Quick introduction to Agile Scrum

1. Agile &
Scrum*
* A scrum is a team pack in rugby where
everyone in the pack acts together to
move the ball down the field of play.
Disclaimer: Most materials are based on presentations by Mike Cohn from

2. The agile manifesto
• In February 2001, 17 software developers met at the Snowbird, Utah resort,
to discuss lightweight development methods. They published the Manifesto
for Agile Software Development to define the approach now known as agile
software development.
• “That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on
the left more.”
Process and tools
Process and tools
Individuals and interactions
Individuals and interactions over
Following a plan
Following a plan
Responding to change
Responding to change over
Comprehensive documentation
Comprehensive documentation
Working software
Working software over
Contract negotiation
Contract negotiation
Customer collaboration
Customer collaboration over

3. Origins of Scrum
• Scrum emerged back in 1995 (even before the definition of “Agile”).
• Scrum was specifically designed to deal with:
• Ziv's law - specifications will never be fully understood.
• Humphrey's law - the user will never know what they want until after the
system is in production (maybe not even then)
• Wegner's lemma - an interactive system can never be fully specified nor can
it ever be fully tested.
• Scrum defines a set of roles, ceremonies and artifacts which together
form the Scrum process.

4. Scrum framework
•Product owner
•ScrumMaster
•Team
Roles
•Sprint planning
•Sprint review
•Sprint retrospective
•Daily scrum meeting
Ceremonies
•Product backlog
•Sprint backlog
•Burndown charts
Artifacts

5. Product owner
• Define the features of the product
• Decide on release date and content
• Be responsible for the profitability of the product (ROI)
• Prioritize features according to market value
• Adjust features and priority every iteration, as needed
• Accept or reject work results

6. Scrum Master
• Represents management to the project
• Responsible for enacting Scrum values and practices
• Removes impediments
• Ensure that the team is fully functional and productive
• Enable close cooperation across all roles and functions
• Shield the team from external interferences

7. The team
•Typically more than 4 (ideally 5-10)
•Cross-functional:
• Programmers, testers, user experience designers,
technical writers, etc.
•Members should preferably be full-time
•Teams are self-organizing (Ideally, no titles …)

8. Product backlog
• The requirements
• A list of all desired work on the project
• Ideally expressed such that each item has value to the users or
customers of the product (user stories)
• Prioritized by the product owner
• Reprioritized at the start of each sprint

9. The Scrum Process
• During each sprint, the team creates finished portions of a product. The
set of features that go into a sprint come from the product backlog,
which is a prioritized list of requirements.

10. Sprint Planning Meeting
Sprint prioritization
• Analyze and evaluate product backlog
• Select sprint goal
Sprint planning
• Decide how to achieve sprint goal (design)
• Create sprint backlog (tasks) from product
backlog items (user stories / features)
• Estimate sprint backlog in hours
Sprint
goal
Sprint
goal
Sprint
backlog
Sprint
backlog

11. Managing the sprint backlog
Ideally the team is self organizing and able to:
• Individuals should be able to sign up for work of their own
choosing
• Estimated work remaining is updated daily
• Any team member can add, delete or change the sprint backlog
• If work is unclear at planning time, define a sprint backlog item
with a larger amount of time and break it down later and update
work remaining as more becomes known