Make Project Management Agile with Scrum Techniques

Agile project management focuses on customer collaboration and responding to change. Scrum is one of the agile methodologies used in software development. Scrum techniques enable teams to develop complex products.

Concepts

Teams and clients work together so that a project finds the best direction.

• Clients are presented with progressive deliverables in increments
• Self-motivated teams develop their own methods for producing deliverables
• Teams collaborate with clients and sponsors throughout the project

Roles

There are usually three main roles in the scrum team, the Scrum Master, the product owner and the development team.

The Scrum Master is similar to a project manager. Instead of supervising and leading the team, the Scrum Master makes sure the team is able to reach their sprint goals by removing obstacles. The Scrum Master helps the team stay focused and follow the Scrum process.

The product owner determines what the product’s functions and features will be. The product owner will write customer user stories and represent the voice of the customer.

The development team consists of three to nine people who design, analyze, develop, document and test the product. The team organizes itself and determines who will handle certain features and activities. The development team collaborates and delivers results to the product owner during the sprints.

Assisting teams can include stakeholders like the vendors and customers as well as managers.

Ceremonies

Ceremonies are also known as activities. Sprint planning, daily meetings and the sprint review allow teams to collaborate.

During sprint planning, the broad goals are determined. Features (stories) are prioritized to determine where in the series of sprints (iterations) they fit. This is the backlog or requirements. Tools like simple charts or programs like ScrumDesk.com keep things organized.

The daily meeting (daily scrum) reports on the status of the project and follows a strict time limit, usually only 15 minutes long. During the meeting only the status is reported. This includes what has been accomplished since the last meeting, what will be accomplished before the next meeting and what problems have or will be encountered.

The sprint review strives for continuous improvement of the product being delivered. Everyone attends this meeting to evaluate the product. It runs no longer than four hours.

Other techniques

• 1. The daily scrum meeting should be at the same time and location every day
• 2. Have a meeting after the daily scrum to discuss integration and overlap
• 3. Every 7 – 30 day sprint cycle have an eight-hour sprint planning meeting
• 4. After every sprint cycle, have the sprint review and sprint retrospective meetings

Before scrumming, try these techniques and keep the scrum team on task so that the product is continuously improved.