HOT TOPIC REPORT DIVYA

SCRUM & AGILE
HOT TOPIC REPORT

HOT TOPIC REPORT BY DIVYA RAJASRI
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SCRUM & AGILE
DIVYA RAJASRI TADI
MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS
USF
10.20.2014
ITERATIVE DEVELOPMENTSCRUM
PRINCIPLES
ITERATIVE
DEVELOPMENT
TIMELINES
COOPERATION
SELF-
ORGANISATION

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PROPOSAL
Why I want to take up this topic?
I have worked on an agile project from scratch during my tenure in
Accenture. I have an overall understanding of how agile practices are
implemented in a project. I was assigned user stories to work on and I
myself conducted the daily standup meetings and monthly retrospective
analysis.
Agile is a comparatively new method of software development and I am
passionate about gaining an in-depth knowledge of Agile practices.
 What will my report cover?
In my report, I will start by giving an introduction about agile software
development and its values and principles. My main topic of concentration
would be Scrum. Under Scrum I will research on:
-History
-Roles
-Events
-Artifacts
-Terminology

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction…………………………………………………………..1
Proposal………………………………………………………………2
Current State of Art..…………………………………………………4
History of Scrum...……………………………………………………5
Overview………………………………………………………………6
Agile Principles.………………………………………………………7
Agile Project Lifecycle ………………………………………………9
Scrum Roles…………………………………………………………11
Scrum………………………………………………………………...14
Product Owner Responsibilities…………………………………...19
Development Team Characteristics……………………………...20
Scrum Events……………………………………………………….24
Transparency of Artifacts.…………………………………………30
Definition of Done…………………………………………………..31

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CURRENT STATE OF ART
Scrum is an agile schema which can be used in any project where agile is
being implemented. It is best suited to projects that embrace change
throughout the project lifecycle. It is very important for the project managers
to understand the concepts, principles and methodologies of agile and the
schema of scrum to be able to implement it in a project. Highly critical or
long term projects cannot support the agile framework. It is only the less
critical and short term projects that can adapt to these methodologies. Agile
is applied to projects that are collocated and where the team sizes are
small as compared to traditional waterfall methods where team sizes are
huge and teams are located at the same place. It is the duty of the scrum
master, the product owner and the project manager to carefully analyze
each and every aspect of the product that is going to be released and
based on that analysis decide whether agile and scrum can be
implemented successfully for the project or not. Many fortune 500
companies like Accenture, Infosys, TCS, and JPMorgan have implemented
agile projects which have given outstanding results.

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HISTORY OF SCRUM
Scrum was first implemented in Easel Corporation by Jeff Sutherland along
with his two others group members. They were inspired by an article
named the new product development game which spoke about a rugby
game, where an entire group of people went ahead by passing the ball
among themselves. This is what gave them the idea of working in sprints or
iterations. And years later, Jeff Sutherland along with a group of fifteen
people came up with the Agile Manifesto. Post this the concept of user
stories was introduced by Mike Cohn. All these were put to practice in
many organizations and gained widespread acceptance. People who had
grown out of the traditional software development practices adopted agile
willingly and were impressed by the results it yielded. Now, the IT industry
has widely accepted agile and scrum and there are a huge number of firms
which are implementing agile projects. There are institutions giving Scrum
trainings and certifications to people to make them scrum masters or scrum
product owners. In a nutshell, scrum has been widely accepted as a
successful schema.

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OVERVIEW
Scrum is a repetitive and cumulative agile schema used to manage
software product development.
Agile is a project management methodology in which results are achieved
by people with different functional expertise working towards a common
goal. Agile is a holistic used to express the multiple phases involved in a
software development process. Agile focuses mainly on delivering good
quality software in short intervals of time. Agile Manifesto was a conscious
effort by the idealists who wanted to bring in a new software development
methodology which was way different from the traditional ones.
Agile is based on speedy reactions to change and consistent advancement.
Agile is described by the division of assignments into short periods of work
and successive reassessment. Agile development was coined by
individuals who were tired of conventional methodologies to programming
advancement. With any agile improvement venture, there is significant
stress on engaging groups and community choice making.

