Scrum is an agile framework for managing product development that emphasizes self-organizing cross-functional teams, sprints, daily stand-ups, and adaptive planning. It consists of roles like the product owner and Scrum master, artifacts like the product backlog and sprint backlog, and ceremonies like sprint planning and reviews. Scrum originated in the 1990s and aims to rapidly deliver working software through short development cycles and continuous improvement.
3. What is Scrum?
• Scrum is a lightweight, simple to understand (but
difficult to master) agile process framework.
• Scrum is one of several agile software
development methods.
• Scrum and Extreme Programming (XP) are
probably the two best-known Agile methods. XP
emphasizes technical practices such as pair
programming and continuous integration. Scrum
emphasizes management practice such as the
role of Scrum Master.
• Many companies use the management practices
of Scrum with the technical practices of XP.
5. Mountain Goat Software, LLC
The Agile Manifesto–a statement of
values
Process and toolsProcess and toolsIndividuals and
interactions
Individuals and
interactions
over
Following a planFollowing a planResponding to changeResponding to change over
Source: www.agilemanifesto.org
Comprehensive
documentation
Comprehensive
documentationWorking softwareWorking software over
Contract negotiationContract negotiationCustomer
collaboration
Customer
collaboration
over
6. History of Scrum
• Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland developed
the Scrum method in the early 1990’s. The
Scrum method has evolved somewhat over
the years.
• The definitive guide to the rules of Scrum,
The Scrum Guide, is maintained by Ken
Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland. [The most
recent edition of The Scrum Guide was
published in 2011.]
7. Origins of the idea
• The Scrum methodology was inspired by new approaches to
commercial product development being explored in the late
1980’s.
• In a 1986 article in the HBR, Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka
urged companies to “Stop running the relay race and take up
rugby”.
“In today's fast-paced, fiercely competitive world of commercial new
product development, speed and flexibility are essential.
Companies are increasingly realizing that the old, sequential
approach to developing new products simply won't get the job
done. Instead, companies in Japan and the United States are using
a holistic method—as in rugby, the ball gets passed within the
team as it moves as a unit up the field.”
8. Mountain Goat Software, LLC
We’re losing the relay race
Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka, “The
New New Product Development Game”,
Harvard Business Review, January 1986.
“The… ‘relay race’ approach to product
development…may conflict with the goals of
maximum speed and flexibility. Instead a
holistic or ‘rugby’ approach—where a team
tries to go the distance as a unit, passing the
ball back and forth—may better serve
today’s competitive requirements.”
9. Mountain Goat Software, LLC
• Scrum is an agile process that allows us to focus on
delivering the highest business value in the shortest time.
• It allows us to rapidly and repeatedly inspect actual working
software (every two weeks to one month).
• The business sets the priorities. Teams self-organize to
determine the best way to deliver the highest priority
features.
• Every two weeks to a month anyone can see real working
software and decide to release it as is or continue to
enhance it for another sprint.
Scrum in 100 words
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Scrum origins
• Jeff Sutherland
• Initial scrums at Easel Corp in 1993
• IDX and 500+ people doing Scrum
• Ken Schwaber
• ADM
• Scrum presented at OOPSLA 96 with
Sutherland
• Author of three books on Scrum
• Mike Beedle
• Scrum patterns in PLOPD4
• Ken Schwaber and Mike Cohn
• Co-founded Scrum Alliance in 2002, initially
within the Agile Alliance
11. Mountain Goat Software, LLC
Characteristics
• Self-organizing teams
• Product progresses in a series of month-long
“sprints”
• Requirements are captured as items in a list of
“product backlog”
• No specific engineering practices prescribed
• Uses generative rules to create an agile
environment for delivering projects
• One of the “agile processes”
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Putting it all together
Image available at
www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/scrum
14. Mountain Goat Software, LLC
Sprints
• Scrum projects make progress in a series of
“sprints”
• Analogous to Extreme Programming iterations
• Typical duration is 2–4 weeks or a calendar
month at most
• A constant duration leads to a better rhythm
• Product is designed, coded, and tested during
the sprint
15. Mountain Goat Software, LLC
Sequential vs. overlapping
development
Source: “The New New Product Development Game” by Takeuchi
and Nonaka. Harvard Business Review, January 1986.
