What is agile scrum (sprint) process?
Scrum is a software development process. In today’s rapid world stakeholders want immediate return on their investments. They don’t want to wait for longer periods to get full featured product. As a result, nowadays new software development and testing framework is catching momentum i.e. Scrum approach.
In scrum, projects are divided in small features to be developed and tested in specific time-frames called as sprint (small cycles). Features should get developed and tested in specified small time-frames. This agile scrum team is handled by scrum master.
Scrum is an iterative, incremental framework for projects and products or application development. Scrum has become more and more popular software development and testing framework among organizations. Many small to large sized IT companies have started to embrace Scrum framework, as this can create excellent quality products in less time than other traditional methodologies. This framework can save companies both time and money.
Source: ScrumAllianceSoft Skills for a Scrum Team:
What Soft Skills are required to be a Successful Scrum Team?
When we start our regular (Agile) sprints (Cycles of work), we usually find some of the challenges with our team members. These challenges are not part of technical difficulties. It usually occurs with team member’s mindset or their soft skills. Many successful Scrum projects taught us that the success of scrum depends on how team members support whole heartedly towards the Sprint.
Let us discuss some of the pre-requisite soft skills for a Scrum Team.
Team Spirit
Cross functional Team work is at the heart of Scrum. There is no “my work”, “I have finished my work” and “your work”. On a Scrum team we find only “Our work”, “we have completed our Sprint”. Individuals will have helping tendency for sharing technical knowledge. Scrum Members are always available to team members rather than locked away behind closed doors. Scrum Master will always motivate the teams and create a Supporting learning environment. Team will always be sprint-oriented and often discuss smooth run of the sprint. A scrum team’s job is to self-organize around the challenges and management’s job is to remove impediments to self-organization.
Communication
Good communication must exist among team members of development team, testing team, business analysts and stake holders. There must be highly collaborative interaction between client and the delivery teams. More client involvement implies more suggestions or changes from the client. It implies more bandwidth for communication.
Commitment
Agile Teams needs periodic re-energizing to renew their commitments to their purpose and to each other. Scrum Masters can help by ensuring that the team embraces the concept of whole-team responsibility and whole-team commitment to deliver working software at the end of each sprint. With the whole-team commitment, the team member who has completed his tasks will help the one who has not completed so that hopefully each finishes on time.
Problem Solving
Scrum does not simply focus on developing just any type of end product. Instead, the Scrum method allows the team to focus on creating a product that fulfils the customer’s highest value priorities which are defined by product owners.
Transparency
Transparency among team members and management gives a real momentum to the scrum team. Scrum Master encourages people to ask for help, surface roadblocks, and give public recognition for those brave enough to do so. At the same time, Scrum Master also understands the time wasted and impact on the team when individuals sit on or ignore problems.
Scrum Result
If scrum team follows some of above said soft skills, team velocity will increase significantly. In turn, customers will appreciate the results or updates – and also can react quickly to any potential problems. Team can deliver high value software features in a short time period keeps everyone on top of changing business conditions.
About Author: J.B.Rajkumar is a Certified Scrum Master (CSM) and he has rich experience in Agile/Scrum framework. He has worked as Corporate Trainer, Project Lead, QA Manager and QC Manager. He has implemented Scrum in no. of projects in his current organization. He is a frequent speaker on Agile/Scrum for International Conferences, Colleges, Universities and Software Industries. He conducts training on Scrum and Agile Testing. Presently he is with Automation Practice, in one of the top MNCs.
If you have queries about agile/scrum/sprint software development and testing process then please ask in comments below.
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27 comments ↓
As a Testes what are the roles shuld follow.
Very informative article, i like it a lot.
I am a Business Analyst previously a Black Box Tester.
Black Box Testers have not so much technical knowledge that they can help devs. So what should be the approach of a black box tester in a Scrum Team?
Help other testers to finish off the Sprint within time.
Can you please brief what are the testing methodology we should follow in Scrum Software development process
Agile Scrum processes are very effective methods for delivering quality features quickly if managed effectively.
