Agile
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Faster and more e ective teams with Scrum
Why Scrum?
Bene ts of an agile framework over waterfall methodologies
• Eliminate time and resources waste - critical in a small company
• Increase accountability within the team - team not waiting around for PM to
tell them something they already know, or letting things slide because they
weren’t “told” to do something
• Continual improvement built into the framework
• Increase velocity with improved ways of working and continuous learning
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• Increase team members’ feelings of autonomy and job satisfaction
Why Scrum?
Where do waterfall methodologies fall short?
• Humans are not very good at planning
• Even the best plan will fall apart the moment humans are involved, especially external teams/
individuals
• A Gantt chart looks reassuring but the moment something deviates from the plan, the chart is
inaccurate
• Updating a Gantt chart means it has failed to do what it was supposed to do - predict the project
timeline
• Having a detailed project plan is not necessary for many projects, as Team Members’ experience
may not require that level of detail to start and successfully complete the work
• Multiple charts/project plans means multiple sources of truth, room for error and omissions, and
time wasted updating and matching
What are the key aspects of
Scrum?
• Work happens in sprints - a
releasable piece of work needs to
be completed each sprint
• Quick, daily team catchups
• Review with client at the end of a
sprint for feedback
• Team retrospective - learnings and
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improvement
• Events (key Scrum meetings) are
time-boxed
• There is a predictable quality of
work thanks to the De nition of
Done
What does a Scrum team look
like?
• Product Owner - maintains product
backlog, engages stakeholders,
ultimately responsible for product
(most similar role in most
companies is the Project Manager,
but there are key di erences)
• Team Members - technical
specialists who produce the work
• Scrum Master - agile specialist who
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helps the team understand Scrum,
cause removal of impediments, and
implement scrum in the team/
organisation
• Technically there is no ‘project
manager’
• The team is self-managing and
Team Members are accountable for
the work produced in Sprints
• Team is cross-functional - the team
needs to have all necessary skills to
produce the full product
Key changes
• There is no Project Manager - there
is a Product Owner who creates,
updates and orders the Product
Backlog by priority and works with
the team to help them understand
the ask
• The Product Backlog is the single
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source of truth. Includes new items
and xes
• Team Members, with Product
Owner’s involvement, select items
from the Product Backlog for the
Sprint Backlog
• By the end of the Sprint, a
releasable increment of the product
must be complete and meet the
De nition of Done, ready to be
presented to stakeholders
Considerations
• Teams shouldn’t change too much
between projects where possible
• Stable teams are more e ective
and e cient teams
• Initial time cost to change team(s)
over to Scrum is more than made
up for by the time savings later
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• Agile is a competitive advantage
• Using some agile practices does
not make a team agile - to get the
bene ts, the whole framework
needs to be applied