Many organizations are adopting agile development methodology to fasten the software development lifecycle and release bug-free software.

Agile software development is a group of software methods based on iterative and incremental development. By doing continuous reviews & inspections we can easily identify gaps in the current agile process and we can add improvements for the next iterations.

scrum structures development in cycles of work called sprints. It works well for any complex/innovative projects. It ensures that the most valuable work has been completed when the project ends.

User Stories

User stories are nothing but user requirements throughout the project. A user story is nothing but what a user wants to do with a software, from a user perspective. 

We should concentrate on few things before creating user stories. Those are listed below,

• User stories should be written in understandable language
• User story should focus on What to do, Who will do, Why should we implement this feature. 
• Log all the key requirements

Scrum Roles

There are 3 roles in scrum methodology. They work together on daily basis to ensure is everything going smoothly or not.

• Product Owner
• Scrum Master
• Team

Product Owner

The Product Owner is responsible for communicating the vision of the product to the development team. He is the single point of contact to know about all product requirements. He will prioritize all the customer requirements. He will maintain the product backlog by keeping it up to date. The Product Owner will schedule the time for releasing completed work to customers and makes the final call as to whether implementations have the features and quality required for release.

Scrum Master

The Scrum Master acts as a bridge between the Product Owner and the team. Scrum Master work is to remove any impediments that are obstructing the team from achieving its sprint goals. Scrum Master needs to understand scrum well to train the entire team who are involved in the project. Scrum Master should approach all the team members to encourage their decision-making and problem-solving capabilities.

Team

The team is responsible for completing work. The team includes a mix of software engineers, architects, programmers, analysts, QA experts, testers, and UI designers.

Scrum Meetings

Below are the key areas to discuss in scrum meetings

• Backlog Refinement Meeting
• Sprint Planning Meeting
• Daily Scrum Meeting
• Sprint Review Meeting
• Sprint Retrospective Meeting

Product Backlog Refinement

Here we will split big items, analyze items, re-estimate, and re-prioritize, for future Sprints.

Sprint Planning Meeting

We will divide the sprint into two parts. One part is to define what to do and another part is to know how to do.

Daily Scrum Meeting

Update and coordination between the Team members

Sprint Review Meeting

Inspection and adoption related to the product increment of functionality

Sprint Retrospective Meeting

Inspection and adoption related to the process and environment

Pro's of Scrum Methodology

• Agile scrum helps the company in saving time and money
• Fast Moving Development
• Mistakes can be easily rectified by using this method
• Frequent updating of the progress in work through regular meetings. Thus there is clear visibility of the project development
• It is an incremental model and for each iteration, we will get continuous feedback from the user 
• Easy to do changes, due to sprints and constant feedback from the customers
• Easy to measure individual productivity by conducting daily scrum meetings. And this improves each team member productivity too.
• Issues are identified well in advance through the daily scrum meetings
• More chances to deliver a quality product at a scheduled time.