Rather than doing all of
one thing at a time...
...Scrum teams do a little
of everything all the time
Requirements Design Code Test
16. Mountain Goat Software, LLC
No changes during a sprint
• Plan sprint durations around how long you can
commit to keeping change out of the sprint
Change
19. Mountain Goat Software, LLC
Product owner
• Define the features of the product
• Decide on release date and content
• Be responsible for the profitability of the
product (ROI)
• Prioritize features according to market value
• Adjust features and priority every iteration, as
needed
• Accept or reject work results
20. Mountain Goat Software, LLC
The ScrumMaster
• Represents management to the project
• Responsible for enacting Scrum values and
practices
• Removes impediments
• Ensure that the team is fully functional and
productive
• Enable close cooperation across all roles and
functions
• Shield the team from external interferences
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The team
• Typically 5-9 people
• Teams are self-organizing
• Cross-functional:
• Programmers, testers, user experience designers, etc.
• Members should be full-time
• May be exceptions (e.g., database administrator)
22. Mountain Goat Software, LLC
The team
• Ideally, no titles but rarely a possibility
• Membership should change only between sprints
24. Mountain Goat Software, LLC
Sprint planning meeting
Sprint prioritization
• Analyze and evaluate product
backlog
• Select sprint goal
Sprint planning
• Decide how to achieve sprint goal
(design)
• Create sprint backlog (tasks) from
product backlog items (user stories
/ features)
• Estimate sprint backlog in hours
Sprint
goal
Sprint
goal
Sprint
backlog
Sprint
backlog
Business
conditions
Business
conditions
Team
capacity
Team
capacity
Product
backlog
Product
backlog
TechnologyTechnology
Current
product
Current
product
25. Mountain Goat Software, LLC
Sprint planning
• Team selects items from the product backlog they can
commit to completing
• Sprint backlog is created
• Tasks are identified and each is estimated (1-16 hours)
• Collaboratively, not done alone by the ScrumMaster
• High-level design is considered
As a vacation
planner, I want to
see photos of the
hotels.
As a vacation
planner, I want to
see photos of the
hotels.
Code the middle tier (8 hours)
Code the user interface (4)
Write test fixtures (4)
Code the foo class (6)
Update performance tests (4)
26. Mountain Goat Software, LLC
The daily scrum
• Parameters
• Daily
• 15-minutes
• Stand-up
• Not for problem solving
• Whole world is invited
• Only team members, ScrumMaster, product
owner, can talk
• Helps avoid other unnecessary meetings
27. Mountain Goat Software, LLC
Everyone answers 3 questions
• These are not status for the ScrumMaster
• They are commitments in front of peers
What did you do yesterday?What did you do yesterday?
1
What will you do today?What will you do today?
2
Is anything in your way?Is anything in your way?
3
28. Mountain Goat Software, LLC
The sprint review
• Team presents what it accomplished during
the sprint
• Typically takes the form of a demo of new
features or underlying architecture
• Informal
• 2-hour prep time rule
• No slides
• Whole team participates
• Invite the world
29. Mountain Goat Software, LLC
Sprint retrospective
• Periodically take a look at what is and is not
working
• Typically 15–30 minutes
• Done after every sprint
• Whole team participates
• ScrumMaster
• Product owner
• Team
• Possibly customers and others
30. Mountain Goat Software, LLC
Start / Stop / Continue
• Whole team gathers and discusses what they’d
like to:
Start doingStart doing
Stop doingStop doing
Continue doingContinue doing
This is just one
of many ways to
do a sprint
retrospective.
