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The Perks Of Agile Scrum Project Management
Know the Advantages of Using Agile Scrum Project Management Practices to Boost your Business.
Quick Overview: The blog will take you from Agile methodology and further within its Scrum process of executing things and achieving targets. Learn about the basic understanding of the Scrum process, including the people involved in implementing project management, how they do it, and what they use to accomplish their goal.
This blog will give you a sneak-peak in the Bacanceyer Agile Scrum Project Management methodology. I have tried to convey how we at Bacancy Technology follow the Agile methodology and practice Scrum project management for fast and accurate delivery.
Preface
I’m sure that the words ‘Scrum’ and ‘Agile’ are not alien to you. If you are from the IT software development industry, you are acquainted with the Agile software development methodology. However, there are people out there who aren’t yet clear with Agile and Scrum’s distinction.
With this article, I am here to justify how the scrum process is exceptionally beneficial for project management. Going beyond the theoretical explanation, I will share my personal experience of implementing Agile methodology at Bacancy Technology — my dream company.
Get hinged and read how we at Bacancy Technology fortified our growth, multiplied our clients, and developed a trust factor within our culture.
Clarification: Agile vs Scrum
When it comes to Scrum and Agile, things can be a bit confusing for beginners. Although both are utilized alternatively at the initial stages, you must know the difference between the two.
Agile refers to a specific set or range of “methods and practices based on the principles and values expressed in the Agile Manifesto,” which involves important points like self-organization, collaboration, and teams’ cross-functionality.
On the other hand, Scrum is generally “a framework utilized for implementing Agile Development.”
You can compare Scrum vs Agile to a recipe and a diet. Generally, a vegetarian diet carries a range of practices and procedures based on values and principles. A recipe for tacos can play the role of a framework that you can use to execute your vegetarian diet.
This relation is quite similar to the connection between diet plan and recipe, where Scrum is the process(recipe), and Agile is the particular manner(diet plan).
Why is Scrum Essential in Project Management
There are a plethora of reasons why Scrum is essential in project management. By using scrum project management, you can deliver your products with an added business value.
This process (scrum project management) is a technique for handling all the software delivery that falls under the shade of agile project management. Providing a lightweight model of the framework, scrum embraces progressive and iterative practices that further help the organizations to offer the working software more often.
This approach allows the software development firms to emphasize the work that holds more importance, thereby disintegrating it into small manageable chunks.
Scrum is entirely all about communicating and partnering among the people who need the work and carrying out the work. It revolves around providing more frequently and responding to the clients’ feedback, thereby enhancing the business value.
However, it takes steps, measures, adjustments, artifacts, and roles to shift from a general traditional project management approach to a scrum project management. Let us dive into a more detailed discussion on it!
Scrum Basics- People & Parts
There is a famous principle in the Agile world to understand people and their roles in a scrum project management team.
The 3355 Principle
The 3355 principle is fascinating. Scrum is or works as a framework used for handling and developing complex and complicated products via “view-and-tune.” It is a grouping or genre that follows agile principles and declaration. This incorporates 3 roles, 3 artifacts, 5 events, and 5 values.
To sum up, the roles, artifacts, events, and values are referred to as the 3355 principles of Scrum!
For working on a scrum project efficiently, it is essential to have a basic knowledge of the 3 roles of Scrum in brief. These are the one who is on the scrum team.
The 3 roles are,
The agile scrum methodology roles are explained below.
⦿ Product Owner: The product owner is someone who is in charge of the project. Those who are confused between a product owner vs project manager, they’re not the same. A product owner is held responsible at times when the methodologies do not follow an appropriate order. Having a crucial role in this project, a product owner is accountable for expressing his/her hopes that he wishes to see in the project. The total capacity to communicate effectively with the team falls on the shoulders of the product owner. He/she has an idea of the upcoming trends in that particular field and has the responsibility to enhance its growth.
⦿ Development Team: The vital work of the development team is to carry out the work processes effectively. A dedicated and skilled development team comprises a group of individuals who develop and deliver a project or product. Usually, a small team consists of 6 people that contain product testers, developers, and business analytics. However, to work efficiently, each of the members must have a common goal. This is why a development team must take the entire responsibility of a project when it fails and experiences success. Alongside, this team is expected to report each of their signs of progress during meetings to track the work.
⦿ Scrum Master: A scrum master is accountable for making sure that each team member analyzes the scrum and its roles. As the name suggests, the master acts as a coach to guide the team members. However, there is a vast difference between scrum master vs project manager. Paying attention to each of the projects, the master extends its help to manage the product backlog and generate methodologies to organize it. For efficient delivery, the master is held responsible for eliminating any of the obstacles that block the team’s progress. As a master, he provides solutions and new insights to the team members to solve nagging problems and develop innovative ideas.
3 Artifacts
Similar to the 3 roles, the next that comes in the 3355 principles is the 3 artifacts.
✰ Product Backlog: product backlog is a list of functionality that stays attached to the product. Prioritized by the product owner, the backlog helps the team focus and work on the essential features.
✰ Sprint Backlog: sprint backlog is a highlighted list of tasks that need to be completed by the team throughout the sprint.
✰ Product Increment: the series of iterations, also known as sprints, are essential for the efficient delivery of the product. By the end of each sprint, the team comes with an improved and enhanced product increment.
