What Is Scrum Project Management? Definition, Examples & Tips

Scrum Project Management is a process that helps teams deliver high-quality products.

It is designed to help teams work together more efficiently and effectively, while also improving their ability to adapt to change.

 

 

What Is Scrum Project Management?

Scrum is a framework that can be used as a project management technique or as a product development methodology.

The framework consists of five roles, three events, and three artifacts. The five roles are:

1. The Scrum Master – This role focuses on the rules of Scrum and making sure they are followed by everyone in the team.
2. The Product Owner – This role focuses on the requirements of the product and making sure they are met by the team.
3. The Development Team – This role works together to build the product according to the requirements set by the Product Owner.
4. The Scrum Master – This role focuses on the rules of Scrum and making sure they are followed by everyone in the team.

Why Use Scrum Project Management?

 Scrum is a framework for managing work and tasks in a collaborative environment. It was developed by Jeff Sutherland, Ken Schwaber and Hirotaka Takeuchi to manage the development of products like games and business software.

Scrum is commonly used in software development, but it can be useful for any type of project that has a multitude of tasks to complete.

Scrum is designed to be simple and flexible enough to be applied to any type of project. It can be applied at different levels as well as for different purposes.

1. Projects finish faster

 Project managers know that projects finish faster when they have a good plan.

The same is true of software development. The more you know about your requirements up front, the more you can plan in advance and the more efficient your team becomes as it plans and executes tasks.

In software development, we call this process “requirements discovery”. It’s where we find out what our users need from the system, what features they want, what problems they’re trying to solve with our app and so on.

This is an iterative process that begins with interviews, then includes gathering user data from surveys and other feedback mechanisms all of which are best done by real people who know how to ask questions.

It’s important because it will affect everything about your project: how much time it takes to build, how much money it costs, how well it performs after launch, etc.

2. Scrum teams deliver higher quality results

A survey of Agile projects found that 71% of the respondents reported that their product delivered more functionality than they expected. The same percentage said their product was more reliable than they expected, and 68% reported that the time to market was faster than they expected.

Scrum teams are also able to respond much more quickly to changes in the marketplace or user needs, because they’re not trying to do everything at once.

They can prioritize work rather than doing everything even though some features may be delayed or dropped altogether.

The ability to adapt is especially important for software, where new technologies are constantly emerging and changing customer behavior is unpredictable. Scrum teams are able to incorporate new ideas into their development process without having to completely overhaul it every time something happens.

 3. Increase in project visibility

Project managers can now easily keep track of the progress of their projects. This is especially true for teams who work in different areas and have little to no interaction with each other.

The PMs are able to see what each member of their team has done, how long they worked on it and when they will be available again. All this information is available in one place and is easy to access at a glance.

4. Reduced time spent on communication

With the help of social media tools, you can reduce the amount of time you spend on communication by 80%. This means that instead of having to call someone every so often, you can just send them an email or message them directly on Slack or Trello.

This saves everyone time because there is no need to pick up your phone or walk over to someone’s desk just to ask them something small like “Do you know if we have any more pens?”

5. Simplified resource management

Simplified resource management is a method of managing resources in multi-tasking systems. The idea behind simplified resource management is to reduce complexity by making all processes share a pool of resources and a single global scheduler.

The main advantage of this approach is that it reduces the number of states in which a process may be found (e.g., ready, running, sleeping). A process can only be in one state at a time: ready or sleeping. Processes sleeping are considered waiting for some event to take place.

When this event occurs, the process wakes up and goes into the ready state where it waits for its turn on the CPU to execute one instruction. It then goes back to sleep until another event occurs.

This model allows for more efficient use of memory because processes don’t have to maintain their own private data structures such as stacks or registers.

6.  Reduced time to market

 The business benefits of using a framework include:

Reduced time to market.

Frameworks are designed to make it easier for developers to quickly create applications, so you can get your product to market faster than if you had to develop every feature yourself.

