How to use the scrum to maximize the effectiveness of your agile team


We talked about the concept of the scrum, a component of the agile development methodology in a previous article. To summarize, a scrum is a collection of activities as well as a group of people that are important to the development of a given project.

In other words, all members of a team that will be responsible for any project for a client come together to accomplish various aspects related to the objectives at hand and the desired end result. As we mentioned in the first article talking about the scrum, it serves to organize the sequence that will allow us to complete the project, as well as make sure that each necessary step leading towards the completion of said project is accomplished.

In this post, we want to dig a little further and take a closer look at the various elements of the scrum to learn how they should proceed.

First, let’s look at one of the main elements of the scrum, the daily scrum. The first thing to know about the daily scrum is that it should not be long. If it drags on, we lose a lot of the efficiency that it is intended to improve. So 15 minutes is all that is needed to perform a productive daily scrum. What has been done so far, what will be done in the day, and what problems we are facing, are topics that will be discussed during those 15 minutes.

If the daily scrum is the moment when we discuss the project, sprints refer to the moment when tangible work gets done. The sprint is in essence a period in time that can vary from one to many weeks in length. The first step is planning the sprint. Sprint Planning aims to establish project priorities and happens between the Product Owner, the Scrum Master, and the various teams participating in the sprint. The goal is to establish the priorities of the project that must be accomplished during the upcoming sprint.

Then comes the sprint review, which is used to ensure that the work that was to be done during the sprint has actually been accomplished. Finally, there is a scheduled time to review the sprint and try to find ways that the work could have been done more effectively, or review some elements of the sprint that did not work as expected.

All this allows all project participants to know where we are in the project to improve communication and understanding of the different tasks that are necessary for the positive outcome of the project. The idea is to maximize cooperation between the various parties involved.

For the customer, it is easier to be kept informed of the level of progress in the project and ultimately get a product that will meet their needs and will be delivered on time while ensuring the profitability of the project for the company.

 

Conclusion

Obviously, each company will have its own approach and can make its own twists to the techniques and processes described above. The important thing is not necessarily to strictly follow each step, but rather to ensure that at each step of a project, we are maintaining good communication between internal teams involved in a project and the client.

The application of the scrum methodology and the ensuing sprints, are some of the processes in place at Solution Médias 360 that allow us to quickly deliver our products and, above all, to exceed the expectations of our customers.

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