by Qambber Hussain Syed

Created on: October 27, 2009

Scrum is an agile development methodology and follows an empirical process instead of a defined process. This means that there is no real law governing how the development would take place before hand rather the development is continuously inspected and steered in the correct direction based on the inspections.

A good starting point to understand the scrum process is to undertant the contained a set of practices and pre defined roles:

== Roles in Scrum ==

The following roles are used in Scrum

1). Product Owner: represents stakeholders and is responsible for choosing what work is to be done and in what priority based on business demands and perspectives.

2). Scrum Master: facilitates and manages the scrum process and ensures smooth working of the team. Scrum master also protects the team from and external influences and resolves any problems/impediments faced by the team for the fulfilment of their sprint goals.

3). Team: is a cross functional group of 5-9 individuals who to the actual development work.

== The Scrum Process ==

Development in a scrum process is done in terms of "Sprints". A sprint is typically a 1-4 week period in which team members work on a set of tasks without any outside interference. The tasks are chosen based on the demands that the product owner puts on the team. The steps in a typical scrum process are outlined below:

1). Creating a Product Backlog

The product owners job is to create a "Product Backlog". This product backlog contains user stories or a general description of a features that are to be the part of the system/software. Ideally it should contain all the features required for the complete software based on a customer-centric perspective. The product backlog is prioritized keeping in view business demands and requirements.

2). Sprint Planning Meeting

Before a sprint can start, a sprint planning meeting takes place:

2.1). Estimating efforts

When the product backlog is ready, the team makes estimations on the effort to complete each item in the product backlog. Each item in product backlog is then assigned effort points such as 0, 1/2, 1, 2, 3, 8, 13, 20, 40, 100 (from too simple to too complex). The team members mutuallydecide on effort points for product backlog items.

2.2). Sprint Backlog

Estimated items from product backlog are then moved into a "Sprint Backlog". The team commits to complete all items in the product backlog.

2.3). Tasking Sprint Backlog Items

The team does an analysis of all sprint backlog items and devides

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