Scrum is
currently most popular framework for developing products (mostly in software
development, but not only there). It’s based on providing increment in
consecutive iterations called sprints. Scrum isn’t a “magic tool” which will do
everything. It’s just like a set of rules.
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Some of
them are:
- Each sprint has from 2 to 4 weeks and as a result there must be created an “increment” which we mean as a potentially shippable product (e.g. an application with fixed bugs and added new functionalities).
- Team should have about 3-9 members.
- There are three roles in a team:
- Product Owner – he should take care of product backlog – organize it, prioritize and make sure it’s clear and understandable for each team member
- Scrum Master – he must ensure that everyone knows and understands Scrum and that scrum is used. It’s kind of a coach. He also should remove any obstacles which can disturb the team.
- Development team – self organizing team, responsible for delivering a product. The Team should have all necessary knowledge and skills for doing it.
- At the beginning of each sprint the team should organize Sprint Planning Meeting – to set the sprint goal and decide which tasks from the product backlog they will do. It should take no more than 4 hours (for 2 weeks sprint).
- Every day the team should meet for 15 minutes – Daily Stand Ups, where they can synchronize their work – exchange information about what they have done since the previous stand up, what they will do now and say about problems if they have any.
- If it is necessary the team can organize Refinement Meeting – e.g. if some task or stories are unclear and need to be defined better.
- At the end of sprint there is a Sprint Review – to sum up a sprint and present an increment to all team members and stakeholders. It should take no more than 2 hours (for 2 weeks sprint).
- Second meeting at the end of sprint is a Sprint Retrospective – dedicated to searching for possibilities to improve the process etc.
- In Product Backlog managed by the Product Owner there should be (arranged by priorities) tasks, stories, bugs, to-dos etc.
- Sprint Backlog is a backlog of stories etc. selected by the team for current sprint.
I really
like this short and funny movie about the role of Scrum Master:
Of course all the
information is just overall and presented shortly. I recommend reading Scrum
Guide. But that’s just a theory. The best way to learn scrum and to check if it
is good for your team is of course practise.
In my team
it really helped for managing
tasks and improving speed of development(with better quality than before). It
also provided us with more peace and
quiet. .
Also you shouldn’t be scared of the number and
length of all meetings – it works fine
And as in almost all teams – our scrum is a bit
different than other ones. But that you will see after a few weeks or months of
using scrum.
Questions for you:
- What is your opinion about scrum?
- Can you recommend other frameworks or tools which can help in improving the process or making team management better? Please describe its advantages and disadvantages.
Everything is fine on paper. Nowadays there is a lot of method of software creation, but as far as I know Scrum is most popular one.
ReplyDeleteI can tell a lot about bad implementation in my company.
Success of scrum in my opinion rely on organisation itself. Important is how far management board is involved, how much trainings was taken.
In my case (my company) there are a lot of to be improved.
Somehow method is effective and focus on important things. Theoretically I love it.
Anyway there are a lot of others methods:
- waterfall - almost historical one, but most popular
- kanban - for production companies
I can agree with you that there will always be something which can be improved. And mostly people can say more about bad implementation than about the good one. Scrum is really simple, but as you can see, quite hard to implement :)
DeleteYeah, waterfall - it's still alive :)
Despite facts that Scrum is more and more popular, in my opinion we have just started to implement, BUT waterfall still rulez (especially in approach, thinking)
Delete1. What is your opinion about scrum?
ReplyDeleteI think that SCRUM is great for the customers, because one of the basic assumptions of Scrum is the constant collaboration of all the people involved in the project, including the customers. After each sprint the client receives a new version of the product that they can test and apply their patches.
2. Can you recommend other frameworks or tools which can help in improving the process or making team management better? Please describe its advantages and disadvantages.
For example brainstorm. Engages every member of the team, supports creativity. It relaxes the atmosphere, improves mood. It is a great starting point for further work, but it also causes some confusion when members are writing their thoughts and not every problem can be solved in this way.
Yes, it's great for the customers, but in result it's also great for the developers - if customer will check product earlier, then developer will get response and results (e.g. integration etc.) earlier, so reaction can be faster - without wasting time for unecessary things etc.
