History

Roles

Pigs

Those who are directly responsible for the delivery of the project and whose bacon is on the line.

  • Team - A (typically) cross-functional group of people responsible for developing the product (project).
  • Product Owner - single customer who establishes vision, prioritizes work, and defines acceptance criteria.
  • Scrum Master - Person responsible for removing obstacles and who is a buffer between the team and any distracting influences.

Chickens

Those who have a stake in the product (project), but no direct responsibility in its delivery.

  • Consumers - The ubiquitous "end user" who will eventually use the product.
  • Customers - Potentially the same as the "end users", although some may never actually use the product.
  • Vendors - Parties that may have products that need to be incorporated into the product or utilize the product in their own.
  • Managers - Typically responsible for the accountability of the team, but not directly involved in its development
  • Executives - Like managers only with more responsibility for the producing organization as a whole

Lexicon

  • Product (Project) - What is being iteratively developed. "Product" will be used instead of "Project" because a "Product Life Cycle" is vastly different than a "Project Life Cycle" in that "Projects" typically have start and end dates whereas the life cycle of a "Product" is defined by its maturity, directly tied to its desired feature-set.
  • Increment - A finite piece of the Product that contains some portion of the desired functionality, produced by a single development iteration.
  • Backlog - A list of Backlog Items
  • Backlog Item - A single item in a Backlog.
  • Product Backlog - The Backlog of every conceivable requirement and feature desired in the final Product, containing completion estimates and priorities for each.
  • User Story - A Backlog Item in the Product Backlog that describes some desired functionality of the product in plain language, usually between a sentence and a paragraph in length. After the planning process, each story should additionally contain a "size" estimate in Story Points, completion priority, and acceptance criteria and may be broken down into additional stories. Each should follow the format: As a [ROLE], I can [PERFORM SOME ACTION], so that [SOME BENEFIT OCCURS].
  • Release - A subset of User Stories taken from the Product Backlog that must be included in the next deliverable Increment of the Product
  • Sprint - A single iteration of development, typically between one and four weeks, which should produce a working Increment of the Product based upon a subset of User Stories taken from the Product Backlog.
  • Sprint Backlog - The Backlog of Tasks assigned to a Sprint and the total amount of work, in hours, remaining to complete each.
  • Task - A single, discrete piece of work to accomplish within the current Sprint and the amount of work, in hours, remaining to complete it.
  • Burndown Chart - A diagram of the trend of work remaining in a Sprint, Release, or Product.

Processes

Sprint Planning

  1. The Product Owner selects User Stories from the Product Backlog as objectives for the current Sprint.
  2. The Team, Scrum Master, and Product Owner review the User Stories selected and choose which to include into the upcoming Sprint.
  3. Without the input of the Product Owner, the Team and Scrum Master review the committed User Stories and break them down into Tasks.

Sprint Review

Presentation of the produced Increment to the Chickens by the Pigs after completion of the Sprint to garner feedback about progress.

Sprint Retrospective

Review of the just-completed Sprint to improve the process by identifying what desirable behavior to carry forward and new behavior to introduce.

Daily Standup (Scrum) Meeting

Short team meeting where each team member gives the status of their task(s) with three questions:

  1. What was done yesterday?
  2. What will be done today?
  3. What obstacles or impediments exist?