Improved quality of code.

By using frameworks, developers can focus on the unique aspects of their projects, rather than having to reinvent the wheel. This has the added benefit of reducing bugs and maintenance costs down the road.

Improved developer productivity.

Code reuse is one of the most valuable benefits that frameworks provide. It saves time because developers don’t have to write everything from scratch.

Reducing code duplication also makes it easier for developers to learn new frameworks because they already have an understanding of how similar ones operate.

7.  Higher return on investment (ROI)

 The ROI on the program is much higher than the cost of the program. This is because a successful program will help to reduce turnover, increase employee productivity and retention, and provide a better customer experience.

The ROI is calculated by evaluating how much money you would have made from having an effective onboarding program if you did not have one. Then compare that amount with how much money you actually made from having one.

For example:

If your company has 100 employees, each of whom cost $10,000 in lost productivity and training costs due to poor onboarding experiences, then the estimated cost of not having an onboarding program would be $1 million (100 employees x $10K in lost productivity).

If your company has an effective onboarding program with a 100% retention rate among new hires (no employee turnover), then it would be worth an estimated $2 million (100 employees x no lost productivity). That means every dollar spent on onboarding will yield an additional $1 in savings a 200% return on investment!

How to implement a successful Scrum team methodology in your organization?

 As a leader, you need to understand what is Scrum and how it can help your organization.

Scrum is a framework for developing products in short cycles and with quick feedback from users. In simple words, Scrum is an agile software development framework that focuses on maximizing productivity by encouraging self-organizing teams and fostering adaptive planning, prioritizing and adapting to change over following a plan.

You might have heard about the term “Agile” many times before, but have never understood what it means or how it benefits your business?

Agile is all about getting software developed quickly and with minimal costs so that businesses can get their products out faster and more efficiently than ever before!

1.  Educate your managers

 The first thing you need to do is educate your managers. It’s all very well for you to know how to do something, but your manager may not.

And if you don’t educate them, they will assume that you are doing it wrong.

Here are some things that I have learned over the years:

Don’t treat people like idiots because they’re not experts in writing code. It’s easy to forget that not everyone has been through school, college and university with a computer science degree.

The majority of people who work in IT have never programmed anything more complex than a VBA macro in Excel or Word. If they have programmed, it was probably many years ago when the only language available was Cobol or Fortran (or perhaps Java 1.0).

Forget about object orientation just tell them what needs to be done and let them get on with it. If you want something done, give them the tools and tell them what those tools can do and then walk away from them so they can get on with their job without being distracted by your constant questions about why they’re not doing things ‘the right way’.

2. Ensure cultural readiness

 In order to ensure cultural readiness, organizations must be clear on what they are trying to achieve and the impact they want it to have. For example, if an organization wants to increase their level of customer satisfaction by 10%, then this is the goal that needs to be defined.

Based on this goal, the organization can then measure progress based on whether or not they are achieving this goal and what actions need to be taken in order for them to achieve their goals.

In addition, there needs to be a solid understanding of what “culture” means within your organization. There are many different ways that culture can be defined; however, there are three main approaches:

Organizational culture – the shared values and beliefs that characterize how people perceive themselves as members of an organization, how they behave within their organizational role and how they interact with others within their organizational role

Cultural competence – an ability or capacity to perform effectively in a foreign culture because one understands its language and customs

Cultural intelligence – the ability (or inability) of individuals in a particular group or society to effectively adapt their behavior or thinking patterns in order for them to function successfully in another culture.

3. Identify a single product owner

 How do you know if your company has a product owner?

A product owner is the single person who is responsible for managing the roadmap and prioritizing work. The product owner role is often confused with that of a project manager, but it’s actually quite different.

A project manager may be involved in setting requirements and making sure that the team knows what needs to be built. But the product owner owns the vision for the product, which can sometimes be more important than any one feature or release.

