Agile
Why Adopt the Agile Methodology?
According to a Standish Group Survey, approximately half of all software projects fail.
According to IDC research and a study done by QSMA Associates indicates:
Companies are embracing the transition to Agile in an effort to ship more frequently, have more predictability, establish consistent quality while delivering end-user satisfaction. These key benefits of Scrum enable you to be successful.
However, successful adoption lies in your ability to:
- Minimize effort on things that don’t provide value
- Maximize effort on things that are deliverable
Scrum projects manage uncertainty by keeping the development cycle (and scope) small. Project estimates for smaller scope are much more reliable than traditional methodologies.
The Key Scrum Concepts
- Requirements are written as short narrative descriptions called “Stories” or bug-fix requests
- Small teams (3-7 people) work in short “Sprints” (2-4 weeks) implementing in rank order
- Teams self-organize to best apply member skill sets (coding, development, testing)
- Team members collaborate to complete stories quickly, instead of working on separate stories in parallel
- At sprint end, completed stories are “delivered,” incomplete stories are not
The Key Scrum Roles
ScrumMaster
- Manages the process (enforces, tracks, expedites problem resolution)
- Runs daily Scrum & Sprint planning meetings
Product Owner
- Responsible for requirements (new features, bug fixes) and release dates
- Works with customers to define user-facing features
- Collaborates with engineers, QA, Services and Support personnel to work out implementation order
Team
- Self-organizes cross-functional members to implement and test features
- Usually software & test engineers, database architects, UI developers
