Scrum, By Ken Schwaber: Project Management

Scrum was developed by Ken Schwaber for project management (Schwaber & Sutherland, 1995). It is one of the agile methods. Its main purpose was to help in improving the productivity within the teams as previous methods were not so effective.
Scrum is characterized by:
• Prioritized work to be completed first.
• All the work is divided into small series of iterations. It helps to improve effectiveness.
• A daily scrum meeting to explain the progress, where the work is stuck, where the problems are and how to solve them.
• A small session where the backlog items can be explained and solved.
• A small session in which all the members can explain about the past sprint.
Scrum is run by scrum master, whose main role is to handle the meeting and remove
Every time a sprint begins with the planning meeting, in which the development team and the client who has given the requirements agree upon the work which has to be completed within the duration of this sprint. The development team has the right to say the final word that how much work has to be done in a realistic way during the sprint and the product owner has the right to the final word on setting the criteria that need to be met during this sprint that can be accepted and approved.
The time span of the sprint is decided by the scrum master and once decided all the future sprints should also last for the same time. In tradition, processes sprint used to last for 30 days.
Once the sprint begins, product owner has no right to step in between and stop the sprint until and unless it has the major issue or it answers questions. On daily basis Standup meetings are organized by the scrum master in which all the progress is being discussed. Only scrum master or project manager can interrupt the ongoing sprint. The product owner can only attend the meetings but cannot interrupt the
Sprint planning meeting
A Sprint Planning Meeting is also organized by scrum master and it is a two-phase meeting. The first part of the meeting is attended by the customers, management, product owner, scrum team and the users. They decide on the goals and the tasks for the next sprint (see sprint backlog below). The second phase is only attended by the scrum team and the scrum master. They concentrate on the productivity of the product and how to finish the deadlines and tasks discussed in the first phase.
Sprint Backlog
The starting point for any sprint is the Sprint Backlog. It has all the Product Backlog items that have to be implemented and completed in the next Sprint. In the Sprint Planning meeting, all the items are discussed and finalized by the scrum master, scrum team and the product owner. The sprint backlog is stable until the period of sprint that is 30 days, unlike the product backlog. When all the items in the Sprint backlog are finished, the new iteration of the system is delivered.
Daily Scrum