DeleteBrainstorm is also quite old, like waterfall, but it's still great for solution finding :)
1. What is your opinion about scrum?
ReplyDeleteIt seems very interesting, I think I would like to work in scrum. It is very innovative. I think that the future in a small companies. I very impressed, I'd love to work in scrum methodology!
Can you recommend other frameworks or tools which can help in improving the process or making team management better? Please describe its advantages and disadvantages.
I do not have so many work experience. I am only student so I can not tell you about another framework or tool which can help in improving the process or making team management better.
Scrum is not only for a small projects or companies. You can use it also in bigger ones. But in such case it's just suggested to divide teams into smaller ones.
DeleteWhat is your opinion about scrum?
ReplyDelete– I think the scrum improve efficiency of work for particular projects. I wouldn't say that scrum is a cure for every single project. If it's used for suitable environment it can be benefical.
Can you recommend other frameworks or tools which can help in improving the process or making team management better? Please describe its advantages and disadvantages.
– Kanban. I feel Kanban as realy good way to track all tasks. It's a visible way for everybody to track project progress. The disadvanatge is using Kanban for complex project. If the project has many task which depends on each other then it's hard to reflect the project on Kanban borad.
I can agree with you that scrum isn't for every project. For example if you do a repeatable work - and in each iteration it looks the same then there is no need to use scrum.
DeleteKanban is also nice. If everything is done properly, then it can give nice results - as like as in a probably most popular example (Toyota).
What is your opinion about scrum?
ReplyDeleteI think that scrum is quite interesting. I have never used to do it in my ex-comapnies. We had thight schedule of who is who and it was also showed rules and responsibilities.
Can you recommend other frameworks or tools which can help in improving the process or making team management better? Please describe its advantages and disadvantages.
I can only recommend only webinar meeting. It is meeting with boss, by the Net and he trains his workers (we aren't show in camera - only boss does) in very social way. It has disadvantege like the boss don't see if you listen to him or not.
You have done totally different tasks or just everyone were responsible for a part of code? It's good to have a specialist in something, but sometimes it's better to "waste" some time and give this task to someone who hasn't done it before. He'll learn new things and in future company will have backup on this position. So it has long-term pros.
DeleteWhat is your opinion about scrum?
ReplyDeleteIn theory it is a good tool, in practice it depends on the person who manages it. I am happy to work with teams that manage scrum.
Can you recommend other frameworks or tools which can help in improving the process or making team management better? Please describe its advantages and disadvantages.
I do not know another tool.
Yes, it depends on the people. Team must "feel the scrum". It may take a long time to achieve it, but as you see it's worth it.
DeleteI don't think that scrum might be useful in my company. There is simply no time or room for such technique. My work depends on what task were given every single day, and I never know how many of them will appear the day after. Sometimes we have to deal with queues of tasks and rearrange them to meet deadlines. We often arrange brainstorm meetings though, to make our work more productive.
ReplyDeleteYeah, it would be really hard to work with a scrum if you have totally unpredictable work and you never know what will happen in the next day.
DeleteBut at least you are agile! :)
1. SCRUM in my opinion is the best agile software development framework. Of course you need to use it well. Unfortunately, I met several companies that modified this methodology. Then of course they were surprised that they did not work out. So if you would like to use SCRUM you should should use it as described in this book
ReplyDeletehttp://www.scrumguides.org/docs/scrumguide/v2016/2016-Scrum-Guide-US.pdf#zoom=100
Unfortunately I'm young programmer. I always work in SCRUM. But i heard about pomodoro technique. It says that you should work 25 minutes. After that you have a short brake (for facebook, coffee etc.) You can read more here
http://pomodorotechnique.com/
Modifications are really popular and I wouldn't say it's something bad. It depends - sometimes of course it is, but sometimes not.
DeleteThanks for the Pomodoro. I didn't heard about it before. At first glance it seems to be based on scrum, but I'll check it more precisely after semester.
The clip shows in a funny way the very well known development methodology, but is pretty accurate. To be honest I never worked in a such a model, but I heard a lot about it from my friends, who work as a developers. It can clarify the work and it's very convenient for people, who have to concentrate at their job. When the task is divided into smaller pieces it is much easier to have a control over the progress and people can focus on particular one job.
