Succeeding with Agile and Scrum
Sinan Si Alhir (LinkedIn; Word Press)
Nohma Abboud (LinkedIn)
Copyright © 2009 Sinan Si Alhir. All rights reserved.

Everyone is talking about “Agile development,” “adopting Scrum,” and “being Lean!”... What’s all the buzz?

Agility is a Value System! It (agile manifesto) emphasizes People, Collaboration, Results, and Responsiveness. Agility is fundamentally a mindset, which includes first focusing on principles and values, and then practices. Its not simply about adopting some collection of process roles, activities, or templates!

Scrum (scrum alliance) is a proven lean and agile approach to delivering results, a simple “inspect and adapt” framework used to organize work for maximum efficiency and effectiveness using three roles, three ceremonies, and three artifacts. Lean Thinking involves a collection of principles that form a foundation for Scrum.

The three roles are:

• Product Owner: The business who is responsible for the result of the process, that might be a commercial product or in-house system.
• Scrum Team: The development organization who is responsible for working with the business throughout the process to define-detail & build & test the result.
• Scrum Master: The role who is responsible for facilitating the overall process.

The three ceremonies are:

• Sprint Planning Meeting: A work session where objectives for a work cycle are agreed on by the Product Owner & Scrum Team and where the Scrum Team explores how to meet those objectives. The objectives take the form of requirements and the work takes the form of tasks.
• Daily Scrum Meetings: A daily check point among the Scrum Team members to ensure the effort is on target for meeting the objectives.
• Sprint Review and Retrospective Meeting: A meeting to review the results of the work cycle with the Product Owner and also consider how the process might be improved.

The three artifacts are:

• Product Backlog: The responsibility of the Product Owner, a prioritized list of objectives for the work cycle. User stories on the Product Backlog are used to express requirements.
• Sprint Backlog: The responsibility of the Scrum Team, a list of tasks for meeting the objectives. Tasks on the Sprint Backlog are used to express work.
• Burndown Chart: Status information communicating progress toward the objective.

At the core of Scrum is the concept of Collaboration, which involves transparency, commitment, and a self-organizing & cross-functional Scrum Teams. As a framework, Scrum is flexible and requires that the Product Owner and Scrum Team use whatever other techniques they require (in addition to the framework) for achieving success. For the Product Owner, this includes Product Management techniques; and for the Scrum Team, this includes Product Development techniques.

While Scrum is conceptually simple, truly doing Scrum requires the mindset described above. Many teams and organizations enthusiastically focus on enacting Scrum practices while not readily absorbing the underlying principles and values, and thus not being successful with Scrum! Other teams and organizations focus on the principles and values but not any other Product Management and Product Development techniques, and thus not being successful with Scrum!
By first focusing on principles and values, and then practices and techniques, you’re on your way to success with Scrum!

Learn the essentials of working as a ScrumMaster or Scrum team member