PMI-ACP Certification: The Scrum Development Process

This video will help you understand better the content of the other courses that will form this Agile Project Management - The PMI-ACP (Agile Certified Practitioner) Certification Program.

There are two main parts: one is called Managing a scrum project and the other The Scrum Process in Action.

You might know this. I’m adding it to any course in the introductory section. But, just in case some suggestions to improve your learning.

There are two main parts: one is called Managing a scrum project and the other The Scrum Process in Action.

The Agile Manifesto and Agile Principles

The term "scrum" originates from the rugby formation, in which a team's players work together to gain possession of the ball. The agile methodology of Scrum borrows this term to describe a framework of project management processes and techniques. Scrum enables project teams to develop complex products quickly and efficiently, to adapt to change, and to regularly deliver value to customers in the form of working products. 

The scrum approach

The product owner is usually a customer representative, whose main focus is to represent the interests of the customer throughout the development process. The product owner measures how well a project performs in terms of return on investment, or ROI. 

In a Scrum team, the Scrum Master is the expert on all Scrum-related issues and ensures that everyone works according to Scrum principles and practices. He or she should also shield the development team from external processes and control, so they can fully concentrate on development. The Scrum Master may be a member of the development team.

A Scrum team usually consists of five to nine individuals who share the responsibility for developing a product and delivering it to the product owner at the end of each sprint. The optimal team is self- organizing and cross-functional. 

Agile project team, scrum team, and development team

You're working as a Scrum Master on a project that involves developing tracking software for a transport company. 

In the Scrum approach, effective communication is vital for ensuring that a Scrum team understands customer requirements, and that development team members can work together efficiently to solve complex problems.

The role of Scrum meetings is to ensure communication flows smoothly between the different stakeholders and team members. There are five types of Scrum meetings – the sprint planning meeting, the daily standup meeting, the Scrum of Scrums, the sprint review meeting, and the sprint retrospective

Sprints are recurring processes.

The core of Scrum, originally referred to as the "game" by its creators, describes how to prepare and run Sprints. While not officially described as such in the Scrum guide, the phases of a Scrum project cycle could be considered and are sometimes described as pre-game, game, and post-game.

The game phase refers to the sprint, or development, phase. This is when the development team plans each sprint and proceeds to create functioning product deliverables, also called potentially shippable product increments. 

The work needed after a sprint or series of sprints to release the product, is sometimes referred to as the post-game phase. 

A scrum task board on a wall or whiteboard

Understand Scrum team roles, guidelines for effective stakeholder communication, project activities and phases in the Scrum development process

At the start of a new Scrum project, some initial planning and design must take place in order to define a project goal and product backlog for the project. 

Once the product owner has compiled project requirements, the development team reviews the backlog and creates a high-level design for the product to be developed. 

The game phase is where the core Scrum practices exist and where the bulk of the work is done. The development team plans each sprint, meets regularly, and creates functioning deliverables. And at the end of each sprint, it delivers the results to the customer, or a customer representative, for review. The process is iterative, with a product developed incrementally over multiple sprints. 

Sample sprint backlog

During the course of a sprint, the members of a Scrum team meet to discuss task progress and any issues that are preventing tasks from being completed.  

Ongoing testing and the adaptation based on test results is a key principle of most agile methodologies, including Scrum. During the game phase of the Scrum development process, this principle is implemented in two ways – through unit testing and sprint reviews.

After each sprint review meeting, the Scrum Master conducts a sprint retrospective with the development team to discuss how the sprint went and how it could have been improved. This helps the team formulate best practices it can apply during the next sprint, in keeping with the agile principle of continuous improvement. 

At any point in a project, it's important to know how the project is progressing. That way, team members can make necessary adjustments – and other stakeholders can verify that everything is on track. Scrum teams use various highly visual tools to track their progress during each sprint. These include burndown charts and various progress charts. 

A burndown chart

As well as burndown charts, a Scrum team may use various progress charts - to track its progress in completing the tasks in each sprint

Both burndown charts and progress charts let you compare actual and estimated values, and both provide a quick, highly visual way to track progress. 

When practicing Scrum we can make the sprint backlog visible by putting it on a Scrum task board. Team members update the task board continuously throughout the sprint; if someone thinks of a new task (“Test the snark code on Windows 8.1”), she writes a new card and puts it on the wall.

As well as charts, you can use various metrics to track and report on the progress of a Scrum project. All visual ways to track progress, within the sprint or on project level, are called progress monitors.

Metrics that you can use to track the progress of a project include velocity, standards violation, business value delivered, number of defects per iteration, number of stories, level of automation, and number of tests. 

At the start of a new Scrum project, some initial planning and design must take place in order to define a project goal and product backlog for the project. 

Course project (optional)

Course wrap up and conclusions.

Agile transition roadmap

Course wrap-up and conclusions