There are many ways to identify a single product owner in your organization. If you’re starting from scratch, it can be difficult to figure out who should own the vision for each product.

Here are some tips:

Don’t have multiple people try to do this job at once. It’s too hard to keep track of everyone’s ideas, especially when they’re not all aligned with each other.

If there are multiple people trying to take on this role, figure out why they’re doing so. Are they looking for recognition?

Do they feel like they need more control over their work? Are they afraid that no one else will care about their ideas? 

4. Identify key team members (Scrum master, developer, tester)

 Scrum Master

The Scrum Master is responsible for the well-being of the team. This includes helping the team understand and follow the Scrum process as well as facilitating team interactions.

The Scrum Master does not manage people, but rather coaches and facilitates. The Scrum Master is a servant leader who works with the Product Owner but does not replace them.

Developers

The developers should be able to document their own work and explain what they have done in a way that makes sense to others on the team. Developers should also be ready to help other team members complete their work if needed.

Developers should be able to estimate their own work and be willing to participate in planning meetings and stand-ups as required by the Scrum Master or Product Owner. It is often useful for developers to have some knowledge of testing procedures so that they can anticipate issues that may arise when integrating their code with other parts of the system being developed by other teams or individuals.

Testers

The testers are responsible for ensuring that all requirements identified by the Product Owner are met by the development team. Their main goal is to ensure that no defects are released into an application or product on behalf of its users (internal or external).

5. Hold daily Scrum meetings

 Daily Scrum meetings are a key part of your Agile process. While they may sound like a simple waste of time, they’re actually an important opportunity to get everyone on the same page and make sure you’re making progress toward your goals.

The Daily Scrum meeting should be held at the same time each day. The best times are after lunch or in the morning before other meetings begin.

The duration of this meeting will vary from team to team; however, it should never exceed 15 minutes.

The meeting should consist of the following elements:

1. Review yesterday’s forecast

What was completed? What wasn’t completed? What went wrong? What went right? Was everyone present?

2.  Plan for today

  What tasks will be completed today? Who will complete them? Who needs help completing tasks? Any risks that need to be addressed before moving forward with work today?

3. Set a goal for tomorrow’s meeting 

What do you want to accomplish tomorrow and what steps do you need to take in order to accomplish that goal?

6. Gradually introduce new members to your team

 One of the best ways to make a new hire feel welcome and build trust is through gradual introduction. This allows you to show the new person around, introduce them to other employees and help them get up to speed.

You can also use gradual introduction as a way to break down barriers between team members who don’t know each other well or who come from different departments. You may want to gradually introduce:

• New hires with current employees in your department.
• New hires with other departments’ staff.
• New hires who are taking over responsibilities from an existing employee with an existing team.

What is Scrum Project Management – FAQ

Scrum Project Management is a framework for implementing Agile software development. It was developed by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland in the early 1990s.

Why is Scrum Project Management important?

Scrum Project Management is important because it provides a framework that helps teams organize themselves, plan their work, and manage their execution. It also allows them to adapt to change more quickly than other approaches, such as waterfall.

How does Scrum Project Management work?

In Scrum Project Management, there is one product owner who represents the customer’s interests. The product owner decides what features will be developed and when they will be ready for release.

The team works together toward this goal by following a set of agreed-upon rules:

The team decides how much work they can accomplish in each sprint (usually two weeks). They then prioritize their backlog into tasks that can be completed within that time frame, so the most important tasks get done first and smaller tasks get pushed down until later sprints or eliminated if they no longer matter to the project’s goals.

What does Scrum stand for?

 Scrum is a framework that helps teams deliver products to their customers at the highest possible quality. The framework consists of Scrum Teams and their associated roles, events, artifacts, and rules.

Scrum Teams are self-organizing and cross-functional. Self-organizing teams choose how best to accomplish their work, rather than being directed by others outside the team.