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1. Customer satisfaction which in case of Agile means timely delivery of
the functioning software.
2. Embrace changes in requirements even though they come in at the
later stages of the development, which gives the customers
competing edge over others.
3. Clients are happy to see a functioning software as compared to
detailed documentation. And if that can be delivered within short time
periods then the client is more than satisfied.
4. Developers and business analysts need to cooperate on every issue.
5. Frame the projects with enthusiastic individuals and create an
atmosphere which helps them give best results.
6. It is very essential to have face to face conversations in order to
share information.
7. A good quality software with low defects is the elementary for the
growth of the project.
AGILE PRINCIPLES

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8. In Agile, it is important to work at a consistent pace throughout the
project for everyone involved to get the desired results within the
given time period.
9. Attention to technicality and design of the project improves agility.
Regular interactions with the stakeholders is required to make sure all
the requirements are being met.
10. Clarity is increasing the load of work which need not be done.
11. The team’s collective effort brings out the excellent
architectures, designs and requirements.
12. The team should meet up at frequent intervals and discuss
ways to achieve better performance and avoid bottlenecks.

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AGILE
TEST
REVIEW
BUILD
DEPLOY
DESIGN
PLANNING
ANALYSIS
AGILE PROJECT LIFE CYCLE

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Agile lifecycle like any other begins with the Planning phase.
PLANNING - In this phase the entire project is planned. The number of
iterations or sprints that the project will have, the duration of each iteration,
the number of stories that will be executed in every iteration, the number of
team members in each team, the skills required for delivering the product,
the time period within which the entire product will be delivered.
ANALYSIS – In this phase the stakeholders and the business analysts
analyze the requirements. All the requirements that the end product should
have are noted down. The product owner and stakeholders play the most
important role in listing all the requirements that are required for the
accomplishment of the project. Agile welcomes change but it is best to
have all the requirements listed at the initial stage itself so that all the
iterations are well planned and no sprint goals can be achieved within the
given timelines. The development team should also have an overall
understanding of the requirements and the project manager should recruit
people with required skill expertise to work on the project.

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SCRUM
ROLES
SCRUM
MASTER
USERS
STAKEHOLDER
S
PRODUCT
OWNER
TEAM
MEMBERS
SCRUM ROLES

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EFFECTIVE FACE TO FACE COMMUNICATION
Every agile team has a Product Owner who is a customer representative
and is selected by the stakeholders. The Product Owner interacts with the
development team on a regular basis and answers all their queries. After
the completion of every iteration, the product owner and all the
stakeholders sit together and figure out the progress and make plans for
maximizing the return on investment making sure it’s in line with the
customer needs and the organization goals.
Every agile project has an information radiator which is a large display
screen giving latest updates of status of the product. Every team’s status is
displayed by a build light indicator. This device is placed centrally in the
project so that every person can easily see it.
The story boards should always give the correct status of all the user
stories whether they have been started, are in progress or completed. Any
user stories not completed or partially completed in a sprint should be

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marked and carried over to the next sprint. Any bottlenecks should be
highlighted and marked as highest priority.
SHORT EVALUATION CYCLE
Scrum Master is responsible for conducting daily stand up meetings for
team in the project. These meetings require every team member to address
his team and inform them about what he/she has worked on the previous
day, their action items for the current day and the roadblocks they faced
during their tasks.
FOCUS ON QUALITY
Various techniques like automation testing, code refactoring, continuous
integration, pair programming and test-driven development are a part of
agile process and ensure that the end product is of high quality and defect
free.

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Scrum is a structure that allows people to find solutions to complicated
queries while delivering products of high quality. Scrum is:
 Lightweight
 Easy to understand
 Tough to excel
Scrum is not a technique to build products, it is a skeleton which can make
use of multiple techniques. Scrum explicitly states the competency of the
product and the practices involved so that they can be worked upon and
improved. The Scrum framework has multiple Scrum Teams and
corresponding roles, events, artifacts and rules. Each element in the
framework has particular functionality and is important for Scrum’s
progress.
SCRUM

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SCRUM THEORY
Scrum is based on experimental process control theory. Experimentation
assures that expertise comes with experience and being able to make
decisions depending on our knowledge base. Scrum has a repetitive,
cumulative approach to improvise certainty and reduce risk. Three pillars
uphold every implementation of empirical process control: transparency,
inspection, and adaptation.
TRANSPARENCY
Critical parts of the procedure must be noticeable to those in charge of the
conclusion. Transparency requires those viewpoints be characterized by a
typical standard so observers have a basic understanding of what is
constantly seen.
For instance:
A universal language referring to the procedure must be followed by all
members. Those performing the work and those accepting the work item
must make sure that they have the same definition of "Done".

