5 Reasons to Try Scrum Today
Yes, Today!
Are you only given a short time to develop a system?
Is your client flooding you with loads of feature requests?
Do you have difficulties in setting a timeline?
Are you unsure of what went well in your team?
Are you unsure of what went wrong in your team?
If you answered “yes” to most of the questions, perhaps now is a good time to take a look into what is called the Scrum methodology.
Scrum is an agile framework for iterative product development, originally used for software development projects. The key feature of Scrum is their focus on iteration. Project development is done through a series of iterations until all the agreed product requirements have been developed.
So if you tried Kanban, Waterfall model or other development methods and none of them seem to be working out for you, here are 5 reasons to try Scrum today:
1. Measured Team Goals
As previously mentioned, Scrum methodology is done in a series of iterations. These iterations are called Sprints. Depending on the complexity of the project, the duration of a sprint can range from 1 week up to 4 weeks. By having sprints, the timeline for the project is easier to arrange.
Every sprint is always started with a Planning Meeting. During this meeting, the whole team will discuss and reach a consensus about the work load and the goal for the Sprint.
This is useful to the team because, not only everyone knows what the whole team is doing, moreover, the whole team is required to reach an agreement on the team’s work capacity and what are they capable to achieve together by the end of the sprint.
2. Reduced Ambiguity
Applying Scrum methodology in your project requires intensive involvement not only from the team but also from the Product Owner. Hence unclear requests or requirements can be minimized by having the Product Owner closely involved to the development process.
Scrum methodology encourages product requirements to be clearly defined and clearly understood by the whole team. It accommodates this through a process where the team, the Product Owner, and the ScrumMaster get together to add/split stories, clarify unclear and ambiguous issues and redefine the acceptance criteria; the process that is called Backlog Grooming.
3. Continuous Introspection
Being a part of the team, you can see the areas that your team excel at and the obstacles that slow down your team. However, not every project team take the time to sit down together to revisit their performance; even if they do, not all of them do this regularly.
Scrum methodology points out the importance of introspection. At the end of every sprint, there will be a Retrospective Meeting. In this meeting, every team member gets a chance to reflect and answer these three things: “what went well?”, “what went wrong?”, “what can we do differently to improve?”
This is a good exercise for the team. It allows everyone to share their point of view, hear their team member’s point of view. Also it is a great chance for the members that are not used to public speaking to have a go at it!
I personally enjoy it as a nice activity to cool down with at the end of the sprint.
4. Stay on the Track
Every morning during a sprint, team members will get together to hold a Daily Scrum Meeting. This activity requires the members to each share: what did they work on yesterday, what are they going to work on today and if there is any blocker/difficulties for their work.
Daily Scrum Meeting allows the team to understand what every team member is working on, what issues has or has not been done and it opens up opportunities to share knowledge. For example if a team member is struggling on a specific issue, and another team member that has experience with that issue is aware of the problem, then they can share their knowledge.
5. Minimized Obstructions
Another advantage of Scrum is having a ScrumMaster, a team member with a specific role of identifying and removing obstacles or impediments in the team.
A ScrumMaster is committed to identify and solve any blockers that may be hindering the team from reaching the Sprint goals. These blockers ranges from technical difficulties such as codes issues that a team member may be facing, all the way to non-technical issues such as working area in the office.
Another important task of a ScrumMaster is making sure that the team is not distracted by outsiders. It is possible that the clients are endlessly requesting new features or changes to the product and this can easily derail the team from the Sprint goals. It is the duty of the ScrumMaster to redirect the requests to the Product Owner, instead of to the team.
So those are 5 of the many reasons you should try Scrum for your project. I personally like Scrum because it strengthen the bond and chemistry of my team. Through Scrum, we are encouraged to improve our communications, we get to understand our team better and most importantly we get to deliver more features in a Sprint than we did before in the same amount of time.
Now it’s time for you to decide. You know what they say, you’ll never know until you try! :)
