Sheila's Blog

Scrum is an iterative and incremental software development framework.  It’s better described as a set of best practices or guidelines, rather than a detailed step-by-step software development process.  The main focus is to increase communication and help teams to empower themselves, so that they can resolve any issues that are preventing them from working to [...]

The Release Plan forecasts future velocity based on historical data.  It’s created by the Product Owner who usually waits 2-3 sprints until some historical data has been generated.  The input is the total effort in the product backlog, the team’s availability, sprint length and velocity.  From this you can determine how many sprints are needed [...]

The Sprint Retrospective takes place after the Sprint Review meeting.  It is an opportunity for the team to identify process improvements to make.  They determine what worked well in the last Sprint, and what didn’t.  The team can take data from previous Sprint Backlog reports, focus on any issues that arose and decide upon actions [...]

This is an informal meeting that lasts about an hour for a week long Sprint.  There are no powerpoints, presentations, speeches or lectures.  The purpose of the meeting is for the team to show fully completed backlog items to the Product Owner.  The team can only demonstrate working software.  Incomplete software is not shown.  The [...]

This is a daily meeting for the whole team to collaborate, organise the work being done, identify impediments and check the progress being made.  During the meeting the team updates the sprint backlog with the number of hours remaining for each task (and maybe the hours already spent).  From this, the burndown chart is generated.  [...]

The Sprint Planning meeting is used to identify the work for a Sprint, and prepare the Sprint Backlog which details the estimates of time needed to accomplish each task.  The Product Owner prepares for the meeting by making sure the Product Backlog is up to date (add/describe new requirements, prioritise the items and make sure [...]

The Sprint Backlog is separate to the product backlog and contains more detailed requirements that have been broken down into tasks estimated in hours.  The Sprint Backlog allows the team to see where they are and provides a focus on the work remaining.  It’s a team artifact which does not have to be shown to [...]

You need a Product Vision and a Product Backlog to drive a project.  The Product Backlog is a high level list of prioritized requirements with a rough size and complexity estimate for each of the requirements.  The Product Owner is responsible for maintaining the list, but can get as much feedback as they like from [...]