My story of sprint development:
Initially we were following traditional waterfall methods to develop a complete feature rich product in one shot. Deadline for this was 1 year. But when 6 months passed we realized we are lagging behind schedule. But it was too late to recover and we hit badly by stakeholders.
Then we revisited the project plan, discussed it with stakeholders and came to the conclusion of Sprint development.
Now we are successfully delivering the product features within short duration of time of 2-3 weeks. This is adding huge benefit to stakeholders and they are happy with current work now.
Thanks to agile scrum and sprint!
useful one
How do you handle the cost control and is it handled by the scrum master?
Very well said, but i also i want to understand from Testing point of view, where we fit in?
Scrum Team consists of 5 to 9 members. (Eg.) In a 7 member team, there may be 4 developers 2 testers and 1 Scrum Master(cross-functional). In the team, there is no hierarchy like Manager/Senior/Junior. Everybody belongs to Scrum Team and everybody works towards the goal. If a dev guy is good in automated testing scripts, he will help in testing area and if a testing guy is good in developing UI part, he will support for that. There is no sepeate testing phase as in waterfall. One Sprint consists of Designing, Developing,testing, implementing and releasing of highly prioritized features.
I am a test engineer. Very recently our team moved into Scrum process. In the scrum team I am purely doing QA related work only. I want to know what kind of QA related documents we need to maintain in a sprint.
@ Rajkumar–What is benefit of using Sprint or in other word what is objective behind adopting Sprint??
@ Vishal
1. It saves time and cost
2. More Team collaboration
3. Better quality product
4. Ultimately Customer will be more happy for early working product.
5. Defects will be visible in the early stage
Nice collection!I am really very impress with your post.Thanks for the share!Waiting for your next upcoming post.
Hi
could you please provide your feedback as what to be followed for software tester ( Freshers )
Nice work. Really a nice article which drive us in clear road on SCURM. Thanks to J.B.Rajkumar.
Wishes…!!!
Hi,
Nice article
. However, my tiny brain is looking for more logic behind this method.
I agree with the fact that if a bunch of members that include the testing and the development arena work together, a transparency builds up and it is really helpful to sort out matters.
If I take an example where my project deals with a website (to be built from scratch), how do you think the scrum approach can be applied?
If there are say ‘N’ modules and you intend to develop and test each module separately, I believe that the integration process may encounter more issues than ever.
In short, my question would be “Is this approach better to be used for smaller projects or can this be used for any kind of project or is this approach better to be used only when we have less time in hand and a bigger thing to be delivered?” I may have gone wrong in understanding the details in depth but any information on this would be highly appreciable
…
Thanks in advance..
Thanks in advance
…
@Sumeet
1. Scrum can be applied to any size of software/product. There are lot of success stories while implementing scrum in large projects than small projects.
2. Integration need not be happened only at the end. If A and B need to integrated before C started, it can be done. Its only team’s (consensus) decision when can it be done.
3. “less time in hand and a bigger thing to be delivered” … Scrum team should not bring the project into this situation.
That was helpful. Thanks a ton sir
…
This article is good to get acquianted to Agile methodology. But i landed into certain confusion.
How is agile methodology different from Spiral and other incremental models ?
Please clarify.
hey , nice blog , like it ,
won’t be nice if i u can clickover to my blog page too ,
& post some suggestion
Hey Guys,
Could you please give me the list of roles andresponsibilities of Teast Lead on Agile dev process.
Hey Guys,
Could you please give me the list of roles and responsibilities of Test Lead in Agile dev process?
Please give me the different types of test cases & explain?
What is an exact role of a tester? What are the documents he has to prepare? Please explain it in detail….
– embrace each other with warm welcome.
– don’t forget to write appreciate word for eachother work.
- last but not least clear and anticipated communication
HI Could you pls explain about Agile/XP SDLC
Can anybody send me a Agile model or any flow chart?
will agile scrum model gives a better quality product. how its quality factor is different from other models
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