Development Team, the Happiest People in Scrum
“Work hard first, get the best results later.”
The words above may be an appropriate sentence to describe how the Scrum framework works. I understood this when I was a member of the development team on the Scrum Framework for my PPL project. That is a new thing for me in developing an application and quite interesting to do. Although there are several roles in this framework, when application development starts, all roles support each other and keep everyone’s motivation, especially the development team, to keep working. Therefore, we need to understand Agile Software Development and Scrum itself.
Agile Software Development
Agile Software Development is a simple and effective process to turn a vision for a business need into software solutions. This methodology promotes continuous iteration of development and testing throughout the software development lifecycle of the project. As we can see in the picture above, agile is a software development process that accepts changing requirements at any time during the development of a product. Agile also aims to satisfy clients by producing software that is already working and regularly developed. In addition, direct communication is also the most efficient and effective way to convey information from and within the software development team. Typically, the development team regularly reflects on how to be more effective, then adapts to their work habits.
Agile software development emphasizes four core values
- Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
- Working software over comprehensive documentation
- Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
- Responding to change over following a plan
This means that while there is value on the items on the right, Agile values the items on the left more.
Scrum Framework
Scrum is an agile development method that concentrates specifically on how to manage tasks within a team-based development environment. Scrum has three roles/actors consisting of the Product Owner, Scrum Master, and development team. The product owner is the person who makes the requirements for a product. As in the comic above, the product owner can add requirements to the user story list. The development team is the people who carry out the tasks assigned to develop the software, while the Scrum Master is the person who manages the sprint.
In Scrum, there are user stories that are requirements needed for the software. Then there is the product backlog which is a repository where requirements are tracked with details on the number of requirements (user stories) to be completed for each release. Typically, the product backlog will be divided into several product backlog items, and product backlog items will be divided into smaller tasks.
Scrum has a process flow called scrum event. In my project, this process begins with the initiation phase to make a Mock-Up and set up Environment. Then, every two weeks, a sprint planning phase will be held wherein it will determine the point estimate/weight of each user story, breakdown user stories into smaller Tasks, and choose a sprint backlog related to the sprint goals set by the product owner.
After the sprint planning phase, the development team will run the sprint phase for two weeks to implement the sprint backlog that has been selected. During the running sprint phase, a daily standup meeting will be held to find out the progress of the sprint backlog and update the scrum board. At the end of the sprint phase, there will be a Sprint Review and Sprint Retrospective.
In Sprint Review, a software product assessment will be carried out based on the Product Owner’s Approval and Acceptance, while the Sprint Retrospective will assess how the team works during the sprint by discussing what has been learned and peer review. At any stage of the Scrum event, the product owner and other stakeholders can add any requirements to the product backlog. In addition, at the end of the scrum event phases, it will be checked whether the completed application meets the Definition of Done (DoD) of the application.
The above phases make the development team must have the motivation to work well and be willing to accept changes in existing requirements. Besides, this makes the members of the development team have to communicate with each other to avoid misunderstanding. However, the development team will be happy when the application has met the DoD and the Product Owner’s Approval and Acceptance for completing an acceptable application and has fulfilled the user story of the client.
Self-Management
We as members of the development team must have self-management in working on every sprint in Scrum development. Self-management is our ability to manage our behaviors, thoughts, and emotions consciously and productively. In MS Buncit team, we must have strong self-management skills to know what to do and how to act in different situations. This thing makes us able to maintain focus and stay productive. We know what we need to do to achieve our fitness goals, and we follow through.
In my opinion, the ability to self-manage is critical to the effective functioning of a team. We need to understand our responsibilities, goals, and what it takes to achieve them. It makes us can make better decisions and do our part to achieve the team objectives. There are several things we do to be able to maintain the ability to self-manage.
First, Goal alignment, each of us must understand the big picture, and align our own goals with our project. It will allow us to stay on track and maintain sight of what we’re working toward and of course, we can also give the best results in each sprint. Second, Strategic planning, we must understand what we need to do to support team goals. In every sprint, we also always choose a backlog that can be completed well. Third, Priority-setting, we always set priorities so we can achieve our goals in every sprint. We choose a backlog that meets the MVP first to be able to provide the main features desired by the client early. It allows us to develop key features if the client provides new feedback which is added to the application. Lastly, Self-care, The only person who can truly be responsible for our care is ourselves. We need to be at our best to do our best and if we don’t practice self-care, we begin to erode our capacity to contribute. In addition, we also need the ability to consciously access our thoughts, desires, and feelings can help us control our behaviors. We need to have this so that we are always in the best condition. This allows us to work at our best and not lose motivation to complete the tasks that we get.
There are several agile principles that affect our team, such as now we have followed the principle of “Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software” so that we will always try for every sprint review there are new completed things and can satisfy the client. We are now also very receptive to changing requirements as a result of using agile, even if it may hinder development for the customer’s competitive advantage. We follow the principle of “Deliver working software frequently” so that every sprint review there is working software that customers can try. In our group, the principle of “Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project” is very visible where we have to communicate daily with each other online to get the best product. In the end, we become more motivated and always reflect on how to be more effective and then adjust our behavior.
The scrum value that I feel in my team is that we have more courage to express existing problems and have discussions to solve them. We also have a focus on our work and a commitment to complete the task as much as possible. More importantly, the team members show respect and openness to each other so that we can be solid to work optimally.
Conclusion
Scrum, which is part of Agile Software Development, is an excellent iterative framework for developing applications with changing requirements. This framework promotes changes to the customer’s competitive advantage. The development team may have challenges to meet the needs of the product owner and DoD, but it will pay off when the application is successfully released and used by many people.
Reference
- https://agilemanifesto.org/
- https://scrumguides.org/
- https://www.guru99.com/agile-scrum-extreme-testing.html
- https://www.invensislearning.com/blog/what-are-scrum-ceremonies/
- https://medium.com/doku-insight/scrum-values-fa94892097a2
- https://www.agilealliance.org/agile101/12-principles-behind-the-agile-manifesto/
- https://www.betterup.com/en-us/resources/blog/what-is-self-management-and-how-can-you-improve-it
- Guidelines From PPL 2021