ReplyDeleteYou're absolutely right. With small task people aren't overwhelmed and it's even easier to start working on it, because it's clearer and easy to understand and goal seems to be achievable in short time.
DeleteI think that all person who work in IT industry heard about any agile principles. However many of this people are complaining about this type of work. At the moment 'agile' or 'scrum' are of buzzwords. Many small IT companies pretends to use of scrum. This is not normal and makes a bad aura of this metedologies.
ReplyDeleteI worked with this metedology two years. I was lucky, because my company was the biggest implemeteation agile in Europe (please wath short presentation about scrum of my previous company - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YV6CRbPx4xo). It was great adventure, because our agile coach prepare many inside meetups about ideas of metedologies. My team created great software by scrum framework. This work of type characterized by big easing implements changes and clients reaction about this software.
At the moment my current company not implemented all of scrum, because external clients not often accept this type of work (tenders or public contracts), but in my team we implemeted kanban methedology.
That's sad because due to high popularity scrum become to be trendy. Just like in fashion it's good to have trousers with holes, in IT it's good to say everywhere "Hey! We're using scrum!", even if there is no one in a whole company, who understands it...
DeleteAs you said, if there is a coach who knows it really well, and also have good skills to pass the knowledge to others, then it will be awesome.
I like scrum very much. I’ve been working in scrum over 3 years and I really can see that this methodology has a lot of pros but of course I see also few minuses. This approach works when your company/project is focused on team work. The team is self-organizing unit and it have an impact how the items will be done. Of course people from development team should work together and support themselves when it’s needed. SCRUM is very good also for the stakeholders. They are always know how the sprint is going and what items could be at risk.
ReplyDeleteYeah, team must "feel the scrum" and everyone should believe that it will help them.
Delete1. What is your opinion about scrum?
ReplyDeleteI kinda like it. However, I find it difficult to implement it properly. Every time I worked in Scrum it looked a little bit different. At the beginning, everybody was excited about Scrum but after a few weeks, the process started falling apart... Probably we were missing a good scrum master.
From my perspectives, the biggest advantage of Scrum are Daily Standup Meetings. During a short meeting, everybody can find out where the whole project is and any obstacles are identified earlier. Moreover, I noticed that DSM are the easiest part of Scrum to implement in an organisation. And the hardest one are meaningful retrospectives and so-called demos for a client after every sprint.
2. Can you recommend other frameworks or tools which can help in improving the process or making team management better? Please describe its advantages and disadvantages.
Somebody has already mentioned Kanban which I think can be mixed with Scrum, at least to some extent. I am also familiar with Pair Programming, which actually I wouldn't call a team management solution, yet still, is worth mentioning. In pair programming, two developers work on a single workstation, one codes and the other observes, navigates and review the former's lines of code. Both change roles frequently. Although it can be very efficient, it is a very expensive approach and can't be applied to every problem.
Absolutely, with good scrum master, team probably wouldn't lose enthusiasm. But maybe after some longer time it will be back, when results will become visible.
DeleteRetro and demo are hard, but it's also hard to do the proper planning (which is key for successful sprint).
1. What is your opinion about scrum?
ReplyDeleteI think that SCRUM is the most popular agile software development method. It is very interesting and used in many in many IT projects. I have never worked in real scrum project, it was always somehow modified and customized to the project. I think that it was not good decision and scrum should always be used in a way it was created and described. In my opinion scrum is not appropriative method for each project, this methodology is not a cure for everything. Each company should adjust its development method to the way in which our customer works, and what our customer expects.
2. Can you recommend other frameworks or tools which can help in improving the process or making team management better? Please describe its advantages and disadvantages.
I can recommend to you “Trello” application, is a great tool to organize your tasks. If you are using “Slack” to communicate with your team, Trello provides an integration with it, so each event can be immediately send to chosen group of people. This tool can help with any software development methodology.
It's probably not easy to find a company which are using totally "clear" scrum. It's mostly modified, sometimes more, sometimes less.
DeleteWe're using internal tool, which is quite similar to Trello. And it really helps in organizing everything. I like it much.
ReplyDeleteI have no experience working with scrum methodology. I've heard some things about it and whole agile way of management but I don't have any opinion about it yet. Your presention helped me to ge thet key points of this conception and I'm also going to watch presentation to witch Kamil provided a link. I hope it will help me to better understand whole picture.
