During the software development lifecycle, one of the major activities within the Scrum framework is the Scrum sprint. It is the period in the product development where the usable increments are made to a product by the team. 

No doubt, when a team gets it right with its scrum sprint, the team is assured of avoiding some challenges that could spring up during the product development. Hence, the team must diligently plan their sprint to ensure that they achieve the desired goals of their project.

 In this article, we will discuss scrum sprint, how to go about it, and maximize it. 

 

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Scrum sprint project management: an approach for maximizing your productivity

 

Scrum sprint project management offers you and your team a framework that leverages iterative and incremental practices that aid your team in delivering working software regularly.

It allows you to measure the progress of your project by a series of iterations known as a sprint.  Are you probing on sprint scrum definition? 

Scrum sprint is a short time-based period when a scrum team works to finish a set amount of work. With the sprint, you can attain ease in managing your project, you can undertake high-quality work quickly and frequently and be adaptable to flexibility and change in your project.

Scrum sprint project management allows the work of a project to be carried out in an iterative cycle that can be repeated until enough work items have been completed. It helps avoid unnecessary delays and budget overruns by prioritizing the feature set that will result in quality product delivery to the client.

 Also, you can achieve the following with scrum sprint project management:

  • It offers you an approach that aids the prioritization of the important tasks and breaks them down into manageable bits that your team can get on with. 
  • Scrum sprint project management allows smooth collaboration and communication between the team working on the product and the clients that need the product.
  • It establishes a system that ensures a quick response to the feedback of the client, thereby increasing the value that the clients derive from the product.

In product development, the duration of the sprint is between 1- 4 weeks but the most common length is 2 weeks. 

Sinnaps, an online project management tool can assist you in your sprint project management strides, because it is a Scrum planning tool that boosts effective communication among the team. 

 

 

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All about Scrum

 

Sprint backlog: what you need to know

 

In reality, no one embarks on a journey without direction. In the sprint software development project, a sprint backlog is the list of tasks identified by the team to be completed during the sprint.

In sprint planning meetings, the team selects some numbers of product backlog items which are usually in the scope of user stories. The team will also identify the tasks required to complete each user story. 

Furthermore, the team members will estimate how many hours each task will take an individual to complete. It is essential for the team to carefully select the items and size of the scrum sprint backlog because they are responsible for the completion of the tasks.  

The team can maintain the sprint backlog as a spreadsheet and can also use scrum online tools to properly track their backlog items. The team members are expected to update themselves on the sprint backlog with new information once a day.

Also, the team estimates the amount of work left in the sprint. The Scrum Master role is to calculate and give a graphical illustration of the sprint burndown chart. 

Some people often confuse product backlog and sprint backlog to be the same thing but this is not true. A product backlog is the list of all the work that must be done to complete the entire project while a sprint backlog is a piecemeal of the product backlog. A sprint backlog contains only the item that should be completed during a sprint.

 

Sprint planning meeting

 

A sprint planning meeting is an exercise done by the team and it is attended by the Product Owner, Scrum Master, and the development team.

Also, stakeholders can attend the sprint planning meeting. In the meeting, the Product Owner describes the highest priority features to the entire team. The team is offered the opportunity to ask enough questions that can aid them in turning a high-level user story of the product backlog into more comprehensive tasks of the sprint backlog.

In many cases, the onus is not on the Product Owner to describe every item to be tracked on the product backlog. The responsibility of the team is to turn several sprints into a project, the Product Owner tells the Scrum Master and provides the guideline for the sprint planning meeting to discuss at least 2 sprint product backlog items.

Furthermore, if a team has been working on a product for nine sprints, it is essential for the Product Owner to attend the meeting to discuss the top 10 priorities of the sprint product backlog. 

A scrum team works on 4 weeks sprint i.e. they should time-box their sprint planning for 8 hours for a month sprint. 

 

The task of achieving success in sprint planning is centered on the following:

  • Thorough preparation

Work must be done properly outside of the ceremony; the product backlog refinement must be painstakingly done prior to the sprint planning.

