Scrum an agile process

IJRET: International Journal of Research in Engineering and Technology ISSN: 2319-1163
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Volume: 02 Issue: 03 | Mar-2013, Available @ http://www.ijret.org 337
SCRUM: AN AGILE PROCESS
K Selvi1
, Rana Majumdar2
Amity University, kselvi@nic.in, rmajumdar@amity.edu
Abstract
Developing flexible, robust and scalable application is the purpose. Current IT industry is growing in the fast pace and have to
survive in the competitive world by providing quality and time to market software. In order to sustain in the competitive world,
requirement changes very frequently Agile methodologies today provide mechanism to handle growing expectations of customers with
sufficient nimbleness to respond to changing market needs. Software development companies with its focus on innovation and value-
centricity has adopted and matured its software development and maintenance methodology around agile development techniques,
namely, Extreme Programming, Feature driven development and SCRUM. The purpose of this paper is to briefly introduce best
suitable agile process like Scrum and Extreme Programming for different kinds of projects depending the attributes.
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1. INTRODUCTION
Traditional software development methods strict to all the
phases of the SDLC cycle and also baselines the documents in
every phase which are not that much important to meet the
customer requirements and documentation
IT companies today have to overcome several challenges on
behalf of these organizations:
 End customers of such organization today have growing
expectations around product, services and customer
experience adding to complexity of software
development and management
 Customer need products and/or services yesterday and
expect consistent change around such product and services,
hence there is significant time to market challenge.
 Enterprise today have to demonstrate continuous
innovation with new product and services, hence they
suffer from unclear and evolving customer requirement
 Enterprise need agility today to respond to changing
market needs, IT organization‟s today have to be prepared
to handle portfolio of applications, realign initiatives,
shelves an existing initiative etc.
 With growing cost models, IT outsourcing companies have
to provide a way to demonstrate value centricity and
innovation on customer engagements.
Agile methodologies like Extreme Programming (XP) and
Scrum introduce a new approach to manage development
processes in a flexible fashion. Agile methodologies differ from
traditional way of development like it promotes communication,
self-organization, flexibility and innovation instead of extensive
planning and standard process.
2. AGILE METHODOLOGIES
Delivering IT Product consistently at rapid pace
Traditional methodology focuses on baseline requirement
specifications and its implementation in distinct phases,
resulting in limited customer involvement in development life
cycle and high cost of change. Agile overcome most of the
challenges by logically dividing the requirement (and devise
their specification) as per the customer and market need and
continuous seek the feedback resulting in improved product life
cycle.
Agile methodologies (SCRUM, Extreme Programming etc.) are
best suited for customer centric (or end user centric) application
sustenance and extension. Agile promotes a learning driven,
short interval, co-teamed and automated software development.
Agile focuses on delivering continuous build to production in
short iterations or sprints of requirement through
implementation, resulting in a customer feedback every 3-5
weeks and better alignment to customer expectations and
market needs. Agile also promotes automation in software
development thereby improving time to market of product and
services.
Table: 1 Comparison between Traditional and Agile
methodology
Traditional Agile (Scrum & XP)
Plan driven Feature driven
Release frequency,
commonly 6 to 12 months
Release frequency,
commonly 1 to 2 months
Frozen requirements Just-in requirements
Develop project in phases
based on process
Develop project with less
documentation
Integration at the end of the
code development
Continues integration of
the features
Separate testing phase Continues testing
High cost of change Low cost of change
More client involvement Less client involvement
3. SCRUM METHODOLOGY

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Scrum Definition
Scrum is a process for a project team which is based on
collaborative approach with incremental and iterative
development which always focuses to deliver a business value.
An Adaptation Iterative/Incremental Development
SCRUM is an adaptation of incremental and iterative
development technique; it deploys an empirical development
model where a system is build as series of incremental steps
called as Sprints. Usually sprints are development increments of
2-5 weeks duration, involving all the steps of software
development life cycle – requirement to implementation.
SCRUM initially plan the context and broad deliverable
definition, and then evolve the deliverable during the project
based on the environment. SCRUM acknowledges that the
underlying development processes are incompletely defined and
uses control mechanisms to improve flexibility.
Characteristics of SCRUM methodology are:
 The first and last phases (Planning and Closure) consist of
defined processes, where all processes, inputs and outputs
are well defined. The flow is linear, with some iteration in
the planning phase.
 The Sprint phase is a practical process. Many of the
processes in the sprint phase are unknown. It is treated as a
black box that requires external controls. Accordingly,
controls, in risk management, are identified each iteration of
the Sprint phase to avoid chaos while maximizing flexibility.
 Sprints are nonlinear and flexible. Where available, explicit
process knowledge is used; otherwise tacit knowledge and
trial and error is used to build process knowledge. Sprints
are used to evolve the final product.
 The project is open to the environment until the Closure
phase. The deliverable can be changed at any time during
the Planning and Sprint phases of the project.
 The project remains open to environmental complexity,
including competitive, time, quality, and financial pressures,
throughout these phases.
 The deliverable is determined during the project based on
the environment. [30]
3.1 SCRUM - CONCEPTS
Scrum is a software development process which focuses on
delivery the project with short span of time. Scrum process has
mid-level deliveries called sprints. Scrum consists of a basic
unit called sprints. Each sprint is an intermediate release. Each
sprint has resource and task plan.
The maximum life cycle of a scrum is 3 to 4 weeks. In a short
span of time customer is able to view the product which makes
to gain confident from the customer.
Scrum development method has a small team with combination
of technical, business and management people.
The phases of Scrum process
1. Pre-game
2. Game
3. Post-game/Closure
Scrum consists of many smaller releases called sprints. Sprint is
a part of the scrum release and it has the following phases
1)Sprint planning meeting: In this meeting scrum product
backlog is analyzed and product backlog (functionality) is
identified for the release of the scrum.
2)Scrum sprint meeting: Each day of scrum sprint, a meeting is
carried out to discuss the task carried out the day before and
the task to be done on that day.
3)Sprint development: In this phase design, development and
testing is carried for the identified product backlog.
4)Sprint review: In this phase testing is done on the incremental
functionality of the product and the decision is taken based on
the customer‟s feedback.
5)Retrospective sprint closure: Virtual closure of the sprint is
done and the identified sprint backlog is added to the scrum
product backlog.
Each sprint is carried out by following all the above phases of
the sprint. At last when all the sprints are done then final scrum
release takes place.
3.2 Team – Roles & Responsibilities
SCRUM team is generally managed by the SCRUM Master, the
team overall is responsible for estimation, reviewing product
backlog list and suggesting impediments removed from project.
Table: 2 Roles and Responsibilities of SCRUM
Role Key Responsibilities
Customer Participates in tasks related to product
backlog list

