Scrum Project Management

Overview of Scrum Project Management

Scrum is a member of the agile software development family. Scrum was designed to provide maximum benefits from the development, add energy, focus, and clarify with transparency to the development teams. This was developed in 1993 to achieve the goal of software development and management, all together followed by agile methodology principles. Scrum put the focus on the strategy, which includes flexible product development and the team (included for the project) works together to achieve the described goal. Scrum development works differently, which contrasts with the traditional waterfall software development method. In this topic, we are going to learn about Scrum Project Management.

Explanation: Scrum is a method (agile approach) that directly represents the software project management process for effective benefits. The customer is the prime head for the requirement description. The customer and the development team work together to decide to implement the new feature in the project. The project manager is working closely with the development team members to make project-related decisions. Software project management works for managing complex processes, where the implementation of specific management activities is a must.

Features of Scrum Project Management

If the scrum is implemented carefully and properly to the process, it increases the productivity, process, and the development speed is fastened. In this process, regular communication among the teams is taken care of at all levels.

1. Property of scrum model

Scrum model methodology is for management, enhancement, and maintenance for an ongoing project in production prototype. In object-oriented development, it assumes the coding and the design. Scrum is supposed to bring out new or re-engineered legacy systems development efforts. Software release has the previous checklist which includes-

• The customer demand is initially discussed and enhanced based on the requirements.
• The time slot is discussed and kept fixed, and the team is asked to take advantage out of the slot.
• Competition is one of the factors which keeps the team alive and well prepared to get the best out of it.
• The desired quality of the product is delivered to the customer.
• Vision plays an important role in the changes required at this stage to meet system vision requirements.
• Resources need to be taken care of; it includes human power and financial power needed for the completion of the project.

2. Factors that can affect the process

The process where systems development takes place is a highly complicated environment; the complexity is in both ways that is target environment and the development environment.

• The skilled human workforce is the high-risk factor. The professional must be trained with the newest technology in the market. The professionals should be aware of technology and should have sound knowledge for implementing tools, methods, and domains in the new project.
• The stability in the technology is the basic requirement; it falls for the newest technology implementation. The newer technology is very less known and less implemented among the teams, so it may be a factor that stability issues may arise. It is very important to make a balance between new and older techniques with manual procedures also.
• The balance between tool functionality and the newest technique is sometimes a big risk. It needs a pool of good professionals because the number is very less when it comes to trained professionals for new techniques implementation.
• The methods must show effectiveness in modeling, testing, version control, and design. These factors should prove effectiveness and efficiency.
• Domain expertise is the demand for skilled professionals.
• The addition of new features in the required project is a tough job; the team members must keep track of the right fit with current functionality.
• A flexible methodology is adopted for developing systems.
• New functionality adds can be a competition for the new release.
• Time and funding play a very important role, it may affect the process of development.

3. Roles

The scrum process makes use of three roles while implementing an iterative and incremental skeleton. The roles are- the product owner, the team, and the scrum master.

• The Scrum master- the scrum master, has the responsibility of managing the development of the project (process). He prepares his team by giving training and understanding of the scrum process and functioning.
• Product owner- product owner, represents everybody’s interest in the project with a stake. He is also responsible for maintaining product backlogs. In short, he prioritizes the list of project requirements with a time limit set.
• Team- the team comprises the manager and other required teammates. The team is built up based on the requirements of the project. Developing functionality is the responsibility of the team. Every member of the team should possess a self-managing and self-organizing attitude. The team is prepared to figure out loopholes during the development process; they oversee turning product backlogs into an increment of functionality within an iteration and managing their work. The whole team is taking responsibility for the success of the desired project.

In the scrum project management process, the manager keeps the schedule for meetings on a regular basis; the meetings are supposed to discuss the daily functioning of the projects. This daily update on the project is called a daily scrum. The strategy is made by the team members to overcome every risk during the development process.

Phases of the Project cycle

The project cycle has several phases. These cycles are fully directed by the scrum process.

1. Planning phase: It is the time where project vision set up the life for the project and stakeholders are under consideration; it goes beyond financial lead for execution.
2. Staging: Work is prioritized for the delivery of the product on time to the customer.
3. Iterations: Scrum has iterative nature. The working of scrum development is carried out in cycles, and functioning is carried out in sprints. Sprints are basically shorter divisions of work on a priority basis which is framed for completion before the final delivery of the project. Scrum works with several divisions; this is a stage in which many iterations are running in the system. All these cycles are bounded with deadlines, and it is a must to complete the cycle with testing and all process done.
4. Development: Implementation for final touch is done.
5. Release: Satisfactory delivery means the customer is satisfied with the product, and on-time delivery is what makes the customer happy.

Recommended Articles

This has been a guide to Scrum Project Management. Here we discuss the Features of Scrum Project Management and the Phases of the Project cycle. You can also go through our other suggested articles to learn more –

1. Scrum Principles
2. Agile Benefits
3. What is Agile and Scrum
4. Total Quality Management Benefits