An introductory note on “Scrum”, most popular among Agile Methods
Compiled by Sunil Agrawala,PMP,SMC - Reference SBOK guide from Scrum Study
Scrum has emerged as a leading Agile Methodology practiced in the industry. Scrum imbibes the core Agile Philosophy and Manifesto (www.agilemanifesto.org ). There has no formal body of knowledge available on Scrum as such. ScrumStudy, a certification body has come up with Scrum Body of Knowledge (SBOK) guide for Scrum Masters and Scrum Team. ScrumStudy also offeres a complete stack of Scrum and Agile certifications which are recognized by industry worldwide.
Below is a very basic attempt to explain the building blocks of SBOK guide.
The basic building blocks of Scrum Method as per SBOK guide includes:
- Principles
- Aspects
- Processes
Scrum Principles (6) which drives the underlying philosophy of Scrum and Agile
- Empirical process control (Transparency, Inspection & Adaptation)
- Self-organization (innovation, creative, shared ownership and better team buy-in)
- Collaboration (Awareness, Articulation and Appropriation )
- Value-based prioritization (Value, Risk and Dependency)
- Time-boxing (Scrum of 1-6 weeks, everything else is time boxed so that we know achievements)
- Sprint (1-6 weeks), Sprint Planning Meeting (8 hours), Daily Standup (15 mins) Sprint Review (4 hours), Sprint Retrospect Meeting ( 4 hours)
- Iterative development (deliver in increments, with highest value feature delivered first and so on)
Aspects (5) of Scrum which needs to be understood for every project under development
- Organization ( OF the whole Team in terms of various roles)
- Core Roles
- i.Product Owner (Articulates all customer requirements, Voice of Customer)
- ii.Scrum Master (facilitates scrum team to do work)
- iii.Scrum Team (does the actual development work following Scrum Method)
- Non-core roles
- i.Stakeholders
- ii.Sponsor
- iii.Scrum Body of Governance
- iv.Chief Product Owner
- v.Chief Scrum Master
- vi.Vendors
- Business Justification ( Important to understand the justification of why project is done , background, business value, value-driven development etc)
- Quality (of the final product or service)
- Change (Changes in the middle of the project and how they are handled)
- Risk (Risk Management, Scrum as such as a method helps implicitly in managing risk)
Processes
Scrum development methodology divides the life cycle (1-6 weeks for each Sprint) into 5 phases.
- Initiate
- Create product vision
- Identify Scrum Master and Stakeholders
- Form Scrum Team
- Develop Epics
- Create Prioritized Product Backlog
- Conduct Release Planning
- Plan and Estimate
- Create User Stories (From Epics)
- Approve, Estimate and Commit User Stories
- Create Tasks
- Estimate Tasks
- Create Sprint Backlog
- Implement
- Create Deliverables
- Conduct Daily Stand Up Meetings
- Groom prioritized product backlog
- Review and Retrospect
- Convene Scrum of Scrums
- Demonstrate and Validate Deliverables
- Review Sprint
- Release
- Ship deliverables
- Review project