What is scrum in agile methodology? “Scrum your team” & satisfy your client!

A company running an IT project for a customer must complete it efficiently; within a specified time and budget. Working out an effective implementation of excellent teamwork standards allows you to focus on achieving the goal. It guarantees the clear rules of cooperation providing WordPress development services. The Scrum methodology in the WordPress coders team creates a transparent and repetitive work scheme for each project. Scrum improves communication on every level. It has a significant impact on work efficiency. This applies perfectly to the case when we work with a digital agency. Scrum ensures agile project implementation and solving client’s problems fast and creatively, but more importantly, drives learning and continuous improvement.

Before we bet on Scrum

Before we bet on Scrum, we had to face several problems while running our projects:

• communication issues (both with clients and inside the team),
• lack of knowledge flow between individual developers,
• lack of clear rules of conduct in crisis,
• team members complementarity problem.

All this meant that working on the project often turned out to be inefficient, stressful and did not fully satisfy the client. The Scrum methodology implementation was the perfect answer to our needs. It systematizes the roles in the team and complementarity of our team members.

Our scrum transformation for multiple projects

Despite the fact that Scrum was created to manage individual projects, we went a step further. We implemented its principles into the workflow of the entire WordPress team, working simultaneously on a project portfolio.
Thanks to that all the members of our team learn constantly, avoiding problems which they faced in the previous projects. Knowledge sharing in the team improved tremendously. Moreover, each team member has a specific role in it. Thanks to clear procedures we avoid competence problems and create an efficient working system.

Three crucial positions in WordPress team are as follows:

Product Owner

Product Owner is a person responsible for the contact with the client. He listens to all client’s needs and find optimal solution to meet them, choosing the right internal resources to accomplish that. Gathering requirements at the beginning of the project and communicating them to the team is a key area of Product Owner responsibility. He’s task to come up to an idea who is able to solve the problem. He has to agree on all the stages of work and oversee their implementation. During the project course, Product Owner is a “shadow person” watching over the smooth course of the workflow, reacting to threats and supporting the team if needed. If compared to more traditional project management, Product Owner combines roles of project manager and analyst in one person. According to Scrum and Agile principles, he also becomes a part of development team more than merely a supervisor to whom everyone else reports.

Who is a Scrum Master

Scrum Master is a key person, supporting Product Owner and the entire WordPress team. He/she controls the implementation process of all projects and removes obstacles which could slow down or disorganize work. It gives the team a sense of security and professional care throughout the entire work process. Scrum Master makes sure that all procedures are preserved and supervises the organization of the team’s work. While Scrum Master is not directly involved in any project, his responsibility is to ensure the whole team fulfills all the regular Scrum activities.  These are daily meetings, weekly planning, retrospective meetings, etc. The most importantly, it’s Scrum Master’s role to ensure every member of the team approaches each assigned task with relevant dedication and responsibility.

Developers team

Each project is implemented in accordance to the assumed work plan by the developers team. They carry out specific tasks of each project directly. Because we have created the team of highly specialized programmers it allows us to get our clients access straight to them. It means that during the whole project they can contact with both our Product Owner and developers. For simplicity – typically client contacts the lead developer assigned earlier to the particular project. To enable the efficient information flow between client and our team members, we use several online platforms. To manage tasks and communicate project progress we use Trello, Basecamp or Jira. All that speeds up the communication related to the project details, eliminating communication bottlenecks known in traditional project management approach.  Working as a team, we have a freedom to assign the most relevant people to the tasks on individual projects. Every project is different and brings different kind of challenges. Following agile principles gives us the flexibility to use the whole team potential to accomplish each project in the most efficient way, i.e. by assigning domain experts for consultations and avoid ‘reinventing the wheel’ situations if only someone in our team has already solved particular problem in the past.

How it works ?

Our team meets regularly to fulfill typical agile activities. Thanks to that we can constantly optimize our workflow in WordPress development services. We inspire knowledge transfer and make everyone in the team accountable for the work assigned.

Daily meeting

According to the Agile methodology, our team starts each day with the “Daily” meeting. It is not about a specific project, but about the overall work of the whole WordPress team. It is time for a quick exchange of information:

• on the progress of individual projects,
• possible problems,
• options of solving them.

The “Daily” is the time for asking for help or seeking knowledge. Someone who has already faced similar problem knows how to do it right. This is the time when Product Owners can identify potential issues. At this point hey could address them with individual project teams later on, and update clients with current information about project progress if needed.

During dailies the team is also able to plan any unexpected activities related to all kind of urgent tasks: service requests, new project estimations, etc.

Weekly planning

During this meeting the team picks up tasks in individual projects and plans the whole week. We make sure the team is not booked 100% to make space for any urgent task which might appear during the week, as the general Scrum rule says that we should not change the plan during the week. High work efficiency comes from people laser-focused on their tasks. Which is why we by all means try to avoid disrupting the work flow during the course of week.

Retrospective

There are two “Retrospective” meetings planned every week.

• Knowledge Retrospective for the team is used to equalize the level of knowledge in our WordPress team and support each team member in raising his/her qualifications. Individual developers have their specialization fields (i.e. WordPress plugin development, WooCommerce, site optimization, headless WordPress, etc) During the week, each of the team members has to find one interesting new thing, either based on his/her current project experience, or coming from extra research, which they canshare on the “Retro” meeting, increasing the overall knowledge and value of the whole team.

• Project Retrospective for projects focuses on the process of implementation of individual orders. It is time to ask: what went well, what could be done better, and how we can learn from everything we’ve done. The team agrees on the changes we should introduce to our procedures, to protect us from issues we have faced in future, and solutions to the arising problems, which should be widely spread out in the team as our ‘lessons learned’. It is a perfect time to ensure all Product Owners, Developers and Testers really work shoulder to shoulder to achieve the best possible results for our clients in the shortest possible time.

All the above elements of work in Scrum create a perfectly functioning and profitable self-improving system. WordPress team can efficiently perform the work commissioned by the client, and on the other hand, still improves itself, being able to reach for new, increasingly complex tasks.

According to all above we give our clients the opportunity to use our process-organized company without incurring the costs of its construction and service. That is why using outsourced WordPress development services is the best solution to improve your business.