Daily+Scrum

== toc = = =**Background **=

= = The term scrum was coined decades ago and has its roots in rugby game (Takeuchi & Nonaka, 1986 ). In its literal meanings, it is a method of starting __the game__ in which forwards of both teams stoop together having their arms locked to get the ball (AudioEnglish, 2008). Similarly as mentioned before, it is more related to the control in hands of functional team to decide what to do, at what time, which seeded the concept of self-managing teams. There might be different strategies to transfer this control to the people who are doing the actual work and know more than anyone else about its development and daily operations but this control shift solution helps in a better way (Schwaber, 2009 ). =**Introduction **=

= = Scrum is an agile based project management methodology with some specific roles, artifacts and practices.In complex and complicated projects, it is very difficult to anticipate the things which will occur or can occur. Scrum helps to manage such complicated projects by quickly identifying the problems without any delay and then quick movement towards their solutions by empowering the teams and extensively reducing the customer feedback time. Its is a very simple __process__ which makes the project path visible by showing the actual status of project and on-the-spot adaptations to steer the project in the right direction (Schwaber, 2009 ).

Scrum involves only three roles in its operations; the Product Owner, the Team, the ScrumMaster. Scrum involves only these people who are committed to the project so all of the management operations are done by these roles. The Product Owner safeguards every stakeholder's interests in the project, being responsible for __financial__ support, initial requirements and release plan. The Team develops the required functionality. These small, self-managed and cross-functional teams in scrum enjoy the power to take any decisions to improve their current work or the backlog. ScrumMaster, usually a project manager, is responsible for the process and implementation of scrum keeping in mind its pros & cons in the organisation (Schwaber, 2009 ).

Scrum Artifacts
Scrum's artifacts are Product backlog, Iteration Backlog and Burndown Charts. These artifacts are used all the way through in scrum process. Product backlog shows the requirements of the product being built while Iteration Backlog is the list of goals to be achieved during current iteration. Each iteration extracts some requirements from Product Backlog and prioritise them in __a list__ of tasks to be done in its lifecycle. Usage of Burndown Charts is a very effective way to visualise the daily progress of current iteration's work. These charts show how much work is left with respect to time of current iteration (Schwaber, 2009 ).

Scrum Practices
Scrum is a project management methodology which includes different practices. These practice are Daily Standup, Iteration Planning and Scrum of Scrums. According to West & Grant (2010), Daily Scrum is the most popular scrum practice. =Daily Scrum= Daily Scrum or Daily Standup is most famous practice of scrum methodology. This short meeting of the team per day is conducted each day of the current iteration usually at the same place. Agile teams member count can vary from 5-10 but teams with more than 10 members might not get the full benefits of the methodology. As mentioned early, only committed people are strictly required and allowed to talk in this meeting. Other stakeholders like department director or __sales__ head can join the meeting but they are not allowed to speak or participate in discussion because they do not fall in committed people's category of scrum (Mountain Goat Software, 2012). Daily Scrum is quite inflexible and stiff in its structure (Marchenko, 2008 ). Purpose of this meeting is not to solve the problems but to highlight the problems as soon as possible and assigning them to the respective person/department for solution or discuss in offline (Mountain Goat Software, 2012). Daily Scrum can be found strict in its operation but according to the adaptive nature of agile, there are no strict rules that should be followed during the meeting but some formal guidelines.

Operation
The purpose of Daily Scrum is to synchronise all the team members about the iteration status in a short and quick way. This meeting does not focus on the status update to ScrumMaster by the Team but update among the team members. Before the guidelines, three famous questions of Daily Scrum which should be asked to every team member are: According to Marchenko (2008) and Schwaber (2009), following are the guidelines to conduct the Daily Scrum in an effective and efficient way:
 * What did you do since last meeting?
 * What are your plans until the next meeting?
 * What are the problems that obstruct you from achieving the goals and been more productive?
 * 1) Daily Standup means stand up, normally, participants should attend this meeting being in standing position.
 * 2) Attendance should be compulsory for the committed people and team.
 * 3) Daily Scrum means wait for no one and start at the exact decided time.
 * 4) Length of meeting should be maximum 15 minutes regardless of the members.
 * 5) Artifacts should be discussed in some visual form in front of all.
 * 6) Notes should be taken by hand not by typing to avoid any hindrance in effective listening.

