Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Winning with Scrum Teams

Scrum as an Agile Development methodology focuses on the providing much frequently needed agility in the development process to better respond to changes i.e. 1 opportunity per Sprint versus a Fixed time slot (when and how much) approach in the traditional development methodologies.

Scrum also puts The Team in the drivers seat to plan best to the team's collective abilities and deliver on the commitment.

Apart from these the Scrum Team also get empowered due to their Size. Ideally a Scrum Team must be around 7 to 8 persons. The team must be multi-skilled i.e. all the needed skills must be there in the team (for Software Development this translates to Developers, Testers, Functional Designers, Technical Writer).

With clear roles and non-overlapping responsibilities for each team member, a clear ownership gets established and helps the team function as a unit towards the team targets and deliverables.

The daily morning time-boxed Standup meeting with specific questions helps cut down all the un-necessary communication lines. It brings out all the known dependencies, bottlenecks and facilitates making an effective daily plan of actions by priority.

Furthermore with ScrumMaster designated to move the bottlenecks, it leaves the team to focus on the commitment.

This underlying power dis-invested in a Scrum Team maximizes the return to the development process and the department.

The Approach of Scrum Teams and Sprint based execution needs some organizational preparations. However the return on such investments is improved team effectiveness, productivity and brings in the much needed Predictability.