32. Mountain Goat Software, LLC
Product backlog
• The requirements
• A list of all desired work on
the project
• Ideally expressed such that
each item has value to the
users or customers of the
product
• Prioritized by the product
owner
• Reprioritized at the start of
each sprintThis is the
product backlog
This is the
product backlog
33. Mountain Goat Software, LLC
A sample product backlog
Backlog item Estimate
Allow a guest to make a reservation 3
As a guest, I want to cancel a reservation. 5
As a guest, I want to change the dates of a
reservation.
3
As a hotel employee, I can run RevPAR
reports (revenue-per-available-room)
8
Improve exception handling 8
... 30
... 50
34. Mountain Goat Software, LLC
The sprint goal
• A short statement of what the work will be
focused on during the sprint
Database Application
Financial services
Life Sciences
Support features necessary for
population genetics studies.
Support more technical indicators
than company ABC with real-time,
streaming data.
Make the application run on SQL
Server in addition to Oracle.
35. Mountain Goat Software, LLC
Managing the sprint backlog
• Individuals sign up for work of their own choosing
• Work is never assigned
• Estimated work remaining is updated daily
36. Mountain Goat Software, LLC
Managing the sprint backlog
• Any team member can add, delete or change the
sprint backlog
• Work for the sprint emerges
• If work is unclear, define a sprint backlog item with a
larger amount of time and break it down later
• Update work remaining as more becomes known
37. Mountain Goat Software, LLC
A sprint backlog
TasksTasks
Code the user interface
Code the middle tier
Test the middle tier
Write online help
Write the foo class
MonMon
8
16
8
12
8
TuesTues
4
12
16
8
WedWed ThurThur
4
11
8
4
FriFri
8
8
Add error logging
8
10
16
8
8
39. Mountain Goat Software, LLC
Hours
40
30
20
10
0
Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri
TasksTasks
Code the user interface
Code the middle tier
Test the middle tier
Write online help
MonMon
8
16
8
12
TuesTues WedWed ThurThur FriFri
4
12
16
7
11
8
10
16 8
50
40. Mountain Goat Software, LLC
Scalability
• Typical individual team is 7 ± 2 people
• Scalability comes from teams of teams
• Factors in scaling
• Type of application
• Team size
• Team dispersion
• Project duration
• Scrum has been used on multiple 500+ person
projects
43. Mountain Goat Software, LLC
Where to go next
• www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/scrum
• www.scrumalliance.org
• www.controlchaos.com
• scrumdevelopment@yahoogroups.com
44. Mountain Goat Software, LLC
A Scrum reading list
• Agile and Iterative Development:A Manager’s Guide by Craig
Larman
• Agile Estimating and Planning by Mike Cohn
• Agile Project Management with Scrum by Ken Schwaber
• Agile Retrospectives by Esther Derby and Diana Larsen
45. Mountain Goat Software, LLC
A Scrum reading list
• Agile Software Development Ecosystems by Jim Highsmith
• Agile Software Development with Scrum by Ken Schwaber and
Mike Beedle
• Scrum andThe Enterprise by Ken Schwaber
• Succeeding with Agile by Mike Cohn
• User Stories Applied for Agile Software Development by Mike Cohn
46. Mountain Goat Software, LLC
Copyright notice
• You are free:
• to Share to copy, distribute and and transmit the work―
• to Remix to adapt the work―
• Under the following conditions
• Attribution.You must attribute the work in the manner specified
by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that
they endorse you or your use of the work).
• Nothing in this license impairs or restricts the
author’s moral rights.
• For more information see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
47. Mountain Goat Software, LLC
Contact information
Presentation by: Mike Cohn
mike@mountaingoatsoftware.com
www.mountaingoatsoftware.com
(720) 890-6110 (office)
Presentation by: Mike Cohn
mike@mountaingoatsoftware.com
www.mountaingoatsoftware.com
(720) 890-6110 (office)
You can remove this (or any slide) but you
must credit the source somewhere in your
presentation. Use the logo and company
name (as at bottom left, for example) or
include a slide somewhere saying that
portions (or all) of your presentation are
from this source. Thanks.