You should also read Scrum Guide http://www.scrumguides.org/ - it's a good knowledge source at the beginning. I hope that all these informations will help you in future :)
Delete1. What is your opinion about scrum?
ReplyDeleteFrom the moment I've familiarized myself with agile I think it's the best way to make things done on time. Scrum is the most popular agile software development methodology and it looks like its popularity grows. No wonder that software made that way has better quality from the client point of view. It's because of client can review smaller fragments of application as a part of development process. In agile methodologies business has huge influence on software development, that it shares resposibility for final product and because of this its satisfaction is greater.
2. Can you recommend other frameworks or tools which can help in improving the process or making team management better? Please describe its advantages and disadvantages.
I used kanban for a while - worked well. I tried to use pomodoro method, but I stopped - it's rather for freelancer than someone who works with other people. You can't tell your boss that he has to wait, because you can't break your "pomodoro" time.
Scrum has got a lot of pros, and it just works, so this is a source of popularity.
DeleteIt depends on company and their process, in some of them you can tell things like this to your boss.
1.What is your opinion about scrum?
ReplyDelete1. I don't use scrum, but project managers at my company used this at past. In my opinion every tool tool, which can accelerate the goal is good.
2.Can you recommend other frameworks or tools which can help in improving the process or making team management better? Please describe its advantages and disadvantages. I use float at my office I think is good tool to management task on graphic- I know what, I should do everyday. Next good tools for management is Asana, which described every task and we could give them status. Its flaw is complicated use system. I am fun of messenger for team called "Slack", sometimes we wrote about projects at mail and Facebook messenger, Slack could help us to wrote everything about particular customer.
Thanks for recommending Float and Asana. I didn't heard about them before. Currently I'm using an internal tool for this activities, but I'll give a try for them in future.
DeleteWhat is your opinion about scrum?
ReplyDeleteI learned how to use it on my study for two semesters. At tho beginning of use it I thing that Scrum is boring and doesn't work but it turned out that I have bad habits and I'm lazy. Finally I discovered that this is a powerful tool and it can save a lot of time and nerves when creating a product in a team.
Can you recommend other frameworks or tools which can help in improving the process or making team management better? Please describe its advantages and disadvantages.
I doesn't work in other frameworks but I heard about Agile. It's also software development methodologies and I heard that it's easier to learn when team doesn't know Scrum.
As I said before - you didn't give up after first weeks which are hard, and now you can take a profit because of using it :)
Delete
ReplyDeleteIt's very interesting. it's good to have plan for work. As you can see it works. It's good when everone knows what to do. Personally I don't have large experience in team work. But I think it will change in future. Maybe I will use Scrum. Today I don't remember different methods. I had classes in management software at school it's useful subject.
I used to work in two companies with Scrum. It was very helpful in managing the tasks and problems encountered in bumpy sprints. Every week we were reviewing the problems so that the projects that were managed were successful. Unfortunately, I do not know any other methodologies, scrum is a popular tool for me and I did not use any other. It was enough for me.
ReplyDeleteThank you for bringing this one to my attention! Scrum does seem like an interesting framwork and I was happy to learn a bit about in your article. I will see wheather I find a space to implement it and gain a bit of this peace and quiet it provided you with 🙂
ReplyDelete1. The thing I like most about scrum is pretty flat structure of team. I truly believe that in most of the cases programmers (or any other individuals) can be accountable for the job they do. Project doesn’t need to be supervised just for the sake of controlling the progress. Successful manager is not the one who tracks the progress of each task done by every member. It’s not the one who’s involved at every step and does follow-up on every backlog himself. It’s the one who can organize team in that way it can work and deliver results without his involvement. And Scrum supports this idea strongly, that’s why I like it a lot.
ReplyDelete2. Unluckily the only framework which I know by name is PRICNE, however I’m not sure if I want to discuss it, as it’s not very convincing methodology in my judgement. On very general level I think gamification is the future of team and project management. It implements mechanisms known from computer games to split tasks, allows to compete against each other, it rewards completing the tasks. Often there’s even a storyline behind, which makes it even more interesting and involving. So for there are no frameworks directly supporting gamification, however I bet I till change very soon.