Scrum is an agile methodology to manage and control software development where change occurs rapidly (changing requirements, changing technology). Here focus area is on improved communication and maximizing cooperation.
Scrum Roles –
- Product Owner -A Product manager who actually knows what needs to be built and in what sequence this should be done.
- Scrum Master – This role is played by a project manager or team leader who is responsible for enacting scrum values and practices.
- Scrum Team – A small team of 4-5 team members (contains programmers, UI designers, testers etc.)
Scrum Activities –
- Project Kick off Meeting – A collaborative meeting in the beginning of the project
- Participants: Product Owner, Scrum Master
- Purpose: Create the Product Backlog.
- Sprint Planning Meeting – A collaborative meeting in the beginning of each Sprint
- Participants: Product Owner, Scrum Master and Scrum Team
- Purpose: Create the Sprint Backlog.
- Sprint – An iteration where actual development of functionality happens. Each day in a Sprint begins with the Daily Scrum Meeting.
- Daily Scrum Meeting – A short meeting, which is held every day before the team starts working. Each team member talks about their task’s status, open issues and status of other action items from previous meeting etc.
- Participants: Scrum Master (chairperson), Scrum Team
- Sprints Review Meeting –At the end of each sprint, a sprint review meeting is held. During this meeting, the Scrum team shows what they accomplished during the sprint.
Scrum Artifacts –The primary artifact in Scrum development is the product itself.
- Product Backlog -This contains the complete list of the functionality that remains to be added to the product.
- Sprint Backlog – First day of a sprint and during the planning meeting, team members create the sprint backlog. The sprint backlog can be thought of as the team’s to-do list for the sprint.
- Additional artifacts resulting from the Scrum agile methodology is the sprint burn down chart and release burn down chart. Burn down charts show the amount of work remaining either in a sprint or a release, and are an effective tool in Scrum software development to determine whether a sprint or release is on schedule to have all planned work finished by the desired date.