What is the best team setup for efficient development? How the Scrum methodology and agile principles can help to increase software development team productivity.

The challenging way to version 1.0

Let’s assume that you have a good-enough-idea of what you want to build, at least for the first version of the new baby. How do you start off? Just let the team work – after all they are professionals and they should know… You can do that but it won’t work. Why? First of all, despite all the lengthy discussions you still don’t know exactly what you want to build. Most likely every member of your team has a different version of that clear goal. And the tricky thing is that you are not aware of these subtle but relevant differences. Between your idea and the first version of tangible software you’ll have to cross the land of realization. These are dangerous grounds where orks roam and you better not send out the team unprepared. As long as you are safe in Rivendell make a plan that everybody can follow even when walking alone for some time. Slice the mammoth. Break down the work in small pieces and write them down, each part at a time. Make sure all parts fit together and that the sum of the parts makes up what you have in mind for that next version of your software. Put the parts in an order, with most important ones first, and assign each part to one of your team members. Sounds a lot better than just heading out into the wilderness, doesn’t it?

No Master Plan required?

No. You won’t create that 200 page master plan for all that may need to be done within the next 3 years. Don’t waste your time, things will change and if we’re honest you don’t even know what’s going to happen 3 months down the road. But the next 2 weeks should be doable. That seems to be a time range that humans can overlook. 2 weeks are still soon enough to review the first achievements. And just long enough to give the team the time required to create results in the first place. Feedback and intermediate steps are what you are looking for when navigating the uncertain plains of software development. An incredibly high percentage of software projects fail and that should not happen to yours. Don’t be afraid but also don’t be careless. The orks are out there and your team needs a structured approach to succeed. Many methodologies exist and the best choice depends among other things on what you want to build. If you’re about to prepare the next mission to mars you may want to stick to rather old school waterfall style approaches. For all others: take a close look at

Scrum and agile principles

This may sound very abstract at first but is very straight forward once you have a basic understanding. Much of this about accepting that humans seem to have great difficulty to define upfront how exactly that final software should look, work and behave. Of course you can try to define it to the last detail before building it – but it won’t be good, at least not nearly as good as it may get with more degrees of freedom to change and adapt. Think about a cook inventing a new recipe. Will he do it all upfront at his desk? The basics, sure, but the difference between good and great happens during preparation in the kitchen. So with software. Learning usually happens over time and the teams growing understanding of the domain unlocks new possibilities. However if change hits too often chances are that nothing gets ever done. Some balance seems to be required and this is where Scrum comes in. It strikes a balance between not planning at all (no, not good) and overdoing the planning part. It allows for enough flexibility to factor in changes but provides the basic guide rails and structure to keep chaos at bay. And it provides some insight into work and team progress over time. Sounds great, doesn’t it? Let’s take a closer look. If you want the full story go to scrum.org. What you read here is a high level summary.

Epics, User Stories and the Backlog

Did we mention the 2 week time range and that a breakdown of the vision to smaller parts is required? In Scrum these small parts are called epics and user stories. A user story describes a functionality, a feature, some requirement from a specific stakeholders perspective. It should be a very tangible thing with clearly defined outcome, with just enough information so that the people in the team understand what is expected. The team will order the user stories by priority – they all go into a central list called the backlog. And this is what the team is working on within the 2 week period – which is by the way called a sprint. Before the sprint starts the team has agreed on the user stories to be tackled and their priority. The backlog for this sprint is then fixed and the team can focus on working on it undisturbed. No change of priorities, no sudden additional tasks. Let the team do its job. In time before the next sprint starts there’ll be another planning for this next sprint. Then the game starts over again.

Why 2 week sprint cycles?

This is some sort of balance between structure and flexibility: the current sprint is fix, but you can plan the next one as required, factoring in whatever changes that came up. So the backlog is your definition of the work to be done, and it will change over time. However the team will work on stable ground and produce results every 2 weeks. Note that there is no fixed deadline and no fixed overall goal any more – it just doesn’t make sense in this ever changing environment. Instead there is the backlog and each completed user story drives the team towards the next better version. Some forecast about what will be available when is still possible but with less binding guarantee. This approach may sound very challenging in an enterprise, customer, contract context, and it somehow is. By the way – how reliable was your binding guarantee in the past anyway?

Overcome lack of transparency

This is another major challenge in software development. Where does the team stand? How much time is still required to get that next version ready? When will it be done? If the answer is ‘one more week’ or ‘one more month’ you know you’re doomed. These answers mean in fact that we are optimistic and quite sure that we can get the job done – but have zero clue about the remaining effort. Just leave me/us alone and come back again in one week/month. Then by the way you’ll get the exact same answer again. Sounds familiar? This is not bad intention, this is how humans are structured. We tend to underestimate larger work packages. Back to Scrum and the user stories. A story should be small and have a clear, tangible outcome. Something you could see or ideally test once it is done. Like an updated version of that UI with the new feature xyz. Small means it should be feasible to complete it within 1…3 days.

Break things down into smaller parts

If this sounds impossible break your story down to several parts, think about a step wise approach. Sounds like a bit of extra work but the team will get many benefits in return. Each small part will either be not started at all, in progress or done. That’s it. Nothing in between. No it’s-almost-done-come-back-in-a-week any more. The team will see that progress is visible on a day by day basis. Check out this blog post [] for more details. Ah, how will the team see that by the way? The backlog will be visible to the team at any time. You could do it via post-it notes on a wall, one per user story, as very basic approach. Or probably much better via one of the many available Scrum tools with online access for the team and a virtual board for each sprint. You can find some recommendations in the tools article.

Streamline team communication

This is the next critical element. No lengthy status meetings any more, from now on there’s only short ‘stand-ups’ but these happen each and every day. The team meets standing up. Don’t get too comfortable, this should be a quick thing, just a few minutes. Everybody tells what his/her current topics are, any problems or help needed? Then up to the next one, no lengthy discussions. And over, back to work. This approach is much more efficient than weekly status meetings that nobody follows over the entire time anyway. For any detail clarifications people can meet one-one-one as required.

Learning and improvement

Good is never good enough. At the end of each sprint the team will change the perspective to the meta level and meet for a ‘retrospective’. The purpose of this meeting is to think about the team as such, reflect on what worked well within the sprint, what did not, what could be improved? The team should capture and follow up on proposals and ideas. Make team members address impediments together. Get stronger and more efficient over time. And by the way this is it. Stand ups, backlog grooming and planning, a retrospective. No other meetings. Leave the team alone, give them the time to do their work.

And how about roles?

Scrum articles often start with role descriptions as if this was the most important thing. I think the idea is the most important, the team working together, ever improving. Yes, somebody should own the definition of the software product to be build, collect feedback and bring it back into the team, in general act as interface for the team towards the outside world. The outside world will be first of all customers and users, but also most likely other internal stakeholders like upper management, sales, marketing, whatever – depending on company size. This is the Product Owner (PO). The team as such is responsible for contributing to and for delivering on the backlog, but the PO is the one who writes the user stories and prioritizes them. This puts him in the driver seat for steering the product and ensuring fits with the overall vision and market requirements. However a smart PO will always collect as much buy-in and feedback from his team as possible. And then somebody needs to look after the process as such. Invite to backlog planning, ensure stand-ups are short and remove impediments for the team as such. This is what the the ‘scrum master’ does. The team could determine one of the members, or rotate the assignment. For larger organisations there may be full-time scrum masters that looks after several teams. And that’s it.

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What is SCRUM – setting up highly productive development teams