An Introduction

to Scrum

Karl Lieberherr
January, 2009

Mountain Goat Software,

LLC
We’re losing the relay
race
“The… ‘relay race’ approach to product
development…may conflict with the goals
of maximum speed and flexibility. Instead
a holistic or ‘rugby’ approach—where a
team tries to go the distance as a unit,
passing the ball back and forth—may
better serve today’s competitive
requirements.” Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka,
“The New New Product Development
Game”, Harvard Business Review,
January 1986.

Mountain Goat Software,

LLC
 Scrum in 100
• Scrum is an agile process that allows us to focus
words
on delivering the highest business value in the
shortest time.
• It allows us to rapidly and repeatedly inspect
actual working software (every two weeks to one
month).
• The business sets the priorities. Teams self-
organize to determine the best way to deliver the
highest priority features.
• Every two weeks to a month anyone can see real
working software and decide to release it as is or
continue to enhance it for another sprint.
Mountain Goat Software,
LLC
Scrum origins
• Jeff Sutherland
• Initial scrums at Easel Corp in 1993
• IDX and 500+ people doing Scrum
• Ken Schwaber
• ADM
• Scrum presented at OOPSLA 96 with
Sutherland
• Author of three books on Scrum
• Mike Beedle
• Scrum patterns in PLOPD4
• Ken Schwaber and Mike Cohn
• Co-founded Scrum Alliance in 2002, initially
within the Agile Alliance
Mountain Goat Software,
LLC
Scrum has been used by:
•Microsoft •Intuit
•Yahoo •Nielsen Media
•Google •First American Real Estate
•Electronic Arts •BMC Software
•High Moon Studios •Ipswitch
•Lockheed Martin •John Deere
•Philips •Lexis Nexis
•Siemens •Sabre
•Nokia •Salesforce.com
•Capital One •Time Warner
•BBC •Turner Broadcasting
•Intuit •Oce
Mountain Goat Software,
LLC
Scrum has been used for:
• Commercial software • Video game development
• In-house development • FDA-approved, life-critical
systems
• Contract development
• Fixed-price projects
• Satellite-control software

• Financial applications
• Websites
• ISO 9001-certified
• Handheld software
applications • Mobile phones
• Embedded systems • Network switching applications
• 24x7 systems with 99.999% • ISV applications
uptime requirements • Some of the largest
• the Joint Strike Fighter applications in use

Mountain Goat Software,

LLC
Characteristics
• Self-organizing teams
• Product progresses in a series of month-long
“sprints”
• Requirements are captured as items in a list of
“product backlog”
• No specific engineering practices prescribed
• Uses generative rules to create an agile
environment for delivering projects
• One of the “agile processes”

Mountain Goat Software,

LLC
The Agile Manifesto–a
statement of values
Individuals and
over Process and tools
interactions
Comprehensive
Working software over
documentation
Customer
over Contract negotiation
collaboration
Responding to
over Following a plan
change
Source: www.agilemanifesto.org
Mountain Goat Software,
LLC
Project noise level

Far from
Agreement
Anarchy
Requirements

Complex

Source: Strategic Management and

Organizational Dynamics by Ralph
Stacey in Agile Software Development
with Scrum by Ken Schwaber and Mike
Close to Simple Beedle.

Agreement
Certainty
Close to

Certainty
Far from
Technology

Mountain Goat Software,

LLC
Scrum 24 hours

Sprint
2-4 weeks
Sprint goal
Return
Sprint Potentially shippable
Cancel
Return backlog product increment
Gift
Coupons
wrap
Gift
Cancel
wrap Coupons
Product
backlog

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LLC
Putting it all together

Image available at
www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/scrum
Mountain Goat Software,
LLC
Sprints
• Scrum projects make progress in a series
of “sprints”
• Analogous to Extreme Programming iterations
• Typical duration is 2–4 weeks or a
calendar month at most
• A constant duration leads to a better
rhythm
• Product is designed, coded, and tested
during the sprint
Mountain Goat Software,
LLC
Sequential vs.
overlapping development
Requirement
Design Code Test
s

