In the mid 80’s, Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka defined a flexible and all-inclusive product development strategy where the development team works as a unit to reach a common goal. They described an innovative approach to product development that they called a holistic or “rugby” approach, “where a team tries to go the distance as…
What is a Sprint Backlog? Is it a baseline, a record or a report? Baseline is a project document, which, defines aspects of the project and, once approved, is subject to change control. It is used to measure project’s actual performance as against planned targets. A reord maintains information on the progress of the project.…
Scrum is a framework for collaborative effort of the team on some of the very complex software projects. It is the most widely-used subset of Agile. The Scrum principles are the fundamental guidelines for applying Scrum framework. The Scrum framework drives on the goals of giving utmost business value in least time. Various Scrum aspects…
A Scrum project often goes through a number of phases. Five phases, composed of nineteen processes, are suggested in A Guide to the Scrum Body of Knowledge (SBOK™). Regardless of the Scrum project, it needs to start somewhere—this is known as the Initiate phase. The Initiate phase includes six processes that address the specific activities and flow…
The Retrospect Sprint is a meeting convened by the Scrum Master during which the team talks about the previous Sprint and decides how to make the next Sprint more productive. This meeting differs from a Sprint Review meeting. In the Sprint Review, the team demonstrates the deliverables from the current Sprint, whereas in the Sprint…
An integral part of the Scrum process is the Daily Scrum meeting which is a regular ritual practiced every morning. The team comes together on each working day about the same time to discuss the status of the project. The synonyms to the Daily Scrum meeting include “Daily Stand up”, “Daily Scrum”, and “Scrum Meeting”…
Task planning and estimation is vital to develop products iteratively in accordance with the requirements specified in the Prioritized Product Backlog. The Scrum Team, in Task Estimation Meetings, estimates the effort required to accomplish each task in the Task List. The result of this process is an Effort Estimated Task List. The Scrum Team uses…
Scalability of a process, network, or unit is its ability to adjust or adapt to any expansion. For example a central server is said to be scalable if it performs similarly when attending on either five clients or fifty clients. In Scrum, it means that the scaling mechanisms applicable for a single Scrum Team can…
At the program or portfolio level, there is normally a smaller number of requirements/user stories than at the project level. The percentage of user stories with a very tangible value/business need/user impact is normally much lower than on project level. That means that the selection of techniques that are useful at a program or portfolio…
Personas are highly detailed fictional characters, representative of the majority of users and of other stakeholders who may not directly use the end product. Personas are created to identify the needs of the target user base. Creating specific Personas can help the team better understand users and their requirements and goals. Based on a Persona,…
