Scrum overview - Jira Tutorial

- [Instructor] In this video, we'll look at scrum artifacts. We will define scrum, describe an increment, identify scrum artifacts and define velocity. According to the Scrum Guide, "scrum is a framework for developing, delivering "and sustaining complex products." Scrum is a way of achieving agility. If you think of agile as a way of working or of as a mindset, there are many methods or frameworks used to achieve this agility. We've already looked at Kanban and here we will discuss Scrum, which is currently the most popular Agile framework. There are other Agile frameworks or methods such as extreme programming or XP and others. We can start by taking a look at the continuous learning that takes place in scrum. A project starts as a vision or an idea of what to create. It's always best to start with the best vision that you can. The Agile team then begins working for a period of time called an iteration and they create a small working piece of the product. After the first iteration, the team has learned things and because of that learning, the product vision has changed somewhat. After the second iteration, the team has built more of a working product, and again, the vision has changed slightly due to the fact that the team has learned during the iteration. This process continues and the actual product moves closer and closer to the vision. After each iteration, the team has created what's known as an increment. An increment is a usable product that may be given to the customer. It's not always given to the customer, but the point is that it is capable to be given to the customer. The increment meets the organization's definition of done. This varies by organization, but in general, it is a high quality subset of the product. Each increment contains the work of the current iteration as well as all prior iterations. A sprint is a time-boxed period used to work on an increment of the product. A sprint is usually between one and four weeks and it's typically two weeks. It's up to the team to decide the duration of the sprints. And in general, this duration does not vary from sprint to sprint. The Scrum Guide has defined some parts of the scrum framework. There are artifacts such as the product backlog, sprint backlog, sprint goal, sprint board and reports. There are roles such as the product owner, scrum master, development team members and stakeholders and there are events or meetings or ceremonies. And these include the sprint itself. The sprint planning meeting, daily stand-ups or daily scrums sprint review and the sprint retrospective. Next, we will discuss the scrum artifacts. We will discuss each of these artifacts, but all of the artifacts provide project transparency, enable team shared understanding and enable inspection and adaptation. These artifacts are used to help the team be more effective. The product backlog is an ordered, ever changing to do list for the project. It can include features, improvements, bug fixes or any other items of work that the team has defined. Issues near the top of the product backlog should include more detail because these work items are closer to actually being worked on by the team. Modifying the product backlog is called product backlog refinement and how this is done varies from team to team. Once you have items in the backlog, you can create a sprint. In the backlog, you start by clicking on the Create Sprint button. This creates a panel for the sprint and you can drag issues from the backlog section into the sprint. A sprint backlog is the subset of the product backlog that you've added to a single sprint. It's the list of issues to be completed in the sprint. The sprint backlog includes not only the issues themselves but a plan on how to accomplish the work of the issue. As you were planning to sprint, it's common to estimate each issue and a common estimation statistic is called story points. Story points are a relative measure of the amount of work required to complete the story. Story points are used by the team to decide how many stories can be completed in the sprint. The story points are often used instead of a more absolute measurement such as hours. The point is usually not to tie estimation directly to the number of hours and hold the team members accountable to those hours. When you're ready to start the sprint, you click the Start Sprint button. You can then enter a sprint details. A sprint name is usually assigned for you but you can change it. You specify the duration of this sprint as well as the start date. You also assign the sprint goal. The sprint goal represents the objective of the sprint increment and is agreed to by the team. The sprint goal is reached by completing the sprint backlog. The sprint goal does not change during the sprint. The sprint is considered a success if the sprint goal is reached. The team has a sprint goal to provide coherence to the product increment. In general, you want each increment to have meaningful value for the customer. The sprint goal enables flexibility with the sprint backlog. The sprint is considered a success if the sprint goal is reached, allowing the team to alter some of the issues that it works on during the sprint. Another artifact is the sprint board. The sprint board is similar to the Kanban board that we saw earlier, but only contains issues from the sprint backlog. You can see here a common set of columns for a sprint with the to-do, in progress and done statuses. During the sprint, you can look at some of the scrum reports. This example is a burndown chart. A burndown chart usually represents the number of story points completed over time during the sprint. The gray lines are the guidelines provided by JIRA showing what a linear decrease in story points would look like and not including non-working days. The red line shows the actual team's performance. Both lines always start at the number of story points that the team has agreed to complete during the sprint. The goal is for the red line to reach zero before the end of the sprint. This chart will automatically be updated as the team completes issues from the sprint board. The sprint report usually contains the burndown chart and also shows the list of issues of the sprint and their current status. This is a good way for everybody to see how the sprint is progressing. Velocity is a term related to scrum which represents the rate at which the team accomplishes work. Usually it's the number of story points completed per sprint. But this could also contain a different estimation statistic such as hours or t-shirt sizes. In the example shown here, the velocity is three points per sprint because the team completed three story points in the sprint. The velocity chart shows the estimated and actual velocity of the team over time. You can see here that in sprint one, the team estimated a velocity of 13 story points and achieved that velocity. Over time, their team velocity increased somewhat and their estimation was quite accurate. Teams can use this historic data to help better estimate story points of the current sprint. Here's a review of what we've discussed. scrum is an agile framework. An increment is a potentially shippable portion of the project that meets the definition of done. A sprint is a time-boxed period in which an increment is created. Scrum artifacts provide project transparency, enable shared understanding and enable inspection and adaptation. Artifacts include the product backlog, the sprint backlog, the sprint goal, sprint boards and reports. Velocity is the rate at which the team accomplishes work, usually in story points per sprint.