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INSPECTION
It is always advisable for the scrum users to go through the scrum archives
and then advance to the Sprint Goal to figure out unwanted changes. The
inspection should be done at specific intervals of time so that it does not
hinder the work. The best way to perform Inspections is to ask experts to
inspect all the work going on at a given point in time.
ADAPTATION
Inspections are conducted by experts who know the correct manner in
which the project should function so that desired results can be achieved.
In case during the inspection, it is pointed out that certain aspects of the
process are beyond the scope of the process and such aspects will affect
the end product which is not acceptable, then immediate changes should
be made to the aspects to reduce the risk.
There are four events prescribed by Scrum for inspection and adaptation
Events section of this document:
 Sprint Planning

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 Daily Scrum
 Sprint Review
 Sprint Retrospective
SCRUM TEAM
A Scrum Team comprises of a Product Owner, the Development Team,
and a Scrum Master. Scrum Teams are mostly cross - functional. Self-
constructing teams figure out ways how best to achieve their work, instead
of being regulated by others outside the group. Cross-functional teams
have all the essential skills needed to fulfill the work without relying upon
others to complete their work. The team structure in scrum intended to
enhance adaptability, inventiveness, and profit. Scrum Teams deliver
results repetitively and cumulatively, in order to receive evaluation based
on which changes can made. Repetitive release of "Done" product
guarantees a conceivably valuable variant of working product is constantly
available.

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PRODUCT OWNER
Product Owner is in charge of increasing the estimation of the product and
the work load of the Development Team. The way it is implemented may
differ broadly across associations, Scrum Teams, and people. Product
Backlog is single handedly maintained by the Product Owner.
The Product Owner is held accountable for all the above activities. The
Product Owner is an individual and not a team, though he may be a
representative of a team. Any variations in the product backlog items
priority have to be reported to the product owner. It is very important for a
company to appreciate the decisions of the product owner for him to
succeed. All the decisions taken by the product owner are visible in the
content and requesting of the product backlog. The development team has
the liberty to work any set of requirements and no one is allowed to
question their decision.

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PRODUCT
OWNER
Improvising the work done
by development team and
ensuring they have a
common understanding of
items in the product backlog
Requesting items in the
Product Backlog to best
accomplish objectives
and missions
Ensures product backlog
is accessible by all and
correctly conveys the
next steps of Scrum
Team
Ensures product backlog
explicitly mentions
items so that they are
easy to understand
PRODUCT OWNER RESPONSIBILITIES

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DEVELOPMENT TEAM
It is a group of experts who are responsible for delivering a functioning part
of the product at the end of each sprint. These teams are organized and
empowered by the organization to handle their own work. The collaborative
effort enhances the proficiency of the development team.
Are self-organizing and function
independently. Even the Scrum
Master cannot tell them how to
convert the Product Backlog into
parts of working product that can be
released in every sprint.
These teams have experts from all
domains and hence are self sufficient
to create a part f the working
product to be delivered. all the
members of the team are known as
developers irrespective of the work
they do.
There are no sub-teams in the
Development Team, even though
there are people working in different
domains like testing, coding, etc...
The entire team is accountable for
the success or failure of a part of the
product released in every sprint.
DEVELOPMENT
TEAM
CHARACTERISTICS

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SIZE OF DEVELOPMENT TEAM
Technically, Development Team size should be such that it can remain
agile and accomplish the required work at the end of each sprint. Lesser
than three people in a team leads to lesser skills and effects the
productivity. This in turn will affect the delivery at the end of each sprint.
And more than ten people in a team will lead to communication gaps and
coordination failures. It is advisable that a development team size from 4 to
9 members.
SCRUM MASTER
The main responsibility of the Scrum Master is to make sure that Scrum is
understood and implemented by the project. A Scrum Masters must ensure
that all the teams in the project are adhering to the rules and practices of
Scrum. The Scrum master interacts with everyone in the scrum team and
outside of it as well. He facilitates communication among all the people in
the project to improve the productivity of the project as a whole.

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SCRUM MASTER SERVICES:
 TO THE PRODUCT OWNER
 Figuring out the right approach for efficient management of product
backlog
 Explaining to the Scrum Team the requirement for explicit
mentioning of Product Backlog items
 Conveying the importance of product planning in an experimental
environment
 Helping out with scrum events as and when required
 Making sure the Product Owner knows the best way to organize
items in the Product Backlog
 Have profound knowledge of agile practices and implementing them
in the project.

