Advantages, Roles in Scrum - Document and Artifacts

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May 29, 2024

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Roles in Scrum

The Scrum team consists of:

• Product Owner
• Development Team
• Scrum Master

Scrum teams are cross-functional and self-organizing. Self-organizing teams choose how best to organize and accomplish their work. Cross-functional teams have all the competencies required to accomplish the work without depending on people outside the team. The team model in Scrum improves productivity, flexibility, and creativity.

1. The Product Owner:

The product owner is the only person responsible for managing the product backlog. The product owner is also responsible for the work of the development team and maximizing the value of the product.

Product backlog management includes:

• Distinctly listing the product backlog items.
• Prioritizing the items in the product backlog to achieve the best results.
• Ensuring that the product backlog is visible, transparent, and clear to all, and reflects the status of development.
• Ensuring that the development team understands the items in the product backlog.
• Ensuring the value of the work done by the development team.

The product owner remains accountable for backlog management even if management of the backlog is done by the development team. The product owner is a single person and not a committee. The team has to convince the product owner if they want to change the priority of a backlog item.

2. The Development Team:

The development team is responsible for developing and delivering a potentially releaseable increment at the end of each sprint. Organizations empower development teams to organize and manage their work. This improves the overall efficiency of the development team.

Development teams have the following characteristics:

• They are self-organizing.
• They are cross-functional and possess all the skills necessary to create a product increment.
• Regardless of the work performed by the person, all development team members are referred to as developers.
• Accountability is shared by the team as a whole even though individual team members may have specialized skills and areas of focus.
• Development teams are not further divided into sub-teams for testing or business analysis.

The ideal development team is big enough to complete significant work and small enough agile. Fewer than three development team members decrease interaction and may face skill constraints which might make it difficult for them to deliver increments. Big teams require a lot of coordination and are too complex for an empirical process. The team count does not include the Product Owner and the Scrum Master.

3. The Scrum Master:

The Scrum Master is a servant-leader of the Scrum team. The responsibility of the Scrum Master is to ensure that the Scrum team follows Scrum practices and rules.

The Scrum Master serves the Product Owner in several ways, including:

• Communicating vision, goals, and product backlog items to the development team with clarity
• Finding effective strategies for product backlog management
• Educating the Scrum Team to create clear and compact backlog items
• Practicing agility
• Promote Scrum events as needed or requested
  
  

The Scrum Master serves the development team in several ways, including:

• Teaching self-organization and cross-functionality to the development team
• Coaching and leading the development team in creating products of high-value
• Removing obstacles that hinder the progress of the team
• Facilitating Scrum events as needed or requested
• Coaching the development team in environments where Scrum has been newly introduced
  
  

The Scrum Master serves the organization in several ways, including:

• Leading and coaching the organization in Scrum
• Arrange for Scrum implementation within the organization
• Helping employees and stakeholders understand and work on Scrum
• Bringing about alterations that increase the productivity of the Scrum Team
• Working with other Scrum Masters to further promote the effectiveness of Scrum in the organization
  
  
  

Documents and Artifacts

Scrum artifacts represent work or value in different ways that are useful in providing transparency and opportunities for inspection and adaptation. Scrum artifacts are specifically designed to maximize the transparency of vital information needed to ensure the success of Scrum increments.

1. Product Backlog:

The product backlog is an ordered list of the requirements and features to be included in the product. It is the single source of reference for any changes to be made to the product. The product backlog lists all features, functions, requirements, enhancements, and fixes that need to be made to the product in the future. The product backlog is ordered by value, risk, priority, and necessity. The main characteristics of product backlog items are their description, order, and estimate.

2. product owner:

The product owner is responsible for the product backlog, including its content, availability, and ordering.

The product backlog starts with only the initial and best-understood requirements. It evolves as the product and the environment in which it will be used evolve. The product backlog constantly changes according to the product's needs to be appropriate, competitive, and useful. The product backlog exists as long as a product exists.

A product backlog can be called a living artifact as requirements keep getting updated. Changes in requirements, market conditions, or technology may cause changes in the product backlog.

Product backlog grooming is the act of adding orders, details, and estimates to items in the product backlog. This is done as a part-time activity during a Sprint and is an ongoing process in which the development team and the Product Owner review and revise the items in the backlog. The Product Owner may influence the development team by helping them understand and select trade-offs. However, the development team is responsible for all estimates. The items in the backlog can be updated at any time by the Product Owner or at the Product Owner's discretion.

The Product owner tracks the total work remaining to reach the goal at each Sprint Review and compares this amount with the work remaining at previous Sprint Reviews to assess progress. This information is made transparent to all stakeholders.

3. Sprint Backlog:

The Sprint backlog is the set of product backlog items that have been selected for the current Sprint along with a plan for developing and delivering the product increment and meeting the Sprint Goal. It is a forecast of the work that the development team plans to accomplish during the next Sprint.

The Sprint backlog is a representation of work that has to be done by the development team to meet the Sprint Goal. The development team modifies the Sprint backlog throughout the Gnrint and new requirements are added to it. The estimated remaining work is updated as and when it is completed. Unnecessary elements in the plan are removed. Only the development team can change its Sprint backlog during a Sprint.

The development team tracks the work remaining in the Sprint backlog daily and projects the possibility of achieving the Sprint Goal. The development team manages its progress in this way. The time spent working on Sprint backlog items is not considered and the only variables of interest are the date and the remaining work.

4. Sprint Burndown Chart:

The team monitors its progress using the sprint burndown chart. It is a leading indicator of whether it will meet its goals at the end of the sprint. The format requires teams to estimate daily the duration of each task in hours to chart the total remaining hours for the tasks not completed.

5. Product or Release Burndown chart:

The product burndown chart is also known as the release burndown chart and measures the team's velocity which is the rate of delivery of a stream of running, tested features over time. As features vary in complexity, effort, and time, a scale known as story PC ints is used to compare their size. The velocity of a team, who have worked together for a few sprints, can be established within a definable range. Product Owners use velocity to predict the output rate of the team for future deliverables. This results in credible release plans. The Product Owners thus use this chart to report progress, determine release dates, and predict release scope.

6. Impediment Backlog:

The impediment backlog is a current list of things that prevent the team from progressing or improving. A good Scrum Master will try to remove these obstacles within 24 hours of them being identified for the team to achieve the best results.

Advantages of Scrum

Traditional development methodologies are only designed to respond to the unpredictability of the development and external environments at the beginning of the cycle. Many new approaches have limited flexibility to respond to changing requirements once the project begins. The Scrum methodology. On the other hand, it is designed to be flexible throughout.

Scrum provides mechanisms for planning a product release and for managing variables as the project progresses. This enables organizations to deliver the most appropriate releases by making appropriate changes at any point in time. Scrum methodology allows developers to devise the most innovative solutions, as the environment changes and more learning happens. Small, collaborative teams of developers can share knowledge about development processes.