Scrum for startups 101

Photo by Marvin Meyer on Unsplash

A startup is a young company that is just in the beginning of developing a product (or service) which users will love. The main goal of a startup is to develop a viable business model to meet a marketplace need or problem. As they are operating in dynamic, fast-paced, fast growing and highly competitive market, startup must offer products (or services) fast. To meet the expectations startups often choose some of the techniques to deliver result early. Scrum is one of them.

Although scrum has been used for many years, startups often do not understand how does it work and what are its practices and roles. I will try to give a short overview and explanations. So, let’s get started 😎

What is scrum?

The Agile Manifesto that gave rise to the agile model was published in 2001. It is an approach that is based on making decisions within the software development teams. Although it is written for developing software, manifesto can be applied on all other areas.

Scrum is a well-established and widely practiced agile project management methodology. It allows teams to work on a constant value delivery.

Who are the members of a scrum team?

The scrum team is a self-contained, cross-functional unit in charge of developing and releasing the product. There is no overall team leader who decides which person will do which task or how a problem will be solved. Those are issues that are decided by the team as a whole.

The team is ideally made up of 5–9 individuals who are collaborative. Each person of the team can have one (sometimes more) of the following roles:

1. Product owner
   The product owner is someone (one person, not a committee!) who has deep knowledge of the user. He understands the client’s vision and what they want to accomplish with the product. They make sure that the team is heading to the right direction by managing and prioritizing items in the Product Backlog. 
   Product owner is in charge of the what
2. Scrum master
   The scrum master is facilitator who helps scrum practitioners achieve highest level of performance. He ensures that the process is being followed by educating, removing blockers, impediments, and helping the team continue to move forward so that it can carry out their project commitments.
   Scrum master is in charge of the how
3. Development team
   They make up the core of the scrum team! They have the authority to decide how the work gets done, what tools they should use, what techniques should be deployed, and the associated costs of those decisions.
   Development team owns the “how to do the work” decisions

What are the main artifacts?

Artifacts are essentially the tools that scrum practitioners use to make great products and to increase visibility and communication effectiveness.

1. Product backlog
   The product backlog is the complete list of the functionality that should be added to the product. The product owner prioritizes the backlog so the team always works on the most valuable features first. This list is never complete.
2. Sprint backlog
   The sprint backlog is similar to the product backlog, and it contains all the tasks the team needs to perform in order to deliver the functionality they committed to deliver during finite period of time (sprint). The team decides on which tasks a sprint backlog will have during the weekly Sprint Planning Meeting.
3. Burn chart
   Burn charts help the team understand the relationship between time and scope. A burndown chart shows how many stories or tasks the team has left to do. When the team is working well, the burndown chart should show an ever decreasing line, all the way to the x-axis. A burnup chart shows how much scope the team has done over a select period of time.
4. Task board
   The task board is a visible reminder of the team dynamics so that everyone knows what is being worked on and by whom. It allows the team to inspect the work and then adapt as necessary.
5. Definition of Done (DoD)
   Definition what “done” means and applying it to tasks and user stories. The whole team must have mutual understanding of “done”.

What are sprint activities?

An iteration of work during which an increment of product functionality is implemented. The whole development process goes step by step, where step is a sprint. All the functions that must be implemented on each sprint are fixed (and cannot be changed during the sprint) and are broken down into tasks which have its own priorities.

Classical scrum assume that sprint fixed duration usually ranges from 2 to 4 weeks and involves teams’ commitment to complete a set of tasks during the sprint.

The result of each sprint is a demonstrable working piece of software. This peace is fully tested, and contains all the features of previous sprints as well as functionality of the current one.

1. Grooming
   All sprints start with a list of features that need to be built. This is commonly referred to as ‘the backlog’ and is a list that the product owner has compiled to develop the product in the long-term. The features are often described in high-level abstraction. Grooming involves breaking these high level tasks, also known as epics, into smaller, more manageable tasks. This will leave the team in a position where they have high-level features broken down into manageable tasks, ordered by what they should start working on first. It is suggested that you groom the backlog a few days before your sprint planning session.
2. Planning
   Sprint planning involves taking the list of small tasks and assigning points to them based on either their complexity or on how long you estimate they will take to complete. For sprint planning the goal is for the team to commit to a set of deliverables for the sprint.
3. Implementing
   Bringing the idea into action.
4. Daily stand-up
   Daily stand-ups are an opportunity for the team to meet every morning and update each other on which tasks have been completed, which are blocked and that they need help with, and which they will be embarking on that day. It is a brief meeting where each member of the team counts in summary: (1) What did I do yesterday? (2) What am I going to do today? (3) What are the impediments for which I need help? Answering these questions allows the team to actively inspect and adapt to changes in near real-time.
5. Showcase
   It is the time when the team is ready to present the work which has been completed. Showcase is a good time to get feedback and suggestions from the stakeholder(s) and to keep them involved in the project.
6. Retrospective
   Once the sprint ends the team reviews how well the sprint went.
   The Sprint Retrospective is an opportunity for the team to inspect, adapt and overcome the issues they faced and create a plan for improvements to be enacted during the next sprint(s). It also helps eliminate past mistakes.

Conclusion

Scrum is a great methodology when it comes to startups. With no clear recipe for success, there should be room for experiments and innovation.

Releasing early product increments to the world is great way to benefit from the ideas, and to keep people informed about the progress. Exposing product increments early and frequently to target customers and users in form of demos or releases helps to achieve a great product market fit.