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 TO THE DEVELOPMENT TEAM
 Training the team to be self-sufficient and independent
 Ensuring that the team comes up with the good products
 Remove any roadblocks hindering the progress of the team
 Helping out with scrum events as and when required
 Training the team to adapt to environments where scrum is not been
implemented.
 TO THE ORGANIZATION
 Training and leading the company in adopting Scrum
 Organizing scrum executions in the company
 Facilitating team members and stakeholders comprehend and
implement Scrum
 Bringing out the change that maximizes the profit of the Scrum Team
 Brainstorming with other Scrum Masters to improve the efficiency of
the application of Scrum in an organization.

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SCRUM EVENTS
There are defined events in Scrum to enhance the consistency. Every
event has a stipulated time within which it has to be completed.
After the commencement of a sprint its duration cannot be increased or
decreased. Rest of the events are terminated as when there goals are
accomplished. Every event in scrum is a chance to evaluate and change
something. Every event is created to make sure there is transparency and
investigation. Failure to incorporate any of these events amounts to losing
an opportunity to evaluate and make changes.
SPRINT
It is the heart of Scrum. It can be defined as a stipulated time period of a
month or so within which a fully functional deliverable part of the product is
created. There are no gaps in between two sprints. As soon as one sprint
gets over the next begins. Sprints involve daily scrum meetings, sprint
planning, retrospective analysis, sprint reviews.

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DURING THE SPRINT:
 Any changes that will or may affect the sprint goal are not made
 There is never reduction in the quality of the product being delivered
 The Product Owner and Development Team should clearly define the
scope of the project.
 Every sprint is like a mini project at the end of which a working
product has to be delivered to the customer.
 Every sprint should clearly state the product that is to be built, the
required design, the plan to execute the design and the features of
the end product.
 It is very important to have a well-defined scope for a sprint because
if the scope is not defined then it is very difficult to come up with the
required end result within the given timelines. This will avoid risk and
any complexity in the sprint.
 The end result in a sprint is quite predictable as there are regular
inspections and evaluations based on which changes are
incorporated in to the sprint.

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 The best part about a sprint is that if the end product is not as desired
then the effort and money lost is only for that period of one month or
so which is way less compared to the traditional methods where the
loss is enormous.
CANCELLATION OF A SPRINT
The product owner is the only person who has the authority to cancel a
sprint even though he/she does it due to pressure from the scrum master,
development or the stakeholders. A sprint can be cancelled before its time
period is over. If the goal that a sprint is trying to achieve becomes
outdated, then it is be cancelled. This may occur if the organization decides
to take up a new technology in the market. As the time period of a sprint is
four weeks, cancelling it does not make sense. On cancellation of a sprint,
all the completed items in the product backlog are assessed. All the
incomplete items are reviewed and put back in the product backlog. Very
rarely a sprint is cancelled as it affects the morale of the scrum team. And
as there are no gaps between sprints, the next sprint is immediately

27
commenced and if the team is not enthusiastic about it the delivery is
affected. So, it is very essential to analyze whether a sprint should be
cancelled or not as it has unwanted consequences.
PLANNING A SPRINT
Sprint planning is done by the scrum team. After a brainstorming session of
not more than 8 hours, the scrum team comes up with a plan for a four
week long sprint. Planning is supervised by the Scrum Master who makes
sure that the session does not exceed the given time limit and all the
people attending it understand the importance and contribute actively. The
sprint planning session basically focusses on what work need to be done to
deliver a part of the product at the end of the sprint and what additional
features can be included in the product that is being delivered.
 WHAT ALL CAN BE ESTABLISHED IN ONE SPRINT
Every sprint has a goal that is to be accomplished before its completion. It
is the responsibility of the Product owner to clearly state the goal of the
sprint and the product backlog items that if completed will achieve the

