What is scrum?
Scrum is a framework to manage knowledge work which uses agile methodology. It is like a daily short meeting between team members having three to nine members, who divide their work and complete the task within given time iterations which are called sprints.
The duration of a sprint is no longer than 1 month and then the progress is tracked in stand up a meeting called as daily scrums.
Definition
It is an iterative and lightweight framework for tracking and managing product development in a dynamic manner. It provides accountability, emphasizes teamwork and iterative progress with three important pillars i.e. inspection, transparency, and adaption.
Understanding Scrum
Scrum is easy to understand but hard to follow. It is part of an agile process. It does not follow a traditional methodology which consists of scrum master, team and product owner.
Steps:
- Product owner makes the list of task to be completed and time that each task will take to complete. Tasks are placed in priority order. This part is building project backlog. This is done by determining how what should be done, which tasks are less critical and those who cannot be completed in a given timeframe and should be considered for the next sprint.
- Using the above step teams start to work with the highest priority items and tries to find how to achieve it.
- Daily sprints are done to check the progress of the task and if there are any changes then that can be clarified with the owner and team.
- The sprint is complete only when the product is ready to deliver. Automation technique is used to resolve issues of time and cost.
How does Scrum make working so easy?
It keeps the team morale high and developers get the freedom to make decisions. Each sprint produces a module that is ready for the market even if the project is ongoing.
It gives a clear view of every programmer so that there is no confusion or conflict between team members about the work assigned. Projects often provide high ROI (return of investment). Early feedback helps course corrections quickly when it is less costly. Project goals can be changed with business goals or client requirements. It is a Lightweight management process that helps the product owner to keep track of the project.
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Top Scrum Companies
1. Microsoft
Microsoft uses scrum ban which is a combination of Scrum and Kanban which Microsoft created, an agile methodology developed for building product features in an iterative way where the scope of iteration does not change. Iterations are done by a team of 6-10 engineers and require full focus to finish the sprint.
The development team then flip the script and use a Kanban style that helps them to prioritize and fix all emergencies that we’re continuing that team supported.
2. Adobe
From the past several years, Adobe Systems has been using scrum as the most commonly used product development method. Products like Premiere Pro and After Effects, Platform tools like Adobe Air and service products like Acrobat connect are using scrum to become effective at delivering solutions to customers with great quality.
3. IBM
IBM, one of the biggest technology company used agile scrum, which played an important role in improving IBM’s business operations to offer their own management software that incorporates agile development called as IBM Rational Team Concert. IBM began changes in the three areas Process, People and Tools and IBM witnessed huge improvements in the end result.
4. Google
Google is the second biggest tech company in the world. They provide timely updates for its applications in a fast-paced world using agile based scrum methodology. One big example is how Google improves the Android OS. Set of features are released to beta testers and if feedback indicates several bugs then the update is rolled back.
5. Spotify
Spotify uses an agile environment for its music streaming service and has gained great results from it. Spotify employees are divided into squads and each squad is responsible for building a specific function of the app. With this approach, Spotify assigns respective tasks to each squad without any concern of one bad commit that will break the entire streaming platform
What can you do with Scrum?
Scrum processes are repeating every week, product owners provide a list of a task as short stories. It helps engineers implement the stories in the form of a sprint. Stories are implemented in rank order.
You can predict the product timeline and can plan for the next sprint if there are no changes required in the assigned task.
Advantages of Scrum
- Scrum enables you to create a methodology required for developing complex products. It helps in improving the product quality on an immediate basis.
- It enables you to deliver projects faster to the customers compared to old methodology as real-time updates are provided when the project is in process.
- It helps to generate required data to calculate the cost and time for the project and taking decisions as and when provided.
- It provides team members to be creative and get to know all the modules of the project.
- It makes possible to measure the productivity of a programmer as daily meetings are done.
- The cost of managing the project is less as it is quicker to deliver the project.
Required Scrum skills
Communication is the most important part of the scrum as your team is moving at a faster pace and communications help to hold it all together. Forecasting the deliverables possible in a sprint is also needed for timely delivery. Shielding the team from distractions other than the work related to the sprint.
Scrum Scope
Agile projects have a variable scope that helps the team to incorporate learning and create better products. Agile approaches to scope management are different from traditional methods where traditional method document complete scope of the project without informing the teams about the product, whereas in Scrum the product owner gathers the data from team’s knowledge of customer needs.
How scrum will help you in career growth
A scrum master will begin a career as the role of a mentor which will help you to showcase your knowledge. He/she will have an opportunity to move into the role of product owner after understanding the product owner’s work with sprint backlog and help build products and deliver them.
Conclusion
Scrum is a new age methodology that helps companies to create products in a dynamic way and deliver the part of the product in different sprints with a faster delivery rate.
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