Businesses today face the need to keep up with the growing virtualization, that is, audiences wanting to get every piece of information, services, contracts online, preferably on their mobile phones. Software development becomes an inevitable concern for IT-and non-IT crowd. Still, it’s complicated and unnecessary to turn yourself into a development expert just to have your product appropriately built.
Instead, you can look into Agile approach that allows you to stay away from the technical details, while being in constant control of the product, changing it right in the process of development to meet customers’ needs in the best way possible.
Online-based product creation is just destined to increasingly happen online and remotely by hiring the team(s) of skilled developers to get the job done. Probably, the most popular methodology of dealing with such software development outsourcing is the Scrum process management framework, as it creates the workflow structure that is easy to apply to any software project.
While the traditional waterfall approach lets the next stage of the software project start only after releasing a large version in bulk, Scrum allows swiftly releasing useful pieces of functionality, not making you and the customers wait, adjusting product priorities on the fly. Other Agile frameworks often lack universality, articulating the methods to work with the software, but not with the client or customer (prototyping), or demanding from the team a very special set of skills (rapid development), or just expensive to implement.
In contrast, the Scrum framework is lightweight to incorporate, as it deals with a small set of highly effective but understandable work methods. It proposes the heuristic structure with open cells that are to be filled with specificities of your product to organize the working process around it.
Instead of focusing on individual developers or large departments, Scrum applies to the self-sufficient units called teams. The average team size is 7 people, though it can be raised or lowered by 2 members if necessary. The smaller team typically wouldn’t suffice for the development process needs, and the larger team would spend too much time and effort to make conversations constructive, while communication clarity and transparency are the central elements fueling the whole system.
Assembling developers into teams is not about just the assignment of official status or, on the contrary, pure emotional belonging. Teammates in Scrum rather keep the middle way, they are project-driven to work on the list of set objectives, whereas their motivation-maintaining everyday communication constructs around the personal responsibility to other members and the team as a whole.
To deliver the solution, it is necessary to unite engineers with various backgrounds, but equal skill levels, and dedication to self-improvement, as they may need to learn something new in the process. A cross-functional remote software development team can focus on and quickly achieve a particular goal. The labor is organized in short cycles called Sprints, which may run individually or coordinate with other teams. Each Sprint runs from 1 week to a month and starts from getting the full picture of what the meaningful Sprint deliverable should be and ends with the functional increment implementation, which possesses business value for the client.
To begin the Sprint, the team holds the special session of planning (quick as everything in this methodology), where the Sprint Goal and people responsible for every piece of work are defined. Tasks may vary in the volumes of effort and/or complexity, but, as team members themselves decide, who does what, observe special circumstances and take care of the long-term stamina of the group, it takes almost no extra control to manage the team and to uphold its professional abilities.
Usually, at the beginning team needs the user story requirements only, relying on previous and newly gained skills while fulfilling everyday tasks. To facilitate the performance, every day starts from Daily Scrum – the short meeting, usually not exceeding 15 minutes, where developers are asked to report on their previous workday and any difficulties they see or foresee in the Sprint Goal achievement. Such high dynamics of meetings and the balance between actual work and work-around chatting make Scrum the perfect methodology for the fast development of projects with high interactivity level, like software for business.
The key to success is the effective distribution of the remote team’s roles and responsibilities. Overall, the final software functional vision is usually provided by the
Product Owner
The client’s representative, who mediates between the client and engineers. While Product Owner possesses knowledge on product consumer features, Scrum Master is in charge of making the team work together, using the established meeting and process structure, and empowered by Scrum tools – specific applications enabling software development fluency and control – Jira, Trello, Monday, Azure, Scrumwise, and so on. It may seem not a big deal, but the spectrum is so wide it can suit any style of management.
Every product is unique, so are teams and Product Owners, – that is why Scrum software provides a variety of opportunities to trace the stage of Sprint Goal achievement and the amount of input for every particular member. This control can be open or subtle, temporary or constant – the majority of high-skilled teams can work in any Scrum system, even if you chose it relying on purely aesthetic taste.
At the end of each iteration, the workgroup also has to complete the Sprint review and self-evaluation, making it possible for members to develop more effective ways of work and communication. It also contains the check on the product’s current and anticipated value in the context of its market niche. Taking into account changes in the market situation allows answering the potential competitors beforehand, which is also a benefit when the client wants the software but isn’t closely familiar with the inner trends of this sphere.
While Scrum software is useful, functional product creation still depends more on teamwork, human competencies, and risks. That is why the methodology has been highly professionalized – for instance, in the Brightgrove.us they created the complete ready-to-use expert development system, comprising skilled engineers and attentive Scrum masters. It allows hiring qualified teams from the opposite side of the globe, fast launching and saving clients’ money. Whatever partner you choose, Scrum is the most efficient way to build sites & apps these days.
