CSP Exam Preparation Notes

SCRUM

Definition

Scrum is management framework for incremental product development within which complex products can be developed.

• Pillars of Scrum (Three Pillars)
• Transparency/Visibility: Major aspects of the process are transparent and visible to those responsible for the outcome.
• Inspection
• Adaptation
• Roles in Scrum
• Product Owner: Manages the PRODUCT, i.e.responsible for the business value/ ROI of the project
• Scrum Master: Manages the PROCESS, i.e. ensures that the team is functional and productive and following scrum
• Development Team : Manages ITSELF, i.e. self-organizes to get the work done
• Ceremonies in Scrum:
• Sprint Planning [Occurs Before Sprint, Once Per Sprint]: Team meets with the product owner to choose a set of work to deliver during a sprint
• Daily Stand-up [Occurs During Sprint, Daily]: Team meets each day to share struggles and progress
• Sprint Review [Occurs After Sprint, Once Once Per Sprint]: Team demonstrates to the product owner what it has completed during the sprint.
• Sprint Retrospective [Occurs After Sprint, Once Per Sprint : Team looks for ways to improve the product and the process.
• Backlog Refinement Meeting / Backlog Grooming: [Occurs couple of days before next sprint planing meeting, Once Per Sprint]: Split big items (epic), analyze items, re estimate and re prioritize for the future sprints
• Artifacts of Scrum:
• Product backlog : Ordered/ Prioritized list of ideas for the product
• Sprint Backlog: Set of work from the product backlog that the team agrees to complete in a sprint, broken into tasks
• Increment of Product: Required result of every sprint.  It is an integrated version of the product, kept at high enough quality to be ship-able (OR you can say potentially ship-able)

Roles in Scrum

• Product owner 
• Is the one person responsible of maximizing the ROI of the development effort.
• Has profit and loss responsibility for the product assuming its commercial product
• Is responsible for the product vision
• Is responsible for collecting/ gathering requirements
• Constantly managing re-prioritizing the Product backlog
• Accepts OR rejects each product increment at at the end of each iteration
• Is the final voice/ arbiter of requirement question or clarification
• Manages the release plan
• Considers and manages the stakeholders interest
• Decides whether to continue development
• May may contribute as team member
• Is the only one who can cancel the sprint
• Has the leadership role in the project
• Decides whether to ship the product increment
• In some cases customer and product owner are same person
• Scrum Master
• Serves the team
• Empowers and shepherds the team
• Helps Resolve or removes impediments
• Facilitates the scrum process
• Keeps the process moving
• Creates an environment conductive to team self-organization
• Captures empirical data to adjust forecasts
• Shields the team from any external interference and distractions to keep it in zone(group flow) 
• Keeps Scrum artifacts visible
• Socializes the scrum to greater organisation
• Promotes improves engineering practices and help team adopt modern development practices
• Has NO Management authority over team (Anyone with authority over team is by definition  NOT its Scrum Master)
• Has a leadership role
• Team (Also Known as Development Team)
• Cross-Functional (e.g. includes members with testing skills 
• Its members are generally generalist instead of specialist.
• Estimates size of backlog Items
• Intensely collaborative
• Negotiates commitment with product owner, one spring at a time.
• Commits to increments of deliverable software
• It collectively owns the sprint commitments
• Delivers the committed increment of deliverable software
• Tracks its own progress.
• Most successful when located in one location, particularly for first few sprints
• Is self organizing/ self managing, without externally assigned roles.
• Accountable to product owner for delivering as promised
• 7 Plus OR Minus 2 members
• Most success with long term full time membership, i.e. scrum moves work to a flexible learning team and avoids moving people or splitting them between teams.
• Has a leadership role
• Other Stakeholders
• Includes like managers, customers and end-users.
• They support team by respecting the rules and spirit of scrum
• They help remove impediments that the team and product owner identify
• They make their expertise and experience available

Ceremonies in Scrum

• Sprint Planning - Part 1 Meeting   
• Its detailed requirement workshop
• Sprint Planning - Part 2 Meeting   
• The  sessions team collaborates to create high-level design of features it has committed to deliver.
• Daily Scrum or Stand up Meeting   
• Its one of three primary inspect and adapt point
• Sprint Review Meeting   
• Its PRIMARY purpose is to inspect what the team has delivered and gather feed back.
• Its one of three primary inspect and adapt point
• Sprint Retrospective Meeting 
• Its one of three primary inspect and adapt point
• Its final / last meeting of sprint
• Its follows sprint review and Its MUST
• Its focus is on process - the ways scrum team is working together
• Backlog Refinement Meeting (Backlog Grooming Or Estimation Meeting)  
• Occurs every sprint and 
• Generally occurs couple of days before next sprint planing meeting.

Artifacts in Scrum

• Product Backlog 
• Has MOST important items at the top of the list and least important items at bottom
• Its forced list of desired functionality
• Any stakeholder (including Team) can add items in consultation with product owner
• Its constantly re-prioritized by Product owner
• Items at top are more granular (broken down) than items at bottom (Rolling wave Planning)
• Its maintained during backlog refinement meeting
• Product Backlog Item (PBI's) 
• Specifies the what more than how of the customer centric feature.
• Most of PBI's need refinement because they are too large and poorly understood.
• Has  a product wise definition of done to prevent technical debt
• May have item specific acceptance criteria
• Efforts are estimated in relative units like story points
• Effort generally is 2 3 people 2 3 days or smaller for advanced team
• Sprint Backlog
• Consists of committed PBI's negotiated withe team and product owner during sprint planning meeting
• Scope commitments is fixed during sprint execution
• Initial tasks are identified by team during Sprint planning Meeting
• Team will or may discover additional tasks needed to meet the fixed scope commitment during sprint execution
• Visible to team
• Reference during Daily stand up meeting
• Sprint Tasks
• It specifies how to achieve the PBI's what
• Requires one day or less of work
• Remaining effort is re-estimated daily, typically in hours
• Sprint task is OWNED by entire team BUT during Sprint execution a point person may volunteer to be primarily responsible for task
• Sprint Burn Down
• Indicates total remaining team task hours within one sprint
• Re-estimated daily, thus may go up before going down
• Intended to facilitate team self-organization.
• Fancy variations, such as itemizing by point person or adding trend lines, tedsa
• Release/ Product Burn down
• A

Other Important POINTS in Scrum

• Reason to demonstrate the working products frequently is to accelerate out understanding of user's real need.
• In Scrum the management responsibilities are split between Product owner and Team.(Scrum Master is just helps creating environment to help this succeed)
• Bill Wake's INVEST (Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimable, Small, Testable) user stories.
• Scrum Ceremonies are planned opportunities for Inspection and Adaptation
• A Good Product backlog is DEEP:
• Detailed Appropriately
• Estimated
• Emergent
• Prioritized
• A Good User Story should be INVEST:
• Independent
• Negotiable
• Valuable
• Estimable
• Small
• Testable
• Scrum Cycle starts in the MIDDLE of sprint planning meeting, As Sprint planning meeting as two four hours sessions, 1st part is for prioritization and agreeing on which stories to be picked up for the sprint. In 2nd part team discuss about the tasks involved. This when sprint cycle starts.
• There is no Project Manager role in Scrum.
• Art of Objective conversations breaks the process into similar steps: ORID
• Objective
• Reflective
• Interpretive
• Decisional
• When Multiple teams are working on a single project, there should only be ONE Product backlog

Last Updated: 14th June 2013