Notes de l'éditeur
Most slides are courtesy of Mike Cohn at Mountain Goat Software: http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/presentations/30-an-overview-of-scrum
Photo Credit: Jim McDougall [via Flicker] Rugby scrum explained: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nH5mi1H8lgs
rapidly changing or highly emergent requirements With Scrum no specific engineering practices are prescribed
Agile as an umbrella term that describes several lightweight development methods including Extreme Programming, Adaptive System Development, Dynamic System Development Method (DSDM), Feature Driven Development, Kanban and Crystal.
while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.
[Quick definition] Major appeal of Scrum is the simplicity of its basic principles.
Few ideas are completely original. What is the “sequential approach’?
would be nice to include a quote from Wicked Problems here
Releasable software every iteration.
Sprints may be 1-4 weeks in length. “ One aspect of agile development is often missed or glossed over: a world view that organizations are complex adaptive systems. A complex adaptive system is one in which decentralized, independent individuals interact in self-organizing ways, guided by a set of simple, generative rules, to create innovative, emergent results . XP’s 12 practices, for example, were never intended to be all-inclusive rules; instead, they are generative rules that interact in concert when a team of individuals practices them.“ “ Most methodologies provide inclusive rules—all the things you could possibly do under all situations. Agile methods offer generative rules—a minimum set of things you must do under all situations to generate appropriate practices for special situations . Teams that follow inclusive rules depend on someone else to name in advance the practices and conditions for every situation. This obviously breaks down quickly. A team that follows generative rules depends on individuals and their creativity to find ways to solve problems as they arise. Creativity, not voluminous written rules, is the only way to manage complex software development problems and diverse situations.”
“ Sprints contain and consist of the Sprint Planning Meeting, Daily Scrums, the development work, the Sprint Review Meeting, and the Sprint Retrospective.”
“ The ScrumMaster's authority extends only to the process. The ScrumMaster is an expert on the process and on using it to get a team to perform to its highest level. But, a ScrumMaster does not have many of the traditional responsibilities—scope, cost, personnel, risk management among them—that a project manager does.” Who then does risk management?
“ The team itself assumes the responsibility for determining how to best achieve the product goals (as established by the product owner). Team members will collaboratively decide which person should work on which tasks, which technical practices are necessary to achieve stated quality goals, and so on.” “ Scrum relies on a self-organizing, cross-functional team. The scrum team is self-organizing in that there is no overall team leader who decides which person will do which task or how a problem will be solved. Those are issues that are decided by the team as a whole. The team is cross-functional so that everyone necessary to take a feature from idea to implementation is involved.”
“ Scrum recognizes no titles for Development Team members other than Developer, regardless of the work being performed by the person; there are no exceptions to this rule;” [Scrum Guide] Motivation for no-roles rule: “for a team of specialists to be successful each specialist must accept general responsibility for the system as a whole.”
Ceremonies = activities or things you do Could add release planning or “develop product backlog”
Release plan = “a roadmap of what can be expected after a couple of sprints, and what will be part of the release and what won’t.” Business condition example: 99 cent apps are popular Print goal or theme is defined by stories selected from product backlog. May select a story that is not the absolutely next highest priority story because it complements a theme related to the highest priority stories.
“ The two parts of the Sprint Planning Meeting answer the following questions, respectively: o What will be delivered in the Increment resulting from the upcoming Sprint? o How will the work needed to deliver the Increment be achieved?”
Chickens and pigs… “ Over the years, the labels have generated their share of controversy. Some argue that the terms are harmful to the process because they are derogatory. Others say that the negative connotation conjures a power dynamic that drives negative behaviour. Either way, you won't find any references to animals, barnyard or otherwise, in the new Scrum Guide.”
As a <role> I want to <feature> so that <business value>