One day Mickey was driving his car when he saw Minnie on the bus stop
Mickey – Hey Minnie
Minnie – Oh! Hi Mickey
Mickey – What are you doing here
Minnie – Waiting for my bus to go home
Mickey – Don’t worry come in, I will drop you
Minnie – Thanks Mickey
Mickey – You look worried
Minnie – I have been reading about Scrum and now I am confused
Mickey – Oh, don’t you worry, I know you understand better with stories
Minnie – Here we go
Mickey – Well lets take a project, suppose you have bought a new home. It’s completely empty and you have to plan and buy everything for your home. So you need to buy several different items from the market, The shops are spread across a huge market and you need to plan in a way that you can manage to buy all the items properly and correctly and have to manage time and resources in the best way possible. How will you go about it
Minnie – Well, I will first create a list of items. I will then plan what items to get in the first phase. Then I will create a plan on the best time to go to the market. I will also analyse what items to buy first and what to buy last based on my needs, shops location, item size etc. I will also arrange bags for the items
Mickey – Yes, and you can plan how to transfer the items, What if you do not find something, what is the alternative. What items are very important and what are not
Minnie – Yes, and of course I will estimate the budget
Mickey – Yes, very important and the resources, in the sense that if you require help. How many people required at different stages etc. How transportation will take place
Minnie – Yes
Mickey – After planning you will execute the plan. Now based on the amount of stuff you have, you can also divide your shopping in phases or intervals. It can be done within few phases in a day or can also span across several days if needed. Having small manageable phases will be easy to manage, execute and in case changes are required it can be better planned and executed
Minnie – Yes
Mickey – But for every phase or for every visit to the market, you need to plan in a way that whatever you decide to buy, reaches you in a proper and efficient way in the given time and so once all your shopping phases are over, you should have a complete home with all the things you have planned
Minnie – Yes, wow
Mickey – Now here, you planned your project of buying all the things for a new home. You analysed the work and time and resources, You took help of some tools to analyse, estimate, plan. You created a structure to execute the plan, and you created a schedule and time bound phases.
Minnie – Yes
Mickey – This is exactly what Scrum is all about. SCRUM is a framework that describes a set of process, tools and roles to help teams structure and manage their work (project)
Minnie – Ok
Mickey – In Scrum the project is built into series of iterations called Sprints. We breakdown big, complex projects into smaller pieces and each piece is worked upon in a Sprint that usually is 1 week to 3 weeks long
This makes the project more manageable, faster, increases flexibility and ease of incorporating changes
Minnie – Okay, so a big project can be divided into several small phases or modules and each module is worked upon and completed into small interval of time called Sprint
Mickey – Exactly, and this is a way to implement Agile methodology as we saw in A Story of Agile
Minnie – Got it
Mickey – For every project, there is a list of requirements, features, enhancements, fixes to be worked upon and this is called the Product Backlog
For every sprint some requirements or features are taken from this Product Backlog and worked upon and completed
Minnie – Ok
Mickey – Ok now, Scrum has some defined roles
Product Owner – have complete knowledge of the product. They have good understanding of the product market. They analyse and finalise the requirements
Scrum Master – Plan and manages the scrum process, checks everything is going well and as planned. In short manages the scrum
Scrum Team – The complete team working in a sprint that designs, develops and tests the product
Minnie – I am getting it
Mickey – In scrum, there are few meetings to discuss and decide
What to do
How to do
Who will do
Then every day there are stand-up meetings to discuss what is done, what is left, and analyse the progress, schedule. Are we going as planned etc.
After the sprint is over, there is review meeting to discuss about the last spring, what was good, what was not, what we learned, what can be improved in next sprint etc
Minnie – Now I understand this
Mickey – So Scrum is like a process or framework that defines some tools, processes, roles, ways and methods to get work done efficiently
Minnie – Yes and we learned the following terminolgies
- Sprint
- Product Backlog
- Product Owner
- Scrum Master
- Scrum Team
- Daily Stand-up meetings
- Sprint review meeting
Mickey – Great!
Minnie – Is scrum applied for software development projects only?
Mickey – No, its a framework that can be implemented in any project, Marketing, HR etc, however most used in Software development. The main idea here is to plan, break and manage project into small workable pieces
Minnie – Ok, I feel so good now
Mickey – Great and here comes your home
Minnie – Don’t Stop. Let’s go to some place where we can discuss some more stories
Mickey – Sure, ma’am
Minnie – You are my best friend
Mickey – I am always here for you 🙂
about the author | more stories
