How many of us have been in a position where our Manager has asked us to go Agile with software development?

Suddenly you realise what is the fuss around with Agile. You start googling around all the available blogs in your reach and you end up getting one single point – “AGILE IS A MINDSET”.
What was your manager thinking about going Agile? How is my mindset going to help delivery the best product out there in market making it valuable to my client?
Firstly, to deliver a great product you do not need process or tools to get going with product development.

Every seen a game played without set rules and process?
So to be Agile, Scrum is that one framework among many others to get you the right mindset of being Agile.

Scrum talks about 5 important values –
1) COURAGE – Every scrum team member have courage to do the right thing and work on tough problems.
2) FOCUS – Everyone focuses on the work of the Sprint and the goals of the scrum.
3) COMMITMENT – Each team member personally commit to achieve the goals of the scrum team.
4) RESPECT – Scrum team members respect each other to be capable and independent.
5) OPENNESS – The scrum team and its stakeholders agree to be open about all the work and challenges while performing work.

Ok !! we still haven’t spoken about any specific tools or techniques, but how are we going to implement this.
we need a SCRUM MASTER to foster this kind of environment.

Scrum was founded on empiricism and lean thinking. It employs iterative and incremental approach to optimize predictability and control risk.

Empiricism = INSPECT + ADAPT + FREQUENTLY
How frequently we inspect and adapt to any situation determines our mindset to achieve the goal.

So who all are a part of Scrum team?
1) Product Owner
2) Development Team (3-9 members)
3) Scrum Master

Scrum team is small and efficient. It is easily manageable and helps delivering the product quickly in an iterative and incremental approach.
This reduces the risk of managing a large team altogether and minimizes waste.

Scrum Artifacts – The scrum team that works on.
1) Product Backlog – The final product goal.
2) Sprint Goal – The goal to create a small part of the overall product.
3) Increment – The team that decides on the DONE status of a work.

With the right mindset (Agile) and Scrum in place with its values, empiricism, artifacts and the players in place, how would you commit yourself to deliver a high quality product?

Scrum gives you the framework and guidelines and anyone can master it but it is how you design the game and master the situation with scrum helping you deliver a high quality product.

Let me know what you think !