Our team at work has started to adapt to the scrum method for planning and implementing our deliverables. When it was first announced, I felt some level of shock on how things will be done differently. Coincidentally, I was in this headspace of being a student of life by studying something every night instead of doom scrolling on my phone 😓. And so, I decided that this topic will be my first subject to study on.

 

Product Owner - defines the user stories and the acceptance criteria in coordination with the customer, ; monitors the backlogs

Dev - picks up the dev tasks

Scrum Rituals are:

Sprint Planning - this is when prioritization and organization of the sprint logs are done; this is also when story points are assigned; Story points should be agreed by all the members of the team during the discussion. Stories are organized in order of priority in the backlog and devs/qas pick up tasks on top of the sprint log. Because of this setup, there would be a scenario that a member would pick up a task that is outside of their specialization. Based on scrum principles, this is intentional so that all members will be well-rounded in their projects and will have a wider perspective on the overall architecture where the team's projects reside.

Quoting from the book:

"While it's valuable to have the most skilled talent working on the stories that are most appropriate for their specialties, it's also valuable for a team to share knowledge, so that everyone has a clear sense of what's involved in developing and maintaining the whole product. This helps the team become more versatile, provides learning and growth opportunities, improves everyone's ability to estimate new stories, and prevents mission-critical information from being the exclusive responsibility of one person. Finding the proper balance of efficient development and knowledge sharing is up to each team."

Daily Standup - should span 15-30 minutes only; it is the Scrum Master's responsibility that this ritual is timeboxed correctly; no side-discussions should be done; 

Sprint Demo - quick demo of the stories deployed for the sprint; optional to invite customers during this ritual

Sprint Retrospective - What went well? What can be improved?

Scrum Artifacts:

Product Backlog
Sprint (usually has a 2-week long duration)
Stories
Burndown Chart
Story Points
Velocity Chart