Scrum agile methodology

Scrum is an iterative, incremental process for developing any product or managing any work. Scrum is a wrapper for existing engineering practices. Without major changes -often within thirty days - teams are building useful, demonstrable product functionality. Scrum is a set of interrelated practices and rules that optimize the development environment, reduce organizational overhead, and closely synchronize market requirements with iterative prototypes. The tasks are broken into small pieces and small teams formed which consists of designer, developer, tester and the client representative. So all the people from the whole life cycle form a minicosm of the larger team and working together very closely.

The various terms associated with this process is are as follows:


Sprint

A time period (typically between 2 weeks and 1 month) in which development occurs on a set of backlog items that the Team has committed to.

Product Owner

The person responsible for maintaining the Product Backlog by representing the interests of the stakeholders.

Scrum Master

The person responsible for the Scrum process, making sure it is used correctly and maximizes its benefits.

Team

A cross-functional group of people responsible for managing itself to develop the product.

Scrum Team

Product Owner, ScrumMaster and Team

Sprint Burn Down Chart

Daily progress for a Sprint over the sprint's length.


Product Backlog

A prioritized list of high level requirements.


Sprint Backlog

A list of tasks to be completed during the sprint.


Sashimi

A slice of the whole equivalent in content to all other slices of the whole. For the Daily Scrum, the slice of sashimi is a report that something is done.

Standup meeting

The daily project status meeting where the each team member s answers these questions

1. What are you planning to do by today?
2. Do you have any problems preventing you from accomplishing your goal? (It is the role of the ScrumMaster to remember these impediments.)

Sprint retrospective

At the end of a sprint cycle a sprint retrospective is held, at which all team members reflect about the past sprint. The purpose of the retrospective is to make continuous process improvement. Two main questions are asked in the sprint retrospective

1. What went well during the sprint?
2. What could be improved in the next sprint?


So this goes on with the product development happenings in small sprints in which there is a full scale feature ready for deployment.