Working with Scrum in software development projects has a list of perks that help you deliver more value while contributing to maintain good motivation within your team. Let’s view the top 5 of these benefits!
Before Scrum emerged in the 90s, software development projects were executed following classic PM techniques, like GANTT diagrams, detailed requirements documents, and a number of processes aimed to describe a software development project with as much detail as possible.
One of the main ideas was that the risk in a software project could be managed or mitigated by thoroughly thinking of every possible outcome, interaction, and process. If a product needs to be created from scratch, and especially during a time when technologies have not changed frequently, software products tend to be an isolated program running in a controlled environment.
There are some key benefits of working with Scrum in software development projects. The focus on delivering value on a frequent basis provides great visibility of the committed project while also increasing commitment and motivation in the team. But perhaps the main difference is that Scrum does not try to minimize the impact — it actually embraces change.
Handling change
The idea of having incremental deliverables was already there before Scrum emerged and was usually applied to try to minimize the downsides of a waterfall methodology. However, maybe the harder aspect to manage during a software project was change. When a product finished the detailed specification phase, by the time the team started working on the implementation, some things had already changed. The more complex a product is, the more likely it is to be interrupted by a constant flow of change requests, which would push the delivery date further. It also creates a great deal of frustration within the team and stakeholders.
One of the main advantages of Scrum is introducing the idea of smaller yet complete features that can be achieved during an iteration. Those features are presented in the Sprint Review (or demo). This ceremony is a great opportunity to receive valuable feedback from stakeholders (sometimes present in a demo, other times represented by a product owner), thus incorporating change as a driving force for the methodology. If a change is needed, it can be discussed during the Sprint Review and added to the backlog. Then, depending on the nature of the change, it will be estimated, prioritized, and planned for the next Sprint or future iterations.
Participation, commitment, motivation
Scrum strongly encourages team engagement in all the ceremonies. During the Sprint planning, everybody helps to understand what needs to be accomplished and then contributes to a realistic estimation of the effort. This creates commitment in the team, as the plan is created as a collaboration effort.
Having a daily meeting every day is an opportunity to talk about progress, ask questions, and discuss possible barriers. The daily meeting should be short and sweet so everybody understands and can contribute without needing to know all the details of that particular feature. Detailed discussions should be left out of the daily meeting so they don’t become a burden for the rest of the team.
The Sprint Retrospective is another great opportunity to incorporate people’s opinions about the functioning of the team. All retrospective items should have an action item, so if there is something to improve, the action item will be assigned to a team member and then discussed in the next Retrospective to check progress. The idea is that the team feels a sense of progress with the methodology and the way they work.
Participation in ceremonies helps to improve commitment while also increasing motivation in the team.
Do not miss this: The Scrum meeting and how to get a successful Sprint Retrospective.
Exposition and visibility
The combination of short stories, short sprints, and the need to complete the full cycle of development for the backlog items of the Sprint (specification, planning, development, testing) highly increases the visibility of the team’s work compared to other methodologies.
When a backlog item is completed in a Sprint, that means it is ready to be presented to the product owner and stakeholders at the Sprint Demo. This represents a big change compared to other methodologies when stakeholders would only see the entire product when it was completed or sometimes after it was released to the public. The exposition of the work at early stages also increases engagement in stakeholders. This is especially important when requirements are not clear, when sometimes people need to see the software in action to fully understand what they want and the changes that should be introduced.
Product owner and stakeholder engagement in frequent ceremonies helps improve the real value of the product increments by incorporating meaningful features.
Focus on the work rather than the methodology
Scrum is a lightweight framework intended to help generate value by incremental deliveries. It does not require a big set of detailed documents or learning many processes.
Even though the team needs to understand the way it works, appreciate the purpose of the ceremonies, and have at least some knowledge of the theory, it would be picked up quickly if, for example, a new team member joins without knowing Scrum.
A good Scrum Master can quickly coach the team to have a smooth implementation of the methodology. Once the whole team is familiar with it, there won’t be a lot of documentation to maintain or a rigid process to follow for every change or impediment that is detected in a Sprint.
The ideas are simple to understand, and there is no need for any specific tool.
Read more: 5 must-have qualities of a great Scrum Master
Speed!
In a constantly evolving context, organizations need to adapt quickly to changes. Software has become so interconnected that even when your product is stable, there is always a vendor, service, or other internal software that causes your product to be adapted or modified.
Scrum is especially useful when speed is important. If a short iteration was decided on (2 weeks for example), that means that if a change request is received in the middle of an iteration, it could be refined and ready to be developed and tested in the next Sprint and thus be completed in around 3 weeks. If more urgent changes are needed, the Scrum framework is flexible enough to quickly change the priorities of the tasks already in the Sprint to prioritize an urgent requirement. Organizations with a continuous delivery pipeline implemented can deploy changes to production environments right after the testing is finished.
In conclusion
There are many aspects that explain why Scrum works in software development, but the most important is adaptation to evolving contexts.
It is a framework that incorporates changes in every aspect of the software development lifecycle and helps you deliver more value while contributing to maintain good motivation within the team.
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