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sprint goal. The development team selects a set of items from the product
backlog and can estimate what can be accomplished in the current sprint
as well as the next sprints. Scrum team acknowledges all the work that is
supposed to be done in the current sprint. Sprint work plans are made
based on the product backlog, the strength of the development team and
its prior achievements. Once the development team is done listing the
items it is going to deliver at the end of the current sprint, the scrum team
comes up with a sprint goal. The sprint goal helps the development team
focus on what is to be achieved as an end result. Sprint goal is like a suite
of all the criteria that have to be met in order to achieve it. It is necessary to
have a sprint goal as it explicitly states what is the desired end result at the
end of four weeks and so that no time is wasted working on anything that is
beyond the scope of the defined goal.
 HOW TO GET THINGS GOING IN A SPRINT
After defining the sprint goal and selecting the items from product backlog
for implementation in the current sprint, development team starts to work
on building the functionality of the end product. The items from product

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backlog along with their delivery plan define what is called the sprint
backlog. While working on the sprint, if the development team realizes that
it has more work or less work then it reviews the items from the product
backlog along with the product owner. Other team members are also asked
to give their opinion on this as it affects the end result that will be delivered.
Technical help and domain advice is sort in these cases from the entire
project. Once the sprint planning is done, the development team is
responsible for communicating all the work that is to be done within the
sprint and the steps to accomplish the sprint goal to the scrum master and
the product owner.
TRANSPARENCY OF ARTIFACTS:
Transparency of archived material is an important aspect on which scrum
relies heavily. Scrum does not involve too much documentation but
stresses on the correct amount of documentation that is required for
traceability. A requirement traceability matrix is maintained in agile projects
which maps all the user stories to the corresponding sprints and the test
cases. It is the duty of the scrum master to ensure that all the artifacts are

30
visible and accessible by all the team members. All the changes
incorporated at a later stage have been updated in the documentation.
Development team should make sure that all the test cases and scenarios
for a particular sprint are self-explanatory and are properly documented if
required. Any flaws in transparency can be identified by the scrum master
through frequent inspection and acted upon. It becomes easier to trace any
changes or defects in the end product that is delivered to the customer if
there is complete transparency of artifacts and proper documentation in
place.
DEFINITION OF DONE
It is important that all the team members have a common understanding of
the term “DONE”.
 All the listed to do items in the code are completed
 There are comments in the code and the latest version of the code is
checked in by the programmers
 The code adheres to all the coding standards and is peer reviewed.

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 The build is defect free and all the unit tests are yielding positive
results.
 Deployed to system test environment and passed system tests
 All the build, deployment and configuration changes have been
implemented and documented.
 The documentation is up to date.
 All the tasks are closed.
 There are no unsolved roadblocks which might come up in the code
at a later point of time.
This definition of done should be explicit to all the people working on a
project. At the end of each sprint, a part of the software product is delivered
which adheres to the definition of DONE and this should be true for all the
sprint releases.

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RECOMMENDATIONS TO MANAGER
Agile methodologies are widely being used in the IT industry. There
repetitive and cumulative nature has been beneficial to many projects. The
concept of delivering a part of the end product at regular intervals has
received appreciation from the customers as they get to see a fully
functional part of the product and are assured that the end product will also
be as good. The responsibility of the project manager is to ensure that all
the agile principles are being implemented in the project. All the scrum
roles are explicit to the scrum master, development team and the product
owner. The project has the required logistics like the information radiator,
story board, burn down charts, etc… it is very important that the team sizes
are small, team members collaborate with each other, there should be a
willingness to accept change, all the team members have an expertise in
one or the other domain and the documentation and requirement
traceability matrix are updated with all the incorporated changes.

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References –
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_development
http://www.agilesherpa.org/intro_to_agile/what_is_agile_development/
http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html
https://www.scrum.org/Portals/0/Documents/Scrum%20Guides/2013/Scru
m-Guide.pdf
https://www.scrumalliance.org/why-scrum/resources
http://www.scrumguides.org/
http://scrummethodology.com/
http://www.scrum-
institute.org/Introduction_to_Scrum_A_Real_World_Example.php
http://www.allaboutagile.com/definition-of-done-10-point-
checklist/#sthash.WGpiUJUr.dpuf
http://www.agilesherpa.org/intro_to_agile/what_is_agile_development/
http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html

34
https://www.scrum.org/Portals/0/Documents/Scrum%20Guides/2013/Scru
m-Guide.pdf
https://www.scrumalliance.org/why-scrum/resources
http://www.scrumguides.org/
http://scrummethodology.com/
http://www.scrum-
institute.org/Introduction_to_Scrum_A_Real_World_Example.php
http://www.allaboutagile.com/definition-of-done-10-point-
checklist/#sthash.WGpiUJUr.dpuf

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