Scrum as we all know is the agile
software development methodology most in use nowadays for the development of
many types of software systems and applications. It has been classified under
the category of iterative and incremental development methodologies that works
in an excellent way in managing the software products and projects. It also
helps in management of the application development.
Roles & Methods for Scrum Methodology
Some sets of predefined
roles and methods have been defined for the scrum methodology:
1. The
development team: It involves a team that is cross functional and self organized
and takes care of the following processes:
(a)
Analysis
(b)
Designing
(c)
Implementation
(d)
Testing and so on.
At the end of each sprint, a shippable product is to be delivered by the development team. A typical development team may constitute of 3 – 9 members with self organizing skills which are required even though there is an interaction with the PMOs or project management organizations.
2. The
product owner: The product owner is the representative of all the stake
holders and sometimes may also represent the business. He/ she can also be
regarded as the soul voice of the customer and he/ she is responsible for
the following activities:
(a)
Writing the customer centric items or user stories
(b)
Prioritizing the requirements based up on the
user stories
(c)
Adding those identified requirements to the back
log of the product.
This role is not supposed to be combined with the next one i.e., the scrum master.
3. The
scrum master: The scrum master is responsible for ensuring that the whole
process if followed and the impediments to the ability of the team are
removed so as to make the delivery of the sprint goals easy and early. He
is the one who facilitates the whole scrum development process. Scrum master
as the name suggests should not be mistaken as the leader of the
development team, he is in fact a buffer between the distracting
influences and the development team. In a way he/ she make sure that the
development process takes the intended route and enforces the rules to do
so.
The above mentioned roles are
called the core roles and there is another class of roles called the “ancillary
roles” and as such they have no formal role but they have to be taken in to
account. They have been mentioned below:
- The
stake holders and
- The
managers.
How Scrum is Useful?
- Scrum is quite useful when it
comes to the management of the agile projects since it reinforces the interest
in the agile development of the project.
- The scrum and agile development method
had come to challenge the conventional ideas regarding the agile project
management.
- Scrum methodology helps in the agile development at the steps where
it becomes difficult to set the plan for upcoming processes.
- The scrum and
agile development methodology makes use of the concepts quite contrary to those
used by the traditional development methods i.e., the mechanism of the
empirical process control.
- Here the core management technique is constituted by
the feedback loops.
- The traditional development methods were command and
control oriented.
- This mixed methodology of agile development and scrum has
come to represent an entirely new radical approach that plans and manages the
agile projects.
- It has brought the level of the decision making authority to
that of the operation certainties and properties.
- A project status meeting is
held every day till the development continues which is called the “daily
scrum”.
- Below mentioned are some of the project management tools that support
scrum:
- Banana
scrum
- JIRA
using Green Hopper plug-in
- Mingle
by thought works studios
- Scrum
Do
- Pivotal
tracker
- Microsoft
team foundation server
