Our Process

At Momentify we are devout followers of Agile Development. Agile development refers to a group of development methodologies based on iterative development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing teams. We use a specialized method called the SCRUM development method.

A key principle of Scrum is its recognition that during a project the customers can change their minds about what they want and need (often called requirements churn), and that unpredicted challenges cannot be easily addressed in a traditional predictive or planned manner. As such, we adopt an empirical approach—accepting that the problem cannot be fully understood or defined, focusing instead on maximizing the team’s ability to deliver quickly and respond to emerging requirements.

Scrum Development in a Nutshell

1. Defining the Roles

A number of roles are defined in Scrum. All roles fall into two distinct groups—pigs and chickens—based on the nature of their involvement in the development process. These groups get their names from a joke about a pig and a chicken opening a restaurant:

A pig and a chicken are walking down a road. The chicken looks at the pig and says, “Hey, why don’t we open a restaurant?” The pig looks back at the chicken and says, “Good idea, what do you want to call it?” The chicken thinks about it and says, “Why don’t we call it ‘Ham and Eggs’?” “I don’t think so,” says the pig, “I’d be committed, but you’d only be involved.”

So the “pigs” are committed to building product regularly and frequently, while everyone else is a “chicken”—interested in the project but really indifferent because if it fails they’re not the pigs—that is, they weren’t the ones that committed to doing it. The needs, desires, ideas and influences of the chicken roles are taken into account, but are not in any way allowed to affect, distort or get in the way of the actual Scrum project.

1.1 “Pig” roles

The Pigs are the ones committed to the project in the Scrum process—they are the ones with “their bacon on the line” and performing the actual work of the project.

• ScrumMaster: Work is facilitated by a ScrumMaster whose primary job is to remove impediments to the ability of the team to deliver the sprint goal/deliverables. The ScrumMaster is not the leader of the team but acts as a buffer between the development and the client. The ScrumMaster ensures that the Scrum process is used as intended. The ScrumMaster is the enforcer of rules. A key part of the ScrumMaster’s role is to protect the team and keep them focused on the tasks in hand.
• Team: The team has the responsibility to deliver the product. A team is typically made up of 5–9 people with cross-functional skills who do the actual work (design, develop, test, technical communication, etc.).
• Product Owner: The Product Owner represents the voice of the client. He/she ensures that the Scrum Team works with the “right things” from a business perspective (imagery, logos, ect). The Product Owner writes customer-centric items (goals, target markets, ect), prioritizes them and then places them in the product backlog to be processed by the development team.

1.2 “Chicken” roles

Chicken roles are not part of the actual Scrum process, but must be taken into account. They are people for whom the product is being built.

• Stakeholders (customers, vendors): These are the people who enable the project and for whom the project will produce the agreed-upon benefit, which justify its production. They are only directly involved in the process during the sprint reviews.
• Managers: People who will set up the environment for the product development organizations.

2. Meetings

2.1 The Daily Scrum

Each day during the sprint, a project status meeting occurs. This is called a “daily scrum”, or “the daily standup”. This meeting has specific guidelines:

• The meeting starts precisely on time.
• All are welcome, but only “pigs” may speak
• The meeting is time boxed to 15 minutes
• The meeting should happen at the same location and same time every day

During the meeting, each team member answers three questions:

• What have you done since yesterday?
• What are you planning to do today?
• Do you have any problems preventing you from accomplishing your goal? (It is the role of the ScrumMaster to facilitate resolution of these impediments. Typically this should occur outside the context of the Daily Scrum so that it may stay under 15 minutes.)

2.2 The Post-scrum

Held each day, normally after the daily scrum.

• These meetings allow clusters of teams to discuss their work, focusing especially on areas of overlap and integration.
• A designated person from each team attends.

The agenda will be the same as the Daily Scrum, plus the following four questions:

What has your team done since we last met?

• What will your team do before we meet again?
• Is anything slowing your team down or getting in their way?
• Are you about to put something in another team’s way?