Cross-functional teams have all competencies needed to accomplish the work without depending on others not part of the team.

At regular intervals, Scrum Teams plan their upcoming work using a framework of events. These events are held in a way people more easily understand: Sprints, which are timeboxed periods of work;

Daily Scrums; Sprint Planning; Sprint Review; and Retrospective. The first event in this series is called a Sprint Planning Meeting or Sprint Planning Session (SP).

What is the difference between Scrum and agile?

 The difference between Scrum and agile is the time frame. Scrum is a methodology that focuses on projects of one to two weeks in duration, while agile methods are meant to be long-term and cross-functional.

Agile methods were developed to address the shortcomings of waterfall project management, which was the predominant approach to software development in the 1990s.

Scrum vs Agile: What’s the Difference?

The term “agile” refers to a range of software development methodologies based on iterative and incremental approaches. This contrasts with the traditional approach to software development known as “waterfall,” which involves sequential processes for each phase of development (planning, design, coding, testing, etc.).

The waterfall approach has many drawbacks, including a lack of flexibility since it requires all phases be completed before moving forward with any other phase. It also requires large upfront investments in planning and design before any actual coding begins.

Agile software development approaches focus on delivering working software early and often, treating requirements as they emerge instead of trying to plan them all up front. These approaches tend to emphasize teamwork and collaboration over individual roles or silos.

What are the 6 Scrum principles?

 The Scrum principles are a set of values that guide the Scrum Team. They are a Scrum Team’s commitment to the values of transparency, inspection, and adaptation.

The following is a list of the six Scrum principles:

Transparency – Transparency involves everyone having access to information, and being able to see what everyone else is doing. Transparency also includes everyone being available for questions and problems. When teams are transparent, they are more effective because they don’t waste time with misunderstandings or lost context.

Inspection – Inspection is the process of reviewing work products and results at frequent intervals during their development cycles. Inspections are done by both team members themselves and by other stakeholders outside their immediate group (such as customers or testers).

In inspection sessions, problems are identified, risks are managed, and improvements are made. Inspections also serve as checkpoints for progress so that teams know when they need to adjust course or take action on issues that have been identified during inspections.

Adaptation – Adaptation is about responding effectively to change over time by adjusting plans in light of new information or changing circumstances. Effective adaptation requires keeping options open until it’s time to commit resources to implement a specific plan. 

Is Scrum a project management framework?

Scrum is not a project management framework, but it can be used as one. It is a framework for adaptive projects.

In other words, it is not meant to be used on all projects.

In fact, Scrum was designed by Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber to help software development teams manage their work in an agile fashion. The concept was derived from the Agile Manifesto and iteratively developed over many years of experience with software development projects of all types.

The Scrum Guide defines Scrum as “a framework within which people can address complex adaptive problems” (emphasis added). Adaptive problems are those that change over time and cannot be easily predicted or controlled in advance.

These problems tend to be more common than the problems addressed by traditional project management methods because they are so difficult to predict or control.

What does “time-boxed” mean?

 Time-boxed is a term used in software development, particularly agile software development, to describe a process or activity that is limited to a specific amount of time. The term “time-boxed” is commonly used in the context of iterative and incremental software development methodologies.

In an agile software development project, time-boxing provides a way for teams to ensure progress towards their goals by setting aside specific time periods within which all tasks must be completed.

• Time-boxing can have many benefits, including:
• Ensuring that there is enough time allocated for each task or feature
• Ensuring that work doesn’t get stale while waiting for others to finish their tasks
• Providing focus on completing tasks within the allotted time period

What are the Scrum roles within an agile project management framework?

 The following list provides a high-level overview of the key roles within an agile project management framework:

Product Owner : The product owner is responsible for ensuring that the team delivers value to the customer. They are responsible for writing product backlogs and determining which items should be worked on next.

Scrum Master : The scrum master is responsible for ensuring that the team follows the rules and guidelines of Scrum. They act as a servant leader and help resolve conflicts within the team and between teams.

