Imagine two teams, Team Traditional, and Team Scrum, tasked with building a new website for a client. Both start at the same time, but their approaches differ significantly.
Team Traditional spends the first month gathering all possible requirements, then moves on to design for another month, followed by three months of development, and finally, a month of testing. By the time they deliver the product, six months have passed. The client reviews the site and realizes that market trends have shifted, and some features are outdated. Changes are requested, leading to further delays and increased costs.
Team Scrum breaks the project into small, manageable sprints, each lasting two weeks. After the first sprint, they deliver a basic, working site version with core features. The client reviews it and provides immediate feedback. Team Scrum incorporates this feedback into the next sprint, along with new priorities. This iterative process continues, with the client seeing progress every two weeks and adjusting requirements as needed.
After six months, Team Scrum has delivered a fully functional website and ensured it aligns perfectly with the latest market trends and client needs.
Using agile and scrum interchangeably is like comparing water to ice
Agile V/S Scrum
Agile is a philosophy for project management, emphasizing flexibility, collaboration, and customer satisfaction through continuous delivery that involves breaking the project into phases. It is a set of principles that guide how projects should be approached and managed.
Scrum is a specific methodology within the Agile framework. It provides a concrete set of practices and roles to implement Agile principles. It is like a playbook for how to execute Agile in a structured way.
In a survey of 101,592 software developers, it was found that 85.9% of them used Agile in their work, but this does not mean that they used Scrum techniques and principles.
Meet the scrum team
A scrum team is basically like a superhero squad - a small and nimble group dedicated to delivering awesome product increments. They're like the Fantastic Four, but with a few more members, typically around 10 people. To keep everything running smoothly, they've got their product owner keeping things on track, their scrum master as the team coach, and of course, the all-star development team. And get this - the development team isn't just made up of developers but includes testers, designers, UX specialists, and ops engineers too. It's like having a whole Avengers team of skills and talents working together!
Product Owner - the visionary communicator extraordinaire! They're like the superhero of clear communication, gathering requirements, and feedback while making sure the team delivers what the customer wants.
The Scrum Master - the team's obstacle-busting guru! They ensure that the team is following all the cool Scrum practices and help eliminate any pesky obstacles that pop up.
Scrum development team - the self-organizing, responsibility-sharing dream team who get the work done! They decide how to complete their work without being directed by others, collaborating closely, sharing responsibilities, and holding each other accountable. They design, develop, test, and deliver product increments that meet the definition of "Done”.
User Stories
In agile software development, a user story is a brief, plain-language explanation of a feature or functionality written from a user’s point of view, which can be understood by anyone. These are bite-sized deliverables that can fit in sprints, whereas not all full features can. This helps the team focus on real people, rather than abstract features and help drive creative solutions. Stories encourage the team to think critically and creatively about how to best solve for an end goal.
How to write them :
Consider the following when writing user stories:
Definition of “done” — Define what done means for your user story.
Outline subtasks — Decide which specific steps need to be completed and who is responsible for each of them.
User personas — For whom? If there are multiple end users, consider making multiple stories.
Ordered Steps — Write a story for each step in a larger process.
Scrum ceremonies or events
Backlog Refining:
The primary goal of backlog grooming is to keep the backlog up-to-date and ensure that items are prepared for upcoming sprints. This involves removing outdated user stories and tasks, adding new user stories based on newly discovered insights, and breaking down broad user stories into smaller, manageable items. Additionally, it includes reordering user stories by priority, clearly defining them to avoid uncertainty, and assigning or re-assigning story points and estimates. During grooming, identifying roadblocks and minimizing risks associated with backlog items are crucial to ensure smooth progress in future sprints.
Sprint Planning:
When practicing scrum, the sprint planning meeting is held at the beginning of the sprint and is where teams identify what can be delivered in the sprint and how that work will be achieved. At the end of the planning meeting, every scrum member needs to be clear on what can be delivered in the sprint and how the increment can be delivered.
Daily Stand-up:
The daily stand-up – a.k.a. daily scrum – is a short, 15-minute (or less) daily meeting to discuss progress and identify blockers.
Sprint Review:
The sprint review, also called an iteration review, is where the scrum team meets to reveal what was accomplished during the sprint. A development team shows which backlog items are “Done” to stakeholders and teammates, who can then give feedback.
Sprint Retrospective:
A sprint retrospective is a meeting to review what was successful during the sprint and what can be improved upon
CASE STUDY -INTEL IT: Agile Scalability & Transformation
Intel, a global leader in semiconductor technology, embarked on a journey to improve its product development processes by adopting Scrum. It’s software development teams were experiencing issues with long development cycles, delayed product releases, and difficulty adapting to changing market demands. To address these challenges, Intel decided to transition to an Agile framework, specifically Scrum, to enhance efficiency and product quality.
A Scrum Odyssey: a detailed case study describing how the company used distributed Scrum within a traditional management culture to reduce cycle time by 66% and eliminate schedule slips within a year.
Also, Intel IT is accelerating Agile scalability and transformation with a leadership-first approach and good scrum planning and practice. Large-scale, Agile transformations are extremely challenging for digital enterprises. Every organization’s path is unique and more often than not, failure is part of the process. Intel IT’s Agile journey is no different—at times oscillates between challenging to downright discouraging over the course of a decade.
Today, Intel IT is on course to double the value delivery capacity of all IT teams by 2023.
Some of the improvements include :
A 26% increase in velocity, which is the value delivery capacity of the teams.
A 31% increase in the number of teams that reliably make and meet commitments for each sprint.
A 25% increase in the number of “happy” teams as reported in the sprint retrospectives score of 4+/5.
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Kudos Soumya
Very well put up.
Great article, Soumya!