In this tutorial, we will introduce how to use Scrum project in PingCode, create product backlog and plan iteration, hold Scrum meeting and other detailed processes. Preparations : PingCode software account has been created [ free registration channel ]
What is Scrum? Scrum is one of the most popular agile development frameworks at home and abroad. Scrum provides the team with a regular delivery incremental work model through a series of fixed-cycle iterations (Sprint).
Step 1: Create a Scrum project
After creating and logging into your PingCode account, you can create a project in "Project Management" and choose to create a project with the project type "Scrum". If your team has a specific business process and wants to control and implement an independent workflow separately, you can consider trying the Scrum project template of PingCode project management. For more information on agile development projects, see The Agile Guide .
After the project is created, the team's requirements backlog will be blank initially. The backlog, also known as the product backlog, contains the team's potential work backlog on the project.
Step 2: Create work items in the Product Backlog
In PingCode's Scrum project, work items include five types : epic, feature, user story , task and defect. In agile development, the most commonly used work items are user stories, and you can quickly create user stories in the product backlog. For the creation of user stories, you can refer to the template of the sample project.
What is a user story? User stories start from the user's point of view and use business language that users can understand to describe the work content. As a <role>, I want <activities> to facilitate <business value>.
Example: As a "website administrator", I want to "count how many people visit my website every day" so that "my sponsors know what my website will bring them." User stories are usually written by The product owner creates and prioritizes them, and then the development team evaluates the detailed work content of the user stories in iterations and the amount of work required to complete the story points.
Once you've created some user stories, you can start prioritizing them in your backlog. In PingCode , you can prioritize user stories based on backlog order.
Doing the above steps well is just the beginning of a Scrum project. In the process of agile development, you will continuously create user stories for the project, because Scurm agile projects are delivered continuously and iteratively.
Step 3: Create Iterations
You're ready to start your Scrum project by creating your first iteration in the project.
What is an iteration (Sprint)? In Scrum agile development, the team completes a certain number of user stories in a fixed cycle called iterations. Typically, iterations take one, two, or four weeks, depending on each team's work cadence. Generally, we recommend starting from two weeks, because this time span is moderate, enough to complete some work tasks, and it can also help the team get regular feedback. Once an iteration cadence is established, the team operates according to that cadence for the long term. A fixed iteration cycle helps improve the accuracy of the team's effort estimates and predicts the team's work rate.
Step 4: Hold an iteration planning meeting
At the beginning of an iteration, you should hold an iteration planning meeting with the rest of the team. The iteration planning meeting is a fixed process of agile development, which helps the project iteration of the whole team run more smoothly. In this meeting, the whole team will discuss the goals of this iteration and the product requirements backlog. The development team creates detailed tasks for high-priority user stories, and estimates story points ; and commits to completing a certain number of user stories in an iteration. These user stories form what is known as the iteration requirements backlog.
When evaluating user story effort, you can do so by adding numbers in the story points field. You can also add more details to the story, or click Create Sub Work Item to further create tasks that break down the user story.
When ready, move the user stories agreed upon by the team in the iteration planning meeting to the iteration you just created. This is your requirements backlog for this iteration.
What is an iteration planning meeting?
Participants: Development Team, Scrum Master, Product Owner
When: At the beginning of the iteration
Length: Typically two hours per week for an iteration - eg: A typical two-week iteration would last around four hours for an iteration meeting.
Purpose: To plan the work of the iteration, so that the team can agree on the iteration goal and product requirements to-do work content.
What are iteration goals? When creating an iteration (Sprint), the product owner usually determines the iteration goal. This provides a direction for the work to be done in the iteration. Sprint goals also provide some flexibility in the number of user stories completed in an iteration. An iteration can be considered successful if the iteration goals are achieved.
What is agile estimating? Traditional software teams estimate work items in units of time: days, weeks, months. However, many agile teams have transitioned to story point estimation. Story points score the relative amount of work done, usually determining values in a Fibonacci format: 0, 0.5, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40, 100. Story point estimation helps you measure the next iteration's effort against the number of team members. After a few iterations, your team will have a better idea of how much work they can do each iteration, avoiding overcommitting.
Step 5: Start Iterating
After an iteration is created, some teams are named according to the iteration goal. If the work content in the iteration has something in common, it can be named around the theme of the iteration. Or it can be named according to the working habits of the team.
After you determine the iteration period, you can add the iteration start and end dates. Start and end dates should align with the team's schedule. For example, some teams start an iteration on a Monday and wrap it up on Friday morning the following week. Some teams decide to start and end iterations mid-week. It depends on your team work habits! If you're not sure how long your iteration should last, we recommend trying two weeks.
After the iteration goals and specific work content are determined in the iteration planning meeting, the iteration can start. Here, your team receives work items from the iteration to-do list and updates the status of the work items in real time until it is finally completed.
Step 6: Hold a Daily Standup
Once an iteration begins, your team will meet daily (usually in the morning) to communicate what everyone is doing. The purpose of this is to see if anyone on your team is experiencing obstacles in completing the iteration task.
What is a Daily Standup ?
Key Participants: Development Team
Meeting time: Once a day, usually in the morning
Duration: No more than 15 minutes. There is no need to book a meeting room to sit down and discuss, just stand up for the meeting, and standing up can help shorten the meeting time!
Purpose of the meeting: The purpose of the daily standup is to quickly inform the team about what everyone is working on and plan for the day. This is not a formal meeting. The meeting atmosphere can be relaxed and interesting, rich in form and complete in content. Each team member should answer the following questions:
- What did I accomplish yesterday?