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Role Key Responsibilities
Management Makes final decision making along with
charters, standards and conventions to be
followed in project
Participates in setting of goals and
requirements
SCRUM
Master
Ensures that project is carried according to
the practices, values and rules of SCRUM
and monitor the project‟s progress
Interacts with projects team, customer and
management during the project & ensures
that impediments are removed. Selects
product owner
Product
Owner
Responsible for managing and controlling
the project and making visible the product
backlog list
Makes decision on task related to product
backlog
Estimates the development effort for
backlog items
Turns the issues in the backlog into features
to be developed
3.3 Challenges & Benefits of SCRUM
SCRUM is very intuitive and extremely demanding
methodology and poses following challenges to product
development process.
Co-Location: SCRUM requires business and technology teams
to work together and closely jointly owning the product and its
development. In typically, onsite/ offshore mode, it is quite
challenging and requires strong communication processes.
Enhancement centric: SCRUM is more apt for incremental
development or enhancement to base product, hence in typical
product development scenarios, a baseline architecture and key
infrastructure components needs to be developed before
practicing SCRUM methodology
Quality of Deliverables: SCRUM deploys time-boxing with
fixed date of deployment with trade off scope of the sprint. In
typical mindset, developers end up compromising the quality of
deliverable than impacting the scope to meet the timeline.
Hence, it is quite taxing and without sufficient checkpoint can
impact the quality of deliverables
Refactoring/ Design improvement: SCRUM preaches simple
design and refactoring subsequent releases, sometime in
mission critical applications/ products, this approach is not well
suited.
Automation: SCRUM can be best leveraged with extensive
automation and tools for deployment, build and testing, in
absence of tools/ automation, some of the best practices cannot
be deployed to its completeness.
While these challenges needs an effective management and
discipline, there are several advantages of SCRUM deployment.
 Customer focused: With disruptive transformation in the
industry, customer are challenged to respond to change
quickly to maintain competitive advantage, SCRUM
provide a native capability to managing changing
requirements effectively.
 Time to Market: SCRUM definitely score in quickly
produces something useful, keeps making useful
enhancements and hence very well suited to R&D
initiatives and high risk projects where continuous
customer feedback is critical to the success of project
 Higher Team Productivity: With continuous integration,
use of automated tools, avoidance of rework, SCRUM
usually improves the team productivity.
 Shorter Release Cycles: Hence minimal risk, very well
suite for R&D initiatives and innovative products that
needs customer feedback and insight on regular basis.
 Continuous feedback: And communication, avoids rework,
reduce the risk and improve the development productivity.
 Team unification: Promotes one team, one goal between
the business and IT teams, hence joint accountability/
enhanced acceptance and ownership of the product from
business.
4. EXPERTS VIEW
“Good people will make good software (even without agile,
SCRUM, or whatever)... mediocre and lower people will churn
out similar software even with their home-grown variety of
agile. However people doing agile as it were meant to... will
result in better products.”[29]
“Scrum introduces two really valuable differences from
unregenerate Waterfall, testing both ideas and partial results
with stakeholders like customers and end users, possibly via use
of surrogates, and very short cycles which take advantage of
seeing where you are going by facing reality early and often.
That is, collaborate with your customers, and watch what you're
doing and how well it is working.” [32]
Top 10 Reasons to use Scrum instead of Waterfall
10. Scrum enables rapid reaction to changing customer
requirements
9. Scrum teams possess all the required skills to get the job
done
8. Scrum teams incur less technical debt
7. Scrum improves communication
6. Scrum leads to better client relationships

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5. Scrum improves personnel satisfaction and commitment
4. Scrum reduces time taken to get product to market
3. Scrum produces higher quality product
2. Scrum succeeds by giving the customer what they need
1. Scrum increases productivity and lowers costs[31]
CONCLUSIONS
SCRUM is systematic, structured and robust methodology – for
small to enterprise project, it stretches the project management
and engineering practices to deliver the best, in shortest time
possible and continuously, hence avoid the rework and improve
team productivity. It is highly customer centric with joint
ownership, early planning and feedback to keep the IT team
aligned to business objectives and respond with market needs
appropriately. Automation is key to success for SCRUM and
some of the best practices like continuous integration and test
driven development can only be suited in automated mode.
SCRUM today provide extensive leverage to development
initiatives by improving the time to market and productivity.
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[29]Reference: Scrum smells on Mike Cohn's
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[32]Stackoverflow.com/questions /343162/is- Scrum-evil

Scrum an agile process

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