Rather than doing all

of one thing at a
time... ...Scrum teams do a
little of everything all
the time

Source: “The New New Product Development Game” by

Takeuchi and Nonaka. Harvard Business Review, January
Mountain
1986. Goat Software,
LLC
No changes during a
sprint
Change

• Plan sprint durations around how long you

can commit to keeping change out of the
sprint
Mountain Goat Software,
LLC
Scrum framework
Roles
•Product owner
•ScrumMaster
•Team Ceremonie
•sSprint planning
•Sprint review
•Sprint retrospective
•Daily scrum meeting
Artifacts
•Product backlog
•Sprint backlog
•Burndown charts
Mountain Goat Software,
LLC
Scrum framework
Roles
•Product owner
•ScrumMaster
•Team Ceremonie
•sSprint planning
•Sprint review
•Sprint retrospective
•Daily scrum meeting
Artifacts
•Product backlog
•Sprint backlog
•Burndown charts
Mountain Goat Software,
LLC
Product owner
• Define the features of the product
• Decide on release date and content
• Be responsible for the profitability of the
product (ROI)
• Prioritize features according to market
value
• Adjust features and priority every iteration,
as needed
• Accept or reject work results
Mountain Goat Software,
LLC
The ScrumMaster
• Represents management to the project
• Responsible for enacting Scrum values and
practices
• Removes impediments
• Ensure that the team is fully functional and
productive
• Enable close cooperation across all roles and
functions
• Shield the team from external interferences
Mountain Goat Software,
LLC
The team
• Typically 5-9 people
• Cross-functional:
• Programmers, testers, user experience
designers, etc.
• Members should be full-time
• May be exceptions (e.g., database administrator)
• Teams are self-organizing
• Ideally, no titles but rarely a possibility
• Membership should change only between
LLC
sprints
Mountain Goat Software,
Scrum framework
Roles
•Product owner
•ScrumMaster
•Team
Ceremonie
•sSprint planning
•Sprint review
•Sprint retrospective
•Daily scrum meeting
Artifacts
•Product backlog
•Sprint backlog
•Burndown charts
Mountain Goat Software,
LLC
 Team Sprint planning
capacity meeting
Sprint
Product •prioritization
Analyze and evaluate product Sprint
backlog backlog goal
• Select sprint goal
Business
conditions Sprint planning
• Decide how to achieve sprint
Current goal (design) Sprint
product • Create sprint backlog (tasks)
from product backlog items backlog
(user stories / features)
Technolog • Estimate sprint backlog in
y hours
Mountain Goat Software,
LLC
Sprint planning
• Team selects items from the product backlog
they can commit to completing
• Sprint backlog is created
• Tasks are identified and each is estimated (1-16
hours)
• Collaboratively, not done alone by the ScrumMaster
• High-level design is considered
As a vacation Code the middle tier (8 hours)
planner, I want to Code the user interface (4)
see photos of the Write test fixtures (4)

hotels.
Code the foo class (6)
Update performance tests (4)

Mountain Goat Software,

LLC
The daily scrum
• Parameters
• Daily
• 15-minutes
• Stand-up
• Not for problem solving
• Whole world is invited
• Only team members, ScrumMaster, product
owner, can talk
• Helps avoid other unnecessary meetings
Mountain Goat Software,
LLC
Everyone answers 3 questions
1
What did you do yesterday?

2
What will you do today?

3
Is anything in your way?
• These are not status for the ScrumMaster
• They are commitments in front of peers
Mountain Goat Software,
LLC
The sprint review
• Team presents what it accomplished
during the sprint
• Typically takes the form of a demo of new
features or underlying architecture
• Informal
• 2-hour prep time rule
• No slides
• Whole team participates
• Invite the world
Mountain Goat Software,
LLC
Sprint retrospective
• Periodically take a look at what is and is
not working
• Typically 15–30 minutes
• Done after every sprint
• Whole team participates
• ScrumMaster
• Product owner
• Team
• Possibly customers and others

Mountain Goat Software,

LLC
Start / Stop / Continue
• Whole team gathers and discusses what
they’d like to:
Start doing

Stop doing
This is just one
of many ways to Continue doing
do a sprint
retrospective.