- What am I going to do today?
- Am I stuck with something?
Reporting in front of your colleagues what you did yesterday will demonstrate accountability as a member. After all, no one wants to be someone who does things without commitment.
Tip: Some teams use timers to regulate when everyone speaks; some teams dictate the order in which everyone speaks to ensure everyone is paying attention; many distributed teams use video conferences or group chats to kick off standups. Therefore, daily scrums depend on your team's work habits.
During daily standups, a Scrum board can be used so that each member can see what tasks they are working on.
Step 7: Review the Burndown Chart
It's a good idea to look at burndown charts during iterations . In PingCode , the burndown chart shows the actual and estimated effort in the iteration. The burndown chart updates automatically as you complete work items. You can view this graph in the iteration overview:
What is a burndown chart? A burndown chart shows the actual and estimated effort in an iteration. The horizontal x-axis on a burndown chart represents time, while the vertical y-axis typically represents story points. Use burndown charts to track the total work remaining for an iteration and predict the likelihood of achieving the iteration's goals. By tracking the remaining work throughout the iteration, the team can manage its progress and respond accordingly.
Precautions:
- The team did all the iteration work early on, probably because they didn't pay enough attention to the details of the work.
- Teams that don't complete estimated iterations on time may be because they're throwing in too much stuff that isn't working.
- A burndown chart that drops sharply over a period of time, rather than gradually, may be due to a less granular breakdown of work.
- The product owner adds or changes the user story scope of work during the iteration.
Step 8: Review the Sprint Report
At any time during or at the end of an iteration, you can view the iteration's report to monitor the iteration's progress.
What is an iteration report? Sprint reports include burndown charts and more, listing work done, work not done, and any work added since the iteration started.
Step 9: Hold an Iteration Acceptance Meeting
The iteration acceptance meeting is a team sharing meeting where members present what they have accomplished in the iteration. Each iteration typically produces new content for the product, known as a requirements increment.
This is a formal meeting of the agile development process that provides a lot of feedback to the project team and includes a brainstorming session to help the team decide what to do for the next iteration.
What is an iteration review meeting?
Main Participants: Development Team, Scrum Master, Product Owner Optional Participants: Stakeholders
Meeting time: usually on the last day of the iteration
Duration: Typically two hours for a two-week iteration
Purpose: Accept product increments and update product backlog.
Questions to confirm:
- Does the team meet the iteration's work expectations?
- Was work added or removed during iterations?
- Is there work left to be done in the iteration?
- If so, why?
Step 10: Hold an iteration retrospective meeting
After completing an iteration, have your team do a retrospective. You can record the team review issues on the review board in the iteration overview. Also use the PingCode-Wiki sub-product to help teams organize meeting minutes.
What is an iteration retrospective meeting?
Participants: development team, agile coach (Scrum Master), product owner (Product Owner).
Meeting time: At the end of the iteration.
Duration: Typically 90 minutes for two-week iterations.
Purpose: Review the team's iterative workflow and collaborative communication issues and discuss improvement plans for the issues. The improvement plan will be applied to the next iteration.
The retrospective meeting can not only bring up the working problems of the team, but also analyze the causes of the problems so that the team can continue to focus on these problems. In addition, the team also needs to discuss creative solutions to problems and develop corresponding action plans in meetings. Continuous improvement is the characteristic of continuous iteration of agile teams, and a retrospective meeting is an indispensable part.
Questions to confirm:
- How are we doing during iterations?
- What else can we do?
- Will we do better next time?
Tip: Don’t cancel retrospectives even if the whole team is going well. Retrospective meetings provide ongoing guidance to the team to ensure smooth execution of the project.
Step 11: Finish Iterating in PingCode
On the last day of the iteration you need to end the iteration.
If an iteration has unfinished work or new bugs, you can:
- Set work item to do status
- Move work items to future iteration backlog
- Move the work item to the next iteration for processing
Step 12: Repeat from Step 2
At this point, I believe you have mastered the basics of creating user stories, creating iterations, holding iteration planning meetings, acceptance meetings, and retrospective meetings for Scrum projects. You can consider whether to apply it to your team. If you want to learn more about agile knowledge, please continue to browse the following articles.
Further reading: Guide to Agile Development
Scrum Development Guide: Detailed Explanation of Scrum Framework | Four Scrum Meetings and Correct Ways to Hold | Correct Way to Plan and Execute Sprint | 4 Key Points for Doing Iterative Planning | Do these 4 points to make daily stand-up meetings more suitable for agile Team | 3 Key Steps to Opening a Good Iteration Review | Why Hold an Iteration Review | The 3 Scrum Roles and Their Specific Responsibilities | The Role of the Scrum Three Artifacts in Agile Development | 14 Best Scrums in 2022 Agile Project Management Software | More
Kanban Agile Guide: 5 Benefits of Using Kanban (Kanban) Management Method | Kanban VS Scrum: How to choose? | Which scenarios are suitable for the mixed mode of Kanban and Scrum | More
Scaled Agile: The Value of Scaled Agile and Five Large-scale Agile Frameworks | Spotify Model of Scaled Agile | LeSS Framework of Scaled Agile Framework | SAFe Scaled Agile Framework | Scrum@Scale Model | Agile Project Portfolio Management | OKR and Agile Development | More
Product Management: How to Build a Qualified Product Roadmap | How to Become a Good Product Manager | The Importance of Agile Roadmaps and Construction | How to Build Simple and Effective Product Requirements Documents | Use NPS to Determine Functional Priority | Every Product Manager Needs Learn Product Analysis Skills | More