Next in the line comes the 5 events of the 3355 principles. At Bacancy Technology, we follow these events in the right order and gain a strategic win over completing the project on-time. You may consider the following Agile project management scrum step by step with examples of our work functions.
➼ Sprint: An Agile sprint is a prearranged time frame that is allotted to the team members to complete the backlog tasks.
➼ Daily Scrum: daily scrum helps keep track of the work carried out by the team of members. Additionally, the members share their work the day before and the one they will do now.
➼ Sprint planning meeting: at the initial stages of a sprint, a planning meeting is held to discuss work that needs to be done. The planning meeting consists of the product owner and the team. This process in itself is sprint project management.
➼ Scrum review meeting: at the end of a particular sprint, this review meeting is conducted to get feedback from the product owner to review product.
➼ Scrum retrospective meeting: again, at the end of a particular sprint, the development team participates in a retrospective meeting to cast back on end and spots the possible opportunities for improving the next and new sprint.
Our team has adopted these five core values, which strengthen our culture and trustworthiness retains.
⦿ Openness: We follow an open environment where everyone gets equal opportunities and unbiased feedback. This clarity helps the team members work better together.
⦿ Courage: Our team members are confident about their actions, and they speak-up whenever needed.
⦿ Respect: In the Agile scrum methodology workspace, there is no space for personal grudges or internal-issues. Each member respects every other fellow-member.
⦿ Focus: The iterative process of the Scrum project management helps the team focus on their common goal.
⦿ Commitment: The scrum sprint’s speedy development keeps every team member committed to their roles and duties.
Finally, as I complete explaining the 3355 principle, let me tell you why I recommend it. This principle leads us to maintain the 3 Scrum Pillars: Transparency, Inspection, and Adaption. These virtues are essential ann core-aspects of any Agile team.
The Benefit of Scrum Project Management
The benefits of the Agile Scrum framework are immense. I’ve mentioned the major ones here.
✤ Quality: A specific project, when done, the first thing that strikes the eye is quality. Scrum offers the best framework for consistent feedback and exposure to ensure that the quality is top-notch always. By defining, investigating, regular improvements, and alterations, the end product still has a high-end quality.
✤ Improved ROI: because scrum helps decrease time to market, it improves and enhanced ROI(return on investment). The early accumulation helps in bringing higher total return over time, thereby increasing return on investment.
✤ Decreased Time-to-market: compared to the traditional methods, scrum has proven to offer value to the end customer 30–40% faster, hence reducing TOM( time to market).
✤ Higher customer satisfaction: as the scrum teams are dedicated to providing top-notch quality products, it automatically offers higher customer satisfaction.
✤ Higher team morale: having a happy and healthy team creates space for improvement and rewards. Being self-managing and self-organizing, the scrum helps boost the team members’ overall confidence by delivering excellent products and services.
✤ Increased collaboration & ownership: when the development team takes responsibility, their cooperation and partnership can yield brilliant results. The team collaborates and takes ownership of the performance and the quality of the product through different practices.
✤ Relevant metrics: the metrics that are used by the scrum team are 10x times more relevant and accurate as compared to the traditional approach. Helping estimate cost, time, making decisions, and measuring the performance, scrum offers relevant metrics.
✤ Progress visibility & exposure: in the scrum team and project, each member holds the right to know the project’s progress and details. Transparency and visibility help them to spot the issues more finely and solve them at the earliest, thereby promising top-quality end products. Anything hidden can be a disadvantage.
✤ Increased project control: the scrum team has many gateways to control and manage the project performance. This, in turn, helps them to make alterations and corrections as necessary.
✤ Reduced risk: scrum reduces a lot of trouble in terms of project failure. Many people ask me, “how do you manage risks in scrum projects?” I’d say, as it invests a massive amount of time and money with no ROI, it offers excellent products and entirely focuses on improvement and betterment. There is no chance of failures 99% if the team follows a set of practices and methods.
Importance of Iteration & Improvement
One of the essential characteristics of Scrum that makes it extremely powerful and robust is the objective of iteration and improvement. At the end of each sprint, the end product must be ready to deliver to the client. This does not mean it should be completely prepared, but it must be enough to show a part of the MVP(minimum viable product). This is important because it helps the team collect and an idea of what the client is looking for. By collecting feedback, they ensure satisfactory development.
Investing hours in a project is enormous. And if the product does not satisfy the client, it is terrible. This is why it is vital to go through this process. Rather than delivering the entire project, when you provide parts or chunks, it helps you to avoid all the efforts that might have chances to get wasted.
Apart from this, scrum even helps to improve the product by focusing on creating new cycles. During the retrospective meeting, each team member speaks and comes up with queries that could hamper the project. A healthy discussion can help in improved efficiency of the product. If a team member is overloaded with tasks, the whole team may decide how to manage them and solve complex issues. By discussion also creates space for improvement of the next Sprint. Once they get hold of one sprint’s mistakes, they can easily focus on the next sprint’s betterment, thereby decreasing and shortening the possible chances of any risks.
Postface
I promote and recommend Agile Project Management with Scrum practice because I have seen what difference it makes in the results. I firmly believe that we must accept Agile as the mandate manner of undertaking IT projects. An IT organization without Agile implementation is comparable with a Pizza without Cheese! Who’d like that?
Originally published at https://www.bacancytechnology.com on March 3, 2021.
