How can Scrum improve the predictability and reliability of software development projects?

Who keeps inviting me to these? Scrum is garbage. It's a methodology to work out of a crisis - not how to run projects everyday.

Scrum provides a structure to software development projects by breaking the work into small, manageable tasks and establishing clear and regular communication. The framework's iterative approach allows for continuous feedback and adjustment, which enhances predictability. For example, by holding daily stand-up meetings to discuss progress and impediments, the team can identify and address issues early, improving reliability. Additionally, the use of sprint burndown charts and regular sprint reviews can provide visibility into the project's progress, further enhancing predictability.

Scrum is highly effective in RPA development, offering an iterative approach that excels in incorporating feedback and aligning with business stakeholders. This agile methodology facilitates rapid development cycles, allowing teams to adapt quickly to changes and refine processes. Frequent collaboration and sprint reviews ensure that the development stays on track and meets business needs effectively. Scrum's flexibility and emphasis on continuous improvement make it ideal for RPA projects, fostering a dynamic environment for delivering high-quality automation solutions

Scrum can improve the predictability based on the estimates of current sprint / backlog items and capacity the scrum team is having. Identifying the right cards and highlighting the dependencies earlier is the key to get proper outcome. Scrum also improves the reliability of software by having proper definition of done or acceptance criteria along with demo/ show & tell to business or product owner.

In my experience, scrum/agile forces teams to think in small, immediate and priority order. It allows team to collaborate , be aware of everyone’s effort and ensure risks are understood as soon as possible and addressed . It allows continuous dialogue and evolving product vision over lengthy documentations . Probability of project delivery is many times higher with agile.

Scrum being an empirical process, plays a major role in promoting a team's intellect by giving the freedom of observation and experimentation. Planning and delivering in small increments greatly enhances the predictability and reliability of the projects by timely identification of the impediments, market changes and many other dynamic variables that are often overlooked or too late to address in the waterfall world.

Let us explain what Scrum is to a school 🏫 kid. Imagine you and your friends are making a cool storybook. Scrum is like a magic way to create the best story. Each friend has a job, like drawing or writing. You talk often, making sure the story is awesome. Every few days, you check what you've done and fix things. Scrum helps you work as a team and make the most amazing storybook together!

1. Keep length of sprints consistent 2. Follow small and incremental size of tickets 3. Retro - after every sprint 4. Clear Communication 5. Clear and Achievable goals with deadlines 6. Open for changes

Times and times again, I work with teams that tries to do agile/scrum, doesn't understand it, and dislike it. It's for you and your team to infused your context into scrum. Don't be afraid of doing adjustments within it's events and artifacts. Assess your situation, try living without some part of it, or with a different version that matches your organization's values and practices. Start lean and adopts practices as your teams understands and value them.

Scrum is like religion, only adherence to both principals and rituals can make it heavenly instead of hellish. Well done allows a team to self commit to well defined short term commitments that result in business visible features. It also offers ways for teams to create a safe work environment where teams can agree on ways to improve together and gain predictably in long term feature development.

I have participated in some of the most complex projects , starting with a simple well-minuted daily stand up scrum call. The scrum lead's by far becomes very powerful and critical in stitching up the several pieces together end to end.

1. Sprint planning kicks off with the product owner, dev managers, and architect finalising well-documented features for the team. 2. Tasks are broken down, added to the backlog, and prioritized, focusing on delivering the most important ones within the set timeline. 3. The team starts working on the active sprint, tackling the prioritized tasks. 4. Daily stand-ups keep everyone on the same page, addressing work progress and resolving challenges. 5. Throughout the sprint, the team revisits the backlog, ensuring priorities remain unchanged. 6. At the sprint's end, the team demonstrate the overall progress. 7. A retrospective helps to continuous process improvement. discuss what went right, wrong and action items.

O Scrum é baseado no processo empírico, ou seja, ele funcionará apenas se a transparência, inspeção e adaptação forem possíveis 1 - transparência, onde podemos consultar as nossas métricas de sucesso, e os artefatos do Scrum nos ajudam a acessa-los, ex: product backlog, sprint backlog, incremento. 2 - inspeção, onde qualquer pessoa pode acessar facilmente os artefatos para inspeciona-los, as cerimonias nos ajudam nisso, a partir dos seus resultados, é tomado uma decisão. ex: sprint planning acessamos o product backlog, sprint review acessamos o artefato, etc. 3 - adaptação, é a decisão a ser tomada após a inspeção, o ajuste continuo de rota (quando necessário) visa maximizar o valor do que será entregue.

