint goals. This helps the team remain creative and productive while making sure its successes are visible to the Product Owner.
• Team:
  • Developers: The development team is responsible for self organizing to complete work.Each sprint, the team is responsible for determining how it will accomplish the work to be completed. The team has autonomy and responsibility to meet the goals of the sprint.
  • Testers
  • Customers
  • Executives

Workflow

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Release Planning

• Team starts with a "Product Backlog" which is a list of requirements that the team sustains for a feasible product.

• The goal of each release to deliver subset of product backlog which is known as "Release Backlog". Development team prioritize and estimates the completion time of features from product backlog to compose Release Backlog. After that, the features of Release Backlog is handled within sprints.

• Sprints are short duration milestones for teams to reach ship-ready state. Sprint ranges from 2 days to 20 days. "Sprint Backlog" is a record of a list of requirements which need to be developed and function during a sprint. These requirements do not change during the sprint. Through the sprint process if desired to add additional requirements, these new requirements are incorporated into product backlog. If a task in the sprint list encounters a problem that can not be solved,immediately sprint is cancelled and a new sprint is created.

• "Burn-down Chart" is graphical representation of remaining work for a particular sprint versus time. The remaining work of a burn-down chart goes toward to zero. For this reason, the slope of the graph (burn-down velocity) can be calculated easily and burn-down velocity gives information about following concepts:

  1. Average productivity for each day
  2. Estimated completion day of sprint

In this way, a team can easily measure their completed work and whether they will finish given release on time or not.

Daily Scrums

After Sprint Planning, all team members working on sprint backlog meet every day for Daily Scrum. This meeting is kept short and every team member tries to answer the following questions during the meeting:

• What did I do yesterday that helped the Team meet the Sprint Goal?
• What will I do today to help the Team meet the Sprint Goal?
• Do I see any impediment that prevents me or the Team from meeting the Sprint Goal?

References

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• "Scrum of scrums": https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/scrum/team
• "Product Backlog": http://www.scrumhub.com/breaking-down-your-scrum-backlog/
• "Scrum Product Backlog": https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/scrum/product-backlog
• "Daily Scrum": https://www.scruminc.com/daily-scrum/
• "Release Backlog": http://www.scrumhub.com/scrum-guide/release-backlog/