Project Management: Scrum
Key learnings about the Scrum methodology of project management and team management
Scrum is a specific (very popular) version of agile project management. It’s so popular, in fact, that many people conflate Scrum with agile itself.
Scrum’s main differentiator from other agile methodologies is that the product is built in a series of short, fixed-length sprints, giving a framework for shipping on a regular cadence. The goal is to energize and focus the team with these iterations.
Scrum Principles
Note: These principles are the ones specifically listed in the Salesforce Trailhead module for learning Scrum.
- Focus
- Courage
- Openness / Transparency
- Commitment
- Respect
These principles are more overarching agile principles.
- Aim to produce quality work over quantity of work.
- Projects that are WIP are waste
- Swarming / Dog-piling -> Teams coming together to finish the last 20% of work to get something over the finish line
Scrum limits the capacity by focusing on a sprint-long section of the backlog.
Scrum Roles
- ScrumMaster
- Keeps everyone accountable to their commitments
- Manage/Adapt team’s delivery process
- Build sense of community
- Remove roadblocks
- Protect team and Sprint scope from increasing once the Sprint has started
- Essentially like a Project Manager for the team with increased responsibilities
- Product Owner
- Should be a single person, not a series of people (for a given single product)
- Responsible for the what and why of the process
- Prioritize the product backlog, making sure that the most high-value work gets done when it should
- Defines direction for the team
- Not a Project Manager; this role is more high-level, focusing on collaborating with the executive team on translating the overarching desires of the company into tangible work for the engineering team
- Teams
- Cross-functional
- Autonomous
- Well-versed Generalists do well here, reducing silos of knowledge and bottlenecks
Scrum Elements
- Product Backlog
- Work that is possible, not all work to be completed
- Doesn’t mean that this work will be done, but work that could/should be done
- Varying levels of details
- Product backlog is meant to protect the team. If a stakeholder comes to team and wants them to work on high-priority item right now, Scrum says, “Nope, put it in the backlog and it’ll get prioritized next sprint.”
- Sprint Backlog
- Work that will be done during the current sprint
- High-priority items taken from the product backlog
- Potentially Shippable Work
- Their work isn’t always shipped at the end of a sprint, but should be shippable
- Focus on outcome, not output
Scrum Meetings
Meetings in Scrum are meant specifically to produce action items and not waste time.
- Planning Meetings
- Inspect and Adapt Meetings
- Retrospectives should be focused on the process and the team
- Sprint demos happen each sprint