2.3 The Sprint Planning meeting

At the beginning of the sprint cycle (every 7–30 days), a “Sprint Planning Meeting” is held.

• Select what work is to be done
• Prepare the Sprint Backlog that details the time it will take to do that work, with the entire team<
• Identify and communicate how much of the work is likely to be done during the current sprint/li>
• Eight hour time limit
• (1st four hours) Product Owner + Team: dialog for prioritizing the Product Backlog
• (2nd four hours) Team only: hashing out a plan for the Sprint, resulting in the Sprint Backlog

At the end of a sprint cycle, two meetings are held: the “Sprint Review Meeting” and the “Sprint Retrospective”

2.2 The Sprint Review Meeting will:

• Review the work that was completed and not completed
• Present the completed work to the stakeholders (a.k.a. “the demo”)
• Incomplete work cannot be demonstrated
• Have a Four hour time limit

2.3 The Sprint RetroSpective will:

• Allow Team Members to reflect on the sprint
• Make continuous process improvements
• Answer two main questions: What went well during the sprint? What could be improved in the next sprint?
• Have a Three hour time limit

3.0 Parts of Development

3.1 The Product Backlog

The product backlog is a high-level document for the entire project. It contains backlog items: broad descriptions of all required features, wish-list items, etc. prioritized by business value. It is the “What” that will be built. It is open and editable by anyone and contains rough estimates of both business value and development effort. Those estimates help the Product Owner to gauge the timeline and, to a limited extent, prioritize. For example, if the “add spellcheck” and “add table support” features have the same business value, the one with the smallest development effort will probably have higher priority, because the ROI is higher.

The product backlog is the property of the Product Owner. Business value is set by the Product Owner. Development effort is set by the Team.

3.2 The Sprint Backlog

The sprint backlog is a document containing information about how our team is going to implement the features for the upcoming sprint. Features are broken down into tasks; as a best practice, tasks are normally estimated between four and sixteen hours of work. With this level of detail the whole team understands exactly what to do, and anyone can potentially pick a task from the list. Tasks on the sprint backlog are never assigned; rather, tasks are signed up for by the team members as needed, according to the set priority and the team member skills.

The sprint backlog is the property of the Team. Estimations are set by the Team. An accompanying Task Board is used to see and change the state of the tasks of the current sprint, like “to do”, “in progress” and “done”.

3.3 The Burn down

The sprint burn down is a chart that is a publicly displayed showing remaining work in the sprint backlog. Updated every day, it gives a simple view of the sprint progress. This chart is viewed online in our project management system.

3.4 Complete and Repeat

After completing the sprint process, we finalize and clear the burn down chart and move on to the next product increment. This will usally require a Sprint Planning Meeting to occur.

4.0 Terminology

The following terminology is used in Scrum:

4.1 Roles

• Product Owner: The person responsible for maintaining the Product Backlog by representing the interests of the stakeholders.
• ScrumMaster: The person responsible for the Scrum process, making sure it is used correctly and maximizing its benefits.
• Team: A cross-functional group of people responsible for managing itself to develop the product.
• Scrum Team: Product Owner, ScrumMaster and Team

4.2 Artifacts

• Sprint burn down chart: Daily progress for a Sprint over the sprint’s length.
• Product backlog: A prioritized list of high level requirements.
• Sprint backlog: A prioritized list of tasks to be completed during the sprint.

4.3 Others

• Impediment: Anything that prevents a team member from performing work as efficiently as possible.
• Sprint: A time period (typically 2–4 weeks) in which development occurs on a set of backlog items that the Team has committed to.
• Sashimi: A report that something is “done”. The definition of “done” may vary from one Scrum Team to another, but must be consistent within one team.
• Abnormal Termination: The Product Owner can cancel a Sprint if necessary. The Product Owner may do so with input from the Team, Scrum Master or Management. For instance, management may wish to cancel a Sprint if external circumstances negate the value of the Sprint Goal. If a Sprint is abnormally terminated, the next step is to conduct a new Sprint planning meeting, where the reason for the termination is reviewed.