Agile Manifesto and Principles

The Agile Manifesto, also called the Manifesto for Agile Software Development. The agile development manifesto represents the absolute cutting edge of the software development industry. It was created by representatives from Scrum, Extreme Programming, Adaptive Software Development, DSDM, Feature-Driven Development, Crystal and Pragmatic Programming. The Agile Manifesto is created as an alternative to traditional heavyweight, document-driven software development processes such as the Waterfall Model. Agile software development focuses on keeping code simple, testing often and delivering functional bits of the application as soon as theyre ready. In Agile project management process works as a team plays an important role. It has been proven that learning in group is very effective & the human interaction helps to accomplish great things. Computers and Books are important but individuals interaction by sharing experience via debating, discussing and feeding off of each others ideas is more important. It has four key values and twelve Agile Principles to guide an iterative and people-centric approach to Agile Software Development.
The values of the Agile Manifesto are: 1. 2. 3. 4. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools Working software over comprehensive documentation Customer collaboration over contract negotiation Responding to change over following a plan

The Agile Manifesto

Twelve Principles behind the Agile Manifesto helps to make clear what it is to be Agile Software Development: 1. Agile first priority is to fulfill the customer need from beginning to end and continuous improvement to ad into valuable software. 2. Agile allow change in requirements in the late in the development as well. 3. Agile works on delivering software regularly interval i.e. from couple of weeks to couple of month based on project. 4. Close, daily cooperation between business people and developers throughout the project. 5. Key point is to trust, support and motivate individuals to get it projects build on time. 6. Daily face-to-face conversation is key point in agile testing. This is most efficient & effective way of communication. 7. Measuring progress by the amount of completed work. 8. Continually seeking excellence 9. Harnessing change for competitive advantage 10. Simplicity 11. Self-organizing team come out with best architectures, requirements, and designs. 12. Regular adaptation to changing circumstances with more effective way.

Agile SCRUM
In few days back I have outlined points Agile values & its key principles in Agile Manifesto and Principles article. Today well talk about commonly used process for agile software development i.e. Scrum. Before start post let me tell you one thing that I always like to share practical knowledge, which can be useful to users in their career life.

What is Scrum?
Scrum is an innovative approach to getting work done in efficient way. It is iterative & incremental agile software development method. These iterations are time boxed with various iterations & each iteration is called Sprint. The Sprint is basically 2-4 week long & each sprint requires sprint planning estimation. According to latest surveys Scrum is the most popular agile project management methodology in software development. The term Scrum is formed from Rugby. Scrum is ideally used where highly emergent or rapidly changing requirements. Scrum is basically worked on a self-organizing, cross-functional team. In the overall scrum team there is no team leader who assign the task to team rather whole scrum members work as a team & they decides the task on which they will work on. Also the problem will be resolve by team. Each Agile Development Scrum team having three core scrum roles: Product Owner, Scrum Master & The Team. 1) Product Owner: The Product Owner is the person who represents the stakeholders and is the voice of the customer. Product owner writes the User Stories, ordered priorities and add in

the Product Backlog. It is recommended that Agile Scrum Master should not mix with Product Owner; both members should be different as each member having its own responsibilities. 2) Scrum Master: The ScrumMaster is a facilitative team leader who ensures that the team adheres to its chosen process and removes blocking issues to deliver the sprint deliverable/goal. Scrum Master is not a team leader but act as a shield for the team from external interferences & also removes barriers. ScrumMaster facilitates the daily scrums. 3) The Team: The scrum development team is generally size of 5-9 peoples with self-organizing and cross-functional skills who do actual work like Analysis, Design, Development, Testing, Documentation etc. In the start of every Scrum Sprint, the team members are committed to delivering few tasks from Scrum Product backlog. Over the sprint timeboxed the team work on developing, testing, integrating feature & end of the Sprint in the Sprint Review Meeting these functionality demoed to Product Owner & interested Stakeholders. In this meeting they can give feedback if any on developed product which could influence the next sprint. The main artifact in the Agile Scrum project is the product itself. The team is working efficiently on product to deliver shippable product after end of every sprint. The Product Backlog is place where all requirements are ordered and written in the user story format. These user stories are ordered & prioritized by Product Owner based on risk, business value, date needed, dependencies etc so that most valuable features picked in Sprint first.

Learn SCRUM Framework

In todays date SCRUM is considered as practical & more valued Agile methodology. It is easy to use & deliver incrementally high quality software on time & budget. In this article we will quickly take a look at what all steps involved in SCRUM framework like What is Product Vision, Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog, Daily SCRUM, A Sprint Burndown and Sprint Retrospective meeting etc.

Project Vision:
The goal of the project vision is to align the team around a central purpose. It is very important for the Agile SCRUM team to know what they are aiming for. Based on vision Product Owner creates ordered prioritized wish list. Requirements are broken down into User Stories by the Product Owner.

Product Backlog:

The Product Backlog is a ordered & prioritized list of item that all need to include in the product. It is dynamic & during the project items may added or deleted from this list. All items are ordered prioritized in this list. The highest priority items are completed first.

SCRUM Framework

Sprint Backlog:
In the Sprint planning meeting the team picks list of User stories from Product Backlog. These selected items moved from Product backlog to Sprint backlog. All sprint backlog user stories are discussed items from the product backlog and team member committed to complete the assigned task within Sprint Timeboxed. Each user story is divided into smaller detailed tasks. In Sprint team work together collaboratively to complete Sprint tasks.

Daily SCRUM:
The Daily SCRUM is not used as a problem-solving or issue resolution meeting. In the Daily SCRUM each of the team members should answer three questions:

What did you do yesterday? What will you do today? Are there any obstacles in your way?

In the Daily SCRUM team share the conflicts, obstacle or impediment faced in their tasks & any possible solutions on that. On daily basis this meeting holds on same time, same location hold by Agile SCRUM team. Ideally The Daily SCRUM is conducted in the morning which helps

to plan task for whole day. As Agile process & Sprint is time-boxed, similarly Daily SCRUM meeting should be time-boxed to 15 minutes max. In this meeting discussion should be quick and relevant. The SCRUMMaster always helps to maintain the focus of team to its Sprint goal.

A Sprint Burndown:
Sprint Burndown measures remaining Sprint Backlog items across the time of a Sprint. It is very effective visual indicator to get correlation between work remaining at any point of time & the actual progress of team. Prior to Daily SCRUM meeting, Sprint Burndown chart should be updated, so it will help to understand the progress of Sprint daily & makes any adjustments if needed.

Shippable Product:
The end of the Sprint can turn into an increment of potentially shippable functionality hand over to customer. This shippable functionality should be well-structured, well-written code, thoroughly tested and user operation of the functionality is documented. At the end of the Sprint features committed in Sprint are demonstrated to all stakeholders & they provide the valuable feedback to moving product in correct direction.

Sprint Retrospective:
At the end of each Sprint review and Retrospective meeting should be conducted to know what went good & bad in Sprint. Participants for this meeting is Team, SCRUMMaster & Product Owner(Listner). This meeting also timeboxed to 2-3 hours. Using this approach each team member is asked to identify specific things that the team should:

Start doing Stop doing Continue doing

Iterations are a key feature of the SCRUM process. In the next Sprint again team choose the chunk of User stories from the Product backlog & Sprint cycle started with new Sprint goals again. These cycles are continue doing unless and until Product backlog is finished or Deadline reaches or budget is used up. Agile SCRUM is ensure that all high priority task ordered top in the Product backlog so those can get completed first before the project ends.