Mountain Goat Software,

LLC
Scrum framework
Roles
•Product owner
•ScrumMaster
•Team Ceremonie
•sSprint planning
•Sprint review
•Sprint retrospective
•Daily scrum meeting
Artifacts
•Product backlog
•Sprint backlog
•Burndown charts
Mountain Goat Software,
LLC
Product backlog
• The requirements
• A list of all desired work on
the project
• Ideally expressed such that
each item has value to the
users or customers of the
product
• Prioritized by the product
owner
• Reprioritized at the start of
This is the each sprint
product backlog
Mountain Goat Software,
LLC
A sample product backlog
Backlog item Estimate
Allow a guest to make a reservation 3
As a guest, I want to cancel a
5
reservation.
As a guest, I want to change the dates of
3
a reservation.
As a hotel employee, I can run RevPAR
8
reports (revenue-per-available-room)
Improve exception handling 8
... 30
...
Mountain Goat Software, 50
LLC
The sprint goal
• A short statement of what the work will be
focused on during the sprint
Life Sciences
Support features necessary
Database for population genetics
Application
Make the application run on studies.
SQL Server in addition to
Oracle. Financial services
Support more technical
indicators than company
ABC with real-time,
Mountain Goat Software, streaming data.
LLC
Managing the sprint
backlog
• Individuals sign up for work of their own
choosing
• Work is never assigned
• Estimated work remaining is updated daily
• Any team member can add, delete or change
the sprint backlog
• Work for the sprint emerges
• If work is unclear, define a sprint backlog item
with a larger amount of time and break it down
later
• Update work remaining as more becomes
Mountain Goat Software,
LLC
A sprint backlog
Tasks Mon Tues Wed Thur Fri
Code the user
8 4 8
interface
Code the middle tier 16 12 10 4
Test the middle tier 8 16 16 11 8
Write online help 12
Write the foo class 8 8 8 8 8
Add error logging 8 4

Mountain Goat Software,

LLC
A sprint burndown chart
Hours

Mountain Goat Software,

LLC
 Tasks Mon Tues Wed Thur Fri
Code the user interface 8 4 8
Code the middle tier 16 12 10 7
Test the middle tier 8 16 16 11 8
Write online help 12

50
40
30
Hours

20
10
0
Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri

Mountain Goat Software,

LLC
Scalability
• Typical individual team is 7 ± 2 people
• Scalability comes from teams of teams
• Factors in scaling
• Type of application
• Team size
• Team dispersion
• Project duration
• Scrum has been used on multiple 500+
person projects
Mountain Goat Software,
LLC
Scaling through the
Scrum of scrums

Mountain Goat Software,

LLC
Scrum of scrums of
scrums

Mountain Goat Software,

LLC
Where to go next
• www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/scrum
• www.scrumalliance.org
• www.controlchaos.com
• [email protected]

Mountain Goat Software,

LLC
A Scrum reading list
• Agile and Iterative Development: A Manager’s Guide by
Craig Larman
• Agile Estimating and Planning by Mike Cohn
• Agile Project Management with Scrum by Ken Schwaber
• Agile Retrospectives by Esther Derby and Diana Larsen
• Agile Software Development Ecosystems by Jim Highsmith
• Agile Software Development with Scrum by Ken Schwaber
and
Mike Beedle
• Scrum and The Enterprise by Ken Schwaber
• User Stories Applied for Agile Software Development by
Mike Cohn
•Mountain
LLC
Lots ofSoftware,
Goat weekly articles at www.scrumalliance.org
Copyright notice
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• For more information see
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Mountain Goat Software,
LLC
Contact information
Presentation by: Mike Cohn
[email protected]
m
www.mountaingoatsoftware.com
(720) 890-6110 (office)

Mountain Goat Software,

LLC