The power at this stage is to break down into small pieces a bigger subject… cut the elephant into small pieces to be able to comprehend but also to resolve and move to the next stage … easy to say, hard to do

Sometimes team members confuses daily standup with status update meeting about the team progress to Scrum Master but it is actually focused gathering where team members synchronise activities, highlight impediments, and plan for the day, fostering collaboration and efficiency rather than simply reporting individual task progress.

In short summary, Scrum follows iterative cycles where sprints are planned to work on a portion of the project scope. Sprints are planned with the development team and the team gives status updates of the progress during daily meetings with the Scrum Master. The outcome of the sprint is presented to the Product Owner and stakeholders for feedback, while the development team reflects on their performance and areas to enhance in future sprints.

In my experience, the process strikes a great balance between being well-structured and yet adaptable, making it suitable even for complex product development. It begins with the Product Owner arranging the Backlog in order of priority, followed by the team picking the items they feel confident they can commit to in the sprint. The daily stand-ups are a key part of the journey, as they give us a chance to check in on our progress, collaborate, and seek support when needed. Finally, team wrap up each sprint with a demo to showcase the working increment of the product, and then take a moment to reflect, pinpointing the strong suits and identifying areas where team can do even better in the next sprint.

1) Scrum follows PDCA cycle. Plan, Do Check and Adjust. 2) Iterative and incremental approach towards Product Development. 3) Fail fast, Deliver fast, Improve faster 4) Hypothesis, execute it in shorter PDCA cycles, take the feedback and improve.

In my experience it all depends how you divide the tasks for deliverables. Secondly how you manage dependencies of tasks parallel development and deadline interdependency. So first step is critical if you do it right it can reduce hiccups during sprints.

From my experience in both small and complex projects, the Scrum process typically unfolds as follows: 'Business road map -> product backlog -> sprint backlog -> sprint planning (estimation and planning for impediments) -> stand-ups -> retro about progress/improvements.' Throughout each stage, effective communication, adaptability, and right tool selection play pivotal roles in ensuring the productivity of the Scrum framework.

It enhances collaboration and communication among team members, fostering a more transparent and cohesive work environment. The iterative approach allows for frequent inspection and adaptation, enabling teams to respond quickly to changes and deliver valuable increments regularly. Scrum promotes customer satisfaction by prioritizing features based on their business value, ensuring that the most valuable elements are delivered early and consistently.

The inherent design is to promote collaboration and regular touch points while not overcomplicating the process. The effectiveness comes from the simplicity of implementation along with the ease of reporting as it happens often. The overall project often benefits becaue the response to blockers or risk is often much quicker since the teams are communicating so regularly. We see a huge advantage with projects in dynamic industries where the scope may change in response to moving markets and customer demands. Because we are developing in smaller chunks we can make shifts prior to committing too many resources on a specific deliverable.

Scrum boosts teamwork, adapts to changes swiftly, and improves constantly. With its short sprints, it speeds up product delivery, making it responsive to customer feedback. The prioritized backlog ensures clear goals, making the development process transparent and customer-focused. In a nutshell, Scrum brings efficiency, adaptability, and customer satisfaction to the development table.

Scrum, for me, epitomizes the epitome of agility in software development. Its benefits extend beyond a mere framework; it's a transformative philosophy that reshapes how teams approach projects. The most striking advantage of Scrum is its ability to deliver tangible value to customers early and consistently. By focusing on the most critical features and releasing them incrementally, it minimizes the risk of wasted efforts. In my experience, embracing Scrum isn't just about adopting a methodology; it's a mindset shift. It's about nurturing a culture of collaboration and continuous improvement. Its multifaceted advantages not only streamline development processes but also nurture an environment conducive to innovation and success.