Daily Scrum Disadvantages

 * Need expertise to get the benefits
 * Members have different schedules which may waste the time or inconvenience many reason for not being present in person
 * Break flow for meeting might effect the critcal in progress work open sharing the performance of a member

Martine and Ken (1999) also explain that Scrum Meetings are rituals that enhance the socialization of status, issues, and plans for the team. In addtion, the ScrumMaster also leads the meetings and logs all the tasks from every member of the team into a global project Backlog. And he will log every block and resolves each block while the developers work on new assignments. Further more, daily scrum meeting not only schedule tasks for the developers but can and should schedule activities for everyone involved in the project such as integration, personnel dedicated to configuration, management, scrummaster. Scrum meetings help also in the creation of an "anticipating culture” because they encourage productive values, increase the overall sense of urgency, · promote the sharing of knowledge, · encourage dense communications and · facilitate "honesty" among developers since everyone has to give a daily status (weinberg, 1997).

As a result of the betterment of agile development practices, the teams has to work with two weeks iteration which leads to three stages of daily scrum.

[|stage1] The daily scrum meeting :the program start with small number of two team of 15 people each group will be engage with daily scrum and question like what will you be doing were asked which made the group to have great quality in their daily work.

Stage2 Scrum of scrum with Pms and non PMs: At stage, the group has grown from 2 team to 5 team also there still have meeting going at this point in time each has little interest in the program.

Stage 3 Scrum of Scrum for PMs 

Conclusion
Daily scrum is always helpful for agile teams because it helps them to adjust if they are not going the right way and also to maintain it if the agile team are heading the right way.With the help of daily stand up meetings, progress are notice and members are motivated to work had and contribute their quota to the team, knowing that the next meeting, they will be ask to account for what they have done?, and the way forward.

**Reference**
AudioEnglish (2008) //The Largest English-learning website in the world// [Online] Available at: [|http://www.audioenglish.net/dictionary/scrum.htm] [Accessed: 27 February, 2012]. Dorset House, New York. Paulo C. and Ralph J. (2009) [Online] Available at: [|http://agiletips.blogspot.com/2009/05/three-stages-of-daily-scrum.html] [Assessed: 1 March,2012]. Mike, Martine, ken, Jeff & Yonat, (1999), 'SCRUM: An extension pattern language for hyperproductive software development' Weinberg, (1997) Gerald Weinberg, Quality Software Management – Vol. 4., Anticipating Change Mountain Goat Software (2012) //The Daily Scrum Meeting.// Available at: [|http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/scrum/daily-scrum] [Accessed: 27 February, 2012]. Marchenko, A. (2008) //7 Tips f Improving the Daily Scrum. //Available at: [|http://agilesoftwaredevelopment.com/blog/artem/7-tips-daily-scrum] [Accessed: 26 February, 2012]. Schwaber, K. (2009) Agile Software Development with Scrum, 1st edn. New York: Microsoft Press. Takeuchi, H. & Nonaka, I. (1986) 'The New Product Development Game'. //Harvard Business Review //[Online] Available at: [|http://www.sao.corvallis.or.us/drupal/files/The%20New%20New%20Product%20Development%20Game.pdf] [Accessed: 29 February, 2012]. West D. & Grant T. (2010) 'Agile Development: Mainstream Adoption Has Changed Agility'. //Trends In Real-World Adoption Of Agile Methods//. 20 January. [Online] Available at: [|http://www.forrester.com/rb/Research/agile_development_mainstream_adoption_has_changed_agility/q/id/56100/t/2] [Accessed: 25 February, 2012].