Start your scrum project
Now that you have an idea of how Agile and Scrum work, we'll cover the process of implementing the scrum framework to your project.
Build your product vision
The product owner is the person who can accurately define the vision of the product. This vision should be for the company and the customer. Basically, if the owner provides the answers for these questions, the vision becomes simple and clear.
- How will the product benefit the customer?
- How does it differ from the competitors?
- Who are the customers?
Structure the vision
After the product owner has come up with the product vision, the next step is giving the vision more shape. Jotting it down in simple sentences can help structure the vision. This involves writing a short blurb that summarizes the answers to the questions from the previous step. Consider the following example:
"The Online Library is the perfect stop for book-lovers who love to constantly find new books to read. Unlike a traditional library, our service provides extensive access to full collections across many genres, all starting at only $70 a month."
In the above example, the following questions are clearly answered:
- Who are the customers? - Book-lovers who go through books quickly.
- How will it benefit the customer? - By providing them an easy, one-stop location to get new books.
- How does it differs from the competitor? - In the range of available titles.
Multiply the ideas from one to thousands
Once the product vision has been laid out and given structure, it's time for the product owner to meet with the scrum master and their team. Everyone can give their ideas to the product owner, who will ultimately decide what to do with this feedback.
Draw your product roadmap
Now that the team has fully developed the vision, the next step is creating a roadmap to lead the team through the journey. First, start by listing the requirements of the product and store it in your backlog.
The product owner then breaks the requirements down into phases.
Say for example, you are working on a project 'E-library' where you have to develop a complete list of work items for completing the website. This huge chuck of work is broken down into epics, user stories, tasks, and bugs. Learn more.
What is an epic?
Epic is the next stage, where the project is further broken-down into smaller requirements (collection of stories). These requirements are a series of actions that are related to the project, where the user performs the action. For example, the above project is divided into different epics like:
- Wireframe
- Development Target - 1st quarter
- Novels and Author Association
- Subscription Details
- Development Target - 2nd quarter
Epic Flowchart
What is a user story?
User Story is the next stage of minimal requirement that breaks down the epic. An user story is created from the customer point-of-view. A collection of similar user stories are grouped under one epic. For instance, given below are the list of user stories can be grouped under the epic - Wireframe.
- As a user, I want to know the different categories of books.
- As a user, I want to subscribe for the daily newsletter.
- As a user, I want to buy books on a rental basis.
- As a user, I want to have a home page that shows the new collections by top 10 authors and the upcoming releases.
What are tasks?
User stories are broken down into even smaller units, called Tasks. These are the minimal requirements of the user stories. They are the workable entities that will help the development team to easily accomplish their work. Every user story has multiple tasks which help in building the user story. Here's an example that can help you breakdown the above user story.
As a user, I want to know the different categories of books.
- Set filter for users to choose the books they prefer.
- Make favorites category as an optional field for the users in the category section.
Estimating your work
Every project requires a certain amount of effort and time, which you can estimate before you begin. In agile, you use points to evaluate the progress of work items. In addition to work items, you can also estimate the project right when you create. You set the estimation type and based on which the estimation points are determined. You can estimate your effort in two different ways either in points or hours.
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