  • Goals and user stories at the top of the product backlog

The Product Owner explains the upcoming sprint goals and the user stories at the top of the product backlog.

Besides, the team should ask the necessary questions during the event. With this, they will maximize the second part of the sprint planning, because they are already in the know of the functionality and they can easily estimate the work they are required to do.

The Product Owner must also focus on working with relevant stakeholders and users to determine the “why” and allow them to communicate to the team during sprint planning. 

Though there are some traditional beliefs about sprint zero in scum, it is believed that it is the pre-planning stage of Scrum planning. This is not the case; the main goal of sprint zero in scrum is to deliver some usable values that can be built on by the next team.

 

Other scrum meetings are the following:

  • Daily scrum

This is a scrum stand-up done by the development team for 15 minutes every day. A daily scrum is done to inspect the progress of the team on their sprint goals. 

 It is important in sprints software development because the team members will describe how individual work is going, seek for necessary assistance, and decide whether they are on course to achieve the sprint goals. 

The scrum stand-up is usually attended by the development team and Scrum Master. The Product Owner is not mandated to attend but can be invited. 

  • Sprint review

The focus is on sprint software development especially on the potential product increment created during the sprint. The team usually invites the stakeholders to discuss what was completed during the sprint. 

They are expected to adopt the product backlog as required based on the feedback they get from the stakeholders. The sprint review is attended by the team and the Product Owner has the right to release any of the completed functionality to the team.

 The sprint review is limited to 4 hours maximum for a one-month Sprint. 

  • Sprint Retrospective

It’s centered on the process of sprint software development. The team discusses what they got right and areas to be improved on. Also, they make concrete plans on how to improve the process, tools, and relationships. 

The Scrum retrospective is attended by the development team, Scrum Master, and Product Owner. In reality, the Product Owner has the right to attend or not. 

In scrum, sprint release is created by the Product Owner and it contains user stories that form the release backlog. It is bounded by start and end time, it is useful for organizing the effort of the release teams undertaking the user stories. 

 

Scrum sprint planning tools

 

Scrum sprint planning tools are useful for teams to carry out their planning exercise. They are used during the agile scrum sprint cycle for maximizing the scrum project plan.

The sprint planning tools have a scrum dashboard that aids the team in creating their sprint backlog items. They have some functionalities embracing scrum methodology that ensures collaboration, transparency, and efficiency among the teams. 

They are scrum online tools for enhancing effective communication, planning workloads, and undertaking the team’s daily iterations. 

Furthermore, sprint planning tools assist in the prioritization of the backlog items in order of their importance. For instance, Sinnaps is a scrum sprint planning tool. It is an agile planning tool that helps create, visualize, and share the roadmap of your sprint software development to the relevant stakeholders.

Also, it has an intuitive interface that can help you in developing your sprint backlog items in order of priority. Again, you can determine the dependencies between the tasks of your project on it to optimize your productivity. It is embedded with Kanban boards that assist you in analyzing your tasks and creating the burndown charts of your work. 

Other scrum sprint planning tools are Jira, Axosoft, Clickup, and Clarizen.

 

Agile – Scrum – Kanban/Scrum values

 

Over the years, there are notable changes in project management but the most common methodologies used by project managers are Agile, Scrum, and Kanban. Agile is a methodology in project management that breaks down large and complex projects into smaller manageable chunks that a project team can execute with ease. 

Scrum and Kanban methodologies are always believed to be agile in their approach. However, there are clear differences while comparing them.

There are 3 specific roles which are Product Owner, Scrum Master, and development team. The role of the Product Owner is initial sprint planning, task prioritization, and communication while the Scrum Master role is to oversee the process during the sprint. The scrum development team members are responsible for carrying out the tasks in the sprint.

Kanban is a less structured approach based on a list of backlog items to be done. Kanban does not have a specific timeframe for the task to be done, unlike scrum. It is managed by prioritization of items on the Kanban board.

The Kanban board consists of different columns that allow the project team to know the status and progress of their projects. For example, as a tool, Sinnaps embraces both methodologies thereby allowing you and your project team to attain ease in project management.

 

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