The implementation of a Scrum project is done through cycles called Sprints. It is recommended that throughout the duration of a project, all the sprint have the same length, ranging from two to four weeks according to company needs. Each sprint begins with a planning meeting where the team and product owner choose among the existing stories in the product backlog the ones that will be part of the sprint backlog.

Stories are the needs or requirements raised, possibly to be developed throughout the project, and the product backlog stores all the stories that have not yet been executed, according to their priority, which is set by the product owner. These stories should have an estimate of how much effort is needed to complete them. This estimate is done by the team before the first planning meeting, so when the sprint backlog is made, it is taking into account the estimated effort for the stories and the average speed of the team in previous sprints.

After that, the team will have the second planning meeting. In this meeting, the stories which were previously selected for the sprint backlog should be analyzed and discussed among the team (and, if necessary, with the product owner), and than the tasks needed for each story to be finished should also be defined. If the team decides that they cannot complete all stories in the sprint backlog in time, a reduction of the sprint backlog should be negotiated with the PO.

After defining all the stories in the sprint backlog, the team should work on each story according to their “priority”, which was set by the PO.

The team should be self-organized in order to perform the tasks during the Daily Scrum. In it, each member should inform the other members of their progress in their work from the day before, what they are planning for the current day and if they are having any problems that prevents them from proceeding with any tasks. These daily meetings and the use of the burndown chart allows the monitoring of progress of the stories during the sprint.

Reaching the end of the sprint, it is time for the Review meeting. The team presents the results of their work, which was made during that sprint to the Product Owner to get his approval. If the product owner is not satisfied with a story, the story is rejected and it should return the product backlog, to be prioritized again and eventually selected for another sprint backlog.

The last step of a Sprint is the Retrospective meeting. It is vital to the continuous improvement of the development process. This is the time the team has to reflect on the problems that hindered the progress of the sprint, which aspects of the process can be improved and how to improve them in next sprint. And then everything repeats itself …

Did you already know about Scrum? What did you think? If you already knew about it, share your experience in the comments below!