Scrum Technology – Demand of most IT projects

SDLC has various models like the Water Fall Model, Spiral Model, V Model, Iterative Model and Prototype Model. The latest model of the SDLC is the agile methodology. Agile approaches are typically used in software development to help businesses respond to unpredictability. Agile is also becoming very much adaptable to maintain a contant visibility on the project by the client / product owner. Under the Agile umbrella there are various mythologies that can be used namely; Kanban, Scrum, Lean, Extreme Programming and many others. Let’s try and understand what Scrum Technology is.

What is Scrum?

In Rugby: Scrum (short for scrummage) is a method of restarting play. The scrum is utilized either after an accidental infringement or when the ball has gone out of play.

Agile Methodologies: Scrum is a framework for effective team collaboration on complex projects. Each team member contributes in project decisions with their opinions. This is also very effective in increasing team communication and eliminate hurdle if any during course of project. Agile approach of iterative and incremental process is facilitated by Scrum Technology.

The Roles in Scrum

Product Owner: In Scrum, the Product Owner is the voice of the customer. He acts like the head of the family, taking responsibility for communicating the vision of the product to the development team. He decides the release date, features of the product and contents. The product owner is responsible for the profitability of the project.

Scrum Master: The Scrum Master acts as a mediator between the Product Owner and the team. He represents management to the project.  The main responsibility of the product owner is to ensure that the team is fully functional and productive and to enact scrum values and practices within the team. The scrum master shields the team from all external forces.

Team Member: The team is the strength pillar which is responsible for completing work. Ideally, teams consist of five to seven cross-functional members. For software projects, a typical team includes a mix of software engineers, architects, programmers, analysts, QA experts, testers, and UI designers. The team members decide how the work is arranged and how assignments are distributed.

Scrum Terminologies

Product & Sprint backlog: The product backlog is a list of desired features for the product. The sprint backlog is a list of tasks from the product backlog to be completed in a particular sprint. Sprint is like a subset of Product backlog.

Sprint planning meeting: This is done once at the beginning of each sprint, where all the top priority items are picked up from the Product backlog and brought into the Sprint backlog. It is basically a list that is the list of tasks the team has committed to complete in the sprint.

Daily Scrum: Every day during the sprint, there is a 15 minutes stand up meeting to discuss: 1.What did you do yesterday? 2 What will you do today? 3 Is anything in your way?. All members of the team are required.

Sprint review meeting: At the end of each sprint, the team demonstrates the completed functionality at a sprint review meeting, during which, the team shows what they accomplished during the sprint. It is a very informal meeting.

Scrum is an agile process most commonly used for product development, especially software development. Scrum is a project management framework that is applicable to any project with aggressive deadlines, complex requirements and a degree of uniqueness. Scrum is much more than a simple framework. Scrum supports our need to be human at work: to belong, to learn, to do, to create and be creative, to grow, to improve, and to interact with other people.


About Author:

Shweta Samudra is a consultant in Systems Plus Pvt. Ltd. Within Systems Plus, she actively contributes to the areas of Technology and Information Security. She can be contacted at: shweta.samudra@spluspl.com