I remember when one of my companies transitioned from the waterfall model to Agile Scrum, and the transformation was amazing. 1. The team began working in a more organized manner. 2. Recurring bugs and bug fix releases were reduced. 3. Testing started from planning and design phases, and the all test suites became stable. 4. Incremental releases and demos built trust with clients, and they were excited about bringing new initiatives to the company. 5. Documentation improved. 6. Sprint updates were shared within the company, and everyone knew what we were working on. 7. The team started discussing and improving weaknesses. Everyone began appreciating others, and teamwork improved. 8. Always prioritised the tasks within sprint.

Scrum is an essential tool in today's fast paced microservices oriented project lifecycle. It fosters collaborations and helps immensely to surface up most of the cross team dependencies early on which is the key ingredient to product owners to take high stake decisions and at times course correct while staying within the timeline boundaries to customers. Scrum's fail fast characteristics is absolutely essential to the success of todays short lived software project lifecycle.

The best part of scrum is it keeps the team engaged and coordinated for continuous improvement and quality output. Early embracement to change is the key success factor of scrum and agile altogether.

The iterative approach helps for changes to be made there and then at end of the sprint instead of waiting till end of the development cycle which delays the project.

In my Scrum experience, it's more than roles; it builds teamwork. Daily stand-ups aren't just updates; they solve problems on the spot. Scrum loves change, turning it into chances for new ideas. For me, retrospectives aren't just about analyzing strengths and weaknesses; they are catalysts for continuous improvement. We evolve our processes based on candid team feedback. Scrum isn't just a framework; it's a mindset that empowers teams to not only meet expectations but exceed them through constant learning and refinement.

Scrum offers benefits such as adaptability to change, faster time-to-market, improved collaboration, customer satisfaction, transparency, higher quality deliverables, increased productivity, better risk management, empowered teams, and a focus on continuous improvement, making it a robust framework for efficient and customer-centric project management.

I am a firm believer to adopt Scrum methodologies from Day 0 for successful crafting of an engineering team. An unpopular opinion from my experience, scrum framework works beautifully in Startups as well. Additionally, for early adopters of Scrum, I always recommend the read of "How to do twice the work in half the time" by Jeff Sutherland's (the creator of Scrum).

Scrum's iterative approach, emphasis on feedback and adaptation, and focus on team ownership create an environment where predictability and reliability are naturally nurtured. While no methodology can guarantee perfect outcomes, Scrum provides a solid framework for software development teams to deliver value early and often, with a high degree of confidence.

In my experience, the Scrum framework plays a great role in team building, increasing transparency in communication, and enriching trust among team members. The framework enables everyone to understand the complete context of why a requirement is being built and what impact the team will make to the business and users when delivered as expected.

Scrum run with startup mindset will make team to proud and motivated.It also give day to day belongingness to team rather than blame in last and which demotivates team.

While scrum is the most popular agile framework out there right now, but there could still be some projects which could benefit more from waterfall than any agile framework.

I believe: Scrum might not be the best fit for early-stage startups. In such environments, developers become less efficient and the process slow down them. Tools like Asana, Trello, or Google Sheets seem more suitable for startups as they allow for quicker movement and adaptation. However, Scrum proves effective in larger teams, where it aids in managing and organising projects with greater transparency.

Scrum is more than just a framework or a set of practices; it is a mindset that focuses on collaboration, adaptability, and continuous improvement. It emphasizes the values of transparency, inspection, and adaptation to enable teams to deliver value effectively.

For successful implementation of Scrum, two critical elements are pivotal: 1) Scrum relies heavily on teamwork, self-organization, and constant communication. If a team struggles to collaborate, lacks trust, or faces difficulties in decision making without a hierarchy, implementing Scrum may not yield the expected benefits. 2) Scrum thrives in adaptable settings where change is embraced. However, in rigid, highly hierarchical organizations or resistant to change, implementing Scrum might face significant challenges and resulting in limited success. Organizations striving for success in project realization should prioritize fostering team collaboration and hence be able to cultivate adaptable environments that could thrive with Scrum.

It is important to remember that Scrum, like other methodologies, is simply one of many tools in your toolbox. It has a time and place, but as always, it depends upon the circumstances. The rituals can at times slow down high performing teams that already have deep understanding of their problem space and the business has a solid direction with minimal risk of significant change.