Agile methodologies have gained great popularity over the last years. These were born as an alternative to the traditional methodologies, characterized by extensive documentation and cascade processes. The essential difference between both kind of approaches is that, while traditional methods are inflexible and fail to respond on aggressive customer requests, the agile method, as its name suggests, is a lot less rigorous than the former: with agile development, the customer is constantly in the loop, suggesting improvements and reviewing every phase.
Now well, what should a company do to change their traditional processes and implement an agile methodology? Although there are different methodologies used in agile development process, one of the most used is Scrum, an agile software solution that provides a flexible framework that leverages teamwork in order to reach development goals, whilst offering the ability to make changes at any point in the process.
It consists of three roles:
But how do you implement Scrum into your workflow? Here are 6 easy steps to show you how:
#1 Handle your product backlog
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This is a crux step in agile method implementation. Before any project begins, you need to create a product backlog. This is essentially a list of the goals that need to be achieved in order to create a finished or near-finished product. List them in order of priority.
The Scrum Master should nominate one person to be the head of the product, also known as the product owner, who will oversee the product backlog as their first action. During the development process, any team member can add anything to the product backlog, but only the product owner has the right to prioritize it.
#2 Sprint Planning
Now that we have the backlog items on a list and the list has been prioritized, it’s time to plan the Sprint. In this step, the team plans each Sprint according to the prioritization of the product backlog, so it determines a number of user stories to develop in each period of time.
The Sprint is the time period in which tasks have to be completed and all goals achieved, and is the essence of Scrum. It usually lasts from one to three weeks, depending on the complexity and velocity of the ecommerce project.
#3 Sprint Budget
Your next priority would be to decide on the team’s Sprint budget. This is will give you a rough idea on the available number of hours the team has to work on the Sprint.
The smart way of doing this would be to multiply the available hours in the Sprint duration by the number of people who are working. You have to deduct an approximate time that team members will not be able to spend working on the Sprint.
#4 Create a Collaborative Workspace
Build a collaboration hub for your team. It will be a place where the team will discuss. The place where the team meets every day (standing up). The place where you can get everything you need to know. At a glance.
#5 Sprint!
The duration of your Sprint is fixed – changing it will compromise the project. The essence of Sprint relies in the control and autonomy of individual groups, intervening will compromise the project.
It is advisable to hold daily meetings to make sure everyone is informed of the latest developments: a brief meeting guided by the scrum master where the team shares the status of the work.
#6 Review, Retrospective, Repeat
At the end of each Sprint, there is a meeting where the Product Owner, the Scrum Master and team discusses the goals that have been achieved. Again, everyone should be involved. It will allow for feedback and the planning of any changes that need to be made.
Following the Sprint Review, hold a Sprint Retrospective meeting. The purpose of the Sprint Retrospective is to reflect on how things went during the Sprint. It’s a chance for the team to discuss the Sprint and consider how they could improve things.
The team is now armed with valuable information. All that’s left for the team to do now, is repeat the process, with the greater knowledge gained from above.
Of course, in reality, the steps aren’t all that simple, but any company can apply an agile methodology as long as they keep in mind that to make this possible, it is necessary not only to comprehend and incorporate the nature of these methodologies and how they can impact the processes, but to make an internal cultural leap. Nevertheless, Scrum and agile development can help your success rate in many ways.