Development Team : The development team consists of all members who work on delivering software as part of an Agile project.

What is a “product backlog” and how does it work?

A product backlog is a prioritized list of features, enhancements and fixes that need to be done. The product owner uses the product backlog to guide the development team in what they should be working on.

The product owner also uses the product backlog as a way to show stakeholders, customers and other interested parties what they can expect in upcoming releases (or when they ask “when will this feature be done?”)

Product owners need a tool that helps them manage their product backlogs effectively.

A good tool will allow them to create, update and organize items in their product backlogs quickly and easily. It should also provide reports that help them see what’s coming up next for their team so they can make informed decisions about what needs to happen next.

What are user stories and how do they help with product backlog management?

 User stories are the backbone of agile development. They help you to define, describe, and capture your product backlog items in a way that makes them visible to the entire team.

When used properly, user stories can help you to keep your project on track and moving forward.

What is a user story?

A user story is a requirement for functionality or new features in your product. Typically, they take the form of “As a [persona], I want [something] so that [some benefit].” User stories are written from the point of view of someone who will be using your product as an end-user or customer.

User stories are usually written as short descriptions (often less than 20 words) that describe what a specific feature does and why it matters to users. By focusing on what a user wants instead of how it should be implemented, you can avoid spending time debating technical details before the feature has been fully designed or tested.

What is Kanban?

 Kanban is a lean methodology that helps companies achieve continuous improvement by focusing on reducing waste, limiting work in process and increasing overall throughput.

The Kanban Method was developed by David J. Anderson, who first applied kanban to software development while he was employed at Chrysler’s FCA US LLC. His goal was to improve the flow of cars from design through production.

Kanban is based on the idea that “work-in-progress” limits WIP should be set based on actual performance rather than estimates of capacity or time. It also focuses on improving team coordination and collaboration as well as reducing administrative overhead and other forms of waste (e.g., waiting).

What does the Waterfall model refer to?

The waterfall model is a sequential software development process that begins with the development of requirements and ends with user acceptance. The Waterfall model is the oldest of the three software development models, and it is widely used for large-scale applications that have long schedules and high costs.

In this model, each phase of development must be completed before the next phase can begin. This means that there are no backtracks or changes made during any phase; they must be made in earlier phases if necessary.

The Waterfall model is also known as top-down structured analysis because it takes a top-down approach to analyzing requirements, designing solutions, coding solutions, testing solutions and then making them available to users (bottom-up).

What are the most important Scrum keywords to understand?

 The Scrum framework is a collection of roles, artifacts, and events that are used to create and manage an agile software project. The framework was created by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland in the 1990s, with their first book published in 1995.

Scrum is a very popular agile project management methodology, used by many companies around the world.

Here are some of the most important Scrum keywords to understand:

Scrum Master: The Scrum Master is responsible for ensuring that the team adheres to Scrum processes and practices, as well as keeping track of progress. They also help remove roadblocks that may be hindering the team from completing their work.

Product Owner: The Product Owner represents the interests of stakeholders, who may or may not be involved in the development process. This person works closely with other members of the scrum team to ensure that they all have an accurate understanding of what needs to be built, how it will be built, and when it will be delivered.

Sprint: A sprint refers to a short period of time during which a specific goal is achieved through a set of activities (or tasks) that can be completed within that time frame. 

Scrum Project Management – Wrap Up

Project management is not an easy task. It requires a lot of time, patience and effort to manage it properly.

Scrum is one of the most popular project management methodologies used by organizations across the globe.

The success of a company depends on its ability to deliver quality products in time. In order to achieve this, you need to have a well-defined project plan and make sure that everyone involved in the project understands their roles and responsibilities.

With Scrum, you can achieve this goal easily because it has been designed specifically for software development projects.

Scrums are very flexible, which allows them to be adaptable to different types of projects.