SCRUM – a few things to know

Overview

1. The Scrum Team presents the “Done” features to the Product Owner and stakeholders (Prototype of what has been completed).
2. Functionality not “done” is not presented. Only show what has been completed for the current sprint.
3. Feedback generated by stakeholders is recorded.
4. The Product Backlog is updated and reprioritized.
5. The Scrum Master sets the next Sprint Review.

Scrum Master

1. The Scrum Master holds daily team meetings. These daily Scrum or stand-up meetings should not exceed 15 minutes;
2. The Scrum Master is responsible for removing team and project obstacles. They help the team to keep working by removing things that may slow down the velocity of the team and shields them from external interference;
3. The Scrum Master maintains the Sprint Burndown chart (with information from the daily scrum meetings);
4. The Scrum Master conducts Sprint retrospective meetings at the end of each sprint to find out what worked well, what didn’t work, and what we could change or try next time;
5. The Scrum Master is a facilitator. They are great as a leader or a coach, not a Manager.

Product Owner

1. The Product Owner is accountable for the product’s success. On Traditional teams, this would be performed by the Business Analyst;
2. The Product Owner is responsible for defining the product features (with the help of the sponsor, scrum team, SMEs, and other stakeholders);
3. The Product Owner is responsible for maintaining the Product backlog and prioritizing the product features within that backlog;
4. The Product Owner facilitates planning sessions and activities to help assign business value to the features in the Product backlog; and
5. The Product Owner works with the scrum team to deliver the highest valued features first.

Scrum Team

1. A Scrum team is cross-functional meaning a group of people with different functional expertise working toward a common goal that usually consists of 5 to 9 people;
2. There are no set project roles within the team, you volunteer for the work you can accomplish. Everyone on the team should be working at something within a set timeframe (sprint);
3. The team defines the tasks and assignments to be completed for a given sprint. The team is self-organized and self-managed. The team decides what to complete during a sprint instead of being told what to work on;
4. The team maintains the sprint backlog. They are responsible for determining how to complete the items from the sprint backlog and assigning story points for each item in the sprint backlog; and
5. The team is responsible for conducting the sprint review. The team will approve the activities to be completed for the upcoming sprint.

Backlog

1. The backlog contains a list of all desired product features;
2. The backlog can contain bugs and non-functional items;
3. The Product Owner is responsible for prioritizing and maintaining the product backlog, but items can be added by anyone at any time;
4. The prioritization of each backlog item can change after each sprint and should be assigned a value; and
5. The product backlog is used to create a sprint backlog used during the next sprint.