Blog Post #3 The fantastic remedy of Scrum… is it?
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On can say that scrum was born as the solution to a problem that occurs in almost every traditional project: Miscommunication. Scrum is often defined as a tool, process and continues on in that flow however, Scrum is more than that. For scrum to work it is not enough that you go through the motions but it requires an understanding of why it is done as Scrum in its essence is a philosophy. When we started the project we did not know much about agile or how it differed from how we been working so far. Simply put it is radically different which is something we would discover. Scrum has a manifesto which clearly states the priorities of this philosophy which every tool Scrum has is built upon. People and interactions over processes and tools Working software over comprehensive documentation Responding to change over following a plan Customer collaboration over contract negotiation. This manifesto created the framework we been working within these past weeks. Within Scrum, it is important to enable clear communication between all members of the team so that it is clear how the work is going and to support the rapport within a group. This is something that we experienced in our group during our development. Last year we had several projects from creating a board game to writing a concept document together. During this time we naturally worked in waterfall the epitome of traditional management. To say that everything went exactly according to the plan would be a lie. It was not only because we were a new group during that time and had to build our group culture but during the projects it was very easy to lose sight of the goals and work momentum. At times the group could feel distant as we got more work in our minors and could not give much time to our projects. Even now while we have fewer lectures in our minor we still got assignments that take away our focus from our game. However, it feels completely different from last year. Scrum’s manifesto must be understood by each member for scrum to work because this manifesto is the foundation of the tools and practices it teaches. For example, the primary practice it gives is the daily scrum. You meet every day at the same time and place where you answer: What did you do yesterday? (for the game in this case) For the game itself there is now a solid sense of progression each week in the games development, requirements and goals are clearer and problems are discovered earlier as communication is now more efficent and present in the group. So for me I wish we had learnt about this earlier as I feel that Scrum works much better for the group and our project than how we worked last year.
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