Agile Methodology

Agile is an iterative approach to project management and software development that helps teams deliver value to their customers faster and with fewer headaches. Instead of betting everything on a "big bang" launch, an agile team delivers work in small, but consumable, increments. Requirements, plans, and results are evaluated continuously so teams have a natural mechanism for responding to change quickly.

An agile framework is an umbrella term for several iterative and incremental software development approaches such as Scrum and kanban etc..

Agile methodology type has its own unique qualities, they all incorporate elements of iterative development and continuous feedback when creating an application. Any agile development project involves continuous planning, continuous testing, continuous integration, and other forms of continuous development of both the project and the application resulting from the agile framework

Scrum

Scrum typically involves daily standups and sprints with sprint planning, sprint reviews, and retrospectives. There are daily scrums and two- to four-week sprints (putting code into production) with the goal to create a shippable product after every sprint. Daily stand-up meetings allow team members to share progress.

Scrum teams are usually comprised of a scrum master, a product owner, and the development team. All must operate in synchronicity to produce high-quality software products in a fast, efficient, cost-effective way that pleases the customer.

Agile Testing

Agile Testing is a practice that a QA follows in a dynamic environment where testing requirements keep changing according to the customer needs. It is done parallel to the development activity where the testing team receives frequent small codes from the development team for testing.

When do we use Agile Scrum Methodology

1. When the client is not so clear on requirements.

2. When the client expects quick releases.

3. When the client doesn’t give all the requirements at a time.

Sprint

In Scrum, the project is divided into Sprints. Each Sprint has a specified timeline (2 weeks to 1 month). This timeline will be agreed by a Scrum Team during the Sprint Planning Meeting. Here, User Stories are split into different modules. The end result of every Sprint should be a potentially shippable product.

Burn-Up and Burn-Down charts

Burn Down Charts provide proof that the project is on track or not. Both the burn-up and burn-down charts are graphs used to track the progress of a project.

Burn-up charts represent how much work has been completed in a project whereas Burn-down chart represents the remaining work left in a project.

Types of Burn-Down charts

There are four popularly used burn down charts in Agile.

1. Product burndown chart

2. Sprint burndown chart

3. Release burndown chart

4. Defect burndown chart

Product Burndown Chart- A graph which shows how many Product Backlog Items (User Stories) implemented/not implemented.

Sprint Burndown Chart - A graph which shows how many Sprints implemented/not implemented by the Scrum Team.

Release Burndown Chart - A graph which shows List of releases still pending, which Scrum Team have planned.

Defect Burndown Chart - A graph which shows how many defects identified and fixed.

Roles in Scrum

There are mainly three roles that a Scrum team have:

Product Owner -  Product Owner usually represents the Client and acts as a point of contact from the Client side. The one who prioritizes the list of Product Backlogs which Scrum Team should finish and release.

Scrum Master - Scrum Master acts as a facilitator to the Scrum Development Team. Clarifies the queries and organizes the team from distractions and teach the team how to use scrum and also concentrates on Return on Investment (ROI). Responsible for managing the sprint.

Scrum Development Team -  Developer’s, QA’s. Who develops the product. Scrum development team decides the effort estimation to complete a Product Backlog Item.

Scrum Team - A cross-functional, self-organizing group of dedicated people (Group of Product Owner, Business Analyst, Developer’s and QA’s). Recommended size of a scrum team is 7 plus or minus 2 (i.e, between 5 to 9 members in a team).

Product backlog & Sprint Backlog

Product backlog is maintained by the project owner which contains every feature and requirement of the product.

Sprint backlog can be treated as subset of product backlog which contains features and requirements related to that particular sprint only.

Velocity in Agile

Velocity is a metric that is calculated by addition of all efforts estimates associated with user stories completed in a iteration. It predicts how much work Agile can complete in a sprint and how much time will require to complete a project.

Re-factoring

Modification of the code without changing its functionality to improve the performance is called re-factoring.

Epic, User stories & Tasks

User Stories:User Stories defines the actual business requirement. Generally created by Business owner.

Task: To accomplish the business requirements development team create tasks.

Epic: A group of related user stories is called an Epic.

Task board in Agile

Task board is dash board which shows progress of the project. It contains:

1. User Story: which has the actual business requirement.

2. To Do: Tasks that can be worked on.

3. In Progress: Tasks in progress.

4. To Verify: Tasks pending for verification or testing

5. Done: Completed tasks.

Daily Stand-up Meeting

Daily Stand-up Meeting is a daily routine meeting. It brings everyone up to date on the information and helps the team to stay organized. Each team member reports to the peers the following:

1. What did you complete yesterday?
2. Any impediments in your way?
3. What do you commit to today?
4. When do you think you will be done with that?

In general, it’s not a recorded meeting. Reporting will be between peers not to Scrum Master or Product Owner. It is normally timeboxed to a maximum of 15 minutes.