Agile Software Development - What Does Scrum Methodology Entail?

Agile software development is a well-known technique used by various software developers to plan and create completely functional products for their customers. Every agile methodology cleverly combines both traditional and modern ideas in a manner that is quickly comprehended and adopted by developers. An agile methodology called Scrum is discussed throughout this article. Scrum, better known as a framework, is an agile approach to software development that promotes team work. This means that a team of developers does not get a pre-determined guide describing how each step is to be performed on a project. Decision making is primarily done by the team itself without receiving instructions from a leader or supervisor.
So the Scrum team is expected to be completely autonomous and organized in order to start and finish programming projects. In this framework every programmer's proficiency is needed from the point of creating an idea to implementing it. Scrum currently boasts high popularity because of its simplicity, effectiveness and broad applicability in terms of controlling diverse interactive and incremental tasks. This agile software development structure is mainly associated with Ken Schwaber, the owner of a company called Advanced Development Methods. He used something that would later become Scrum in 1990s.
Other big names mentioned include John Scumniotales, Jeff McKenna and Jeff Sutherland. In 1995 and the following years Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland merged to form the current Scrum methodology. In 2001, a book called agile software development with Scrum was released by Ken Schwaber and Mike Beedle. An imperative unit is called sprint and each includes a list of activities that a development team feels it has enough time to work on. This list is called a sprint backlog. When developing the backlog the programmers focus on how quickly they performed their past sprints. They breakdown the stories and features into smaller tasks that are set to be completed within four to sixteen hours.
The list is developed in a way that permits each programmer to pick a task in relation to the pre-set scope of work and their level of knowledge and skills. This, as explained above, promotes group cohesion and teamwork. The status of work that is pending, in progress or finished is recorded in the task board. Scrum involves major and auxiliary roles. The former are called pigs while the latter are called chickens. In addition, the major roles are usually the ones that lead to the production of a product and they are three. The first one is called the ScrumMaster. It oversees the agile software development process to make sure that it is followed by the development team without disruptions. It gets rid of hindrances and is not necessarily a boss.
The Scrum Master simply stands between the programming group and any potential interference. The second role is the Product Owner who makes sure that the experts' deliverables are according to the customer's expectations. In addition, the Product Owner puts tasks in the Sprint backlog in the order of priority so that the Development Team can pick the tasks they want to complete for each sprint. Lastly there is the Development Team, usually a cross-functional group, which assumes the responsibility of doing a programming project. Its responsibility is to deliver a valuable product that is worth shipping to a customer at the end of each sprint. A typical agile software development group is made up of three to nine professionals that have diverse skills. Their work is to analyze, design and test a product. They also solve technical problems via a collaborative approach.

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Software Quality Assurance Made Transparent

Successful quality assurance (QA) seeks to provide a clear and realistic model for meeting the customer's expectations. In this context, "transparent" QA will adopt a policy of steady communication and evaluation from the top-down about all business decisions, testing, hiring, and user experience (UX). In addition, transparent QA will strive to anticipate and prevent problems before they occur and do so from the project's earliest stages, throughout development, and after release.
The transparency must begin with the CIO and filter down through the entire team. QA should be treated as a business decision to commit the company to the delivery of a product that meets or exceeds the consumers' expectations. This decision must manifest itself from the project's inception, beginning with the identification of the customer's needs and the means with which the project will attend them. Ideally, this will fill an as-yet-unfilled demand, or fill it in a more efficient way. These expectations must be clear, realistic, and made transparent to anyone involved in the project. Secrets, ambiguities, or procrastinations will only cripple the project at its onset.
There also exists a natural tendency to reduce QA to a software testing role. Limiting QA to a simple "black box" role strips it of its transparency by removing the need for it. Black-box testing merely ensures a certain output produces the desired output without comprehension of the program's inner workings in an attempt to mimic the typical user. It is the most inexpensive form of testing, thus the temptation. Though it has its place, it neglects the top-down, all-encompassing approach of transparent QA. For example, black-box QA will be denied the chance to apply the customers' needs to the hiring process for UX engineers, or even to place their specific needs into a publicized job posting. As another example, black-box QA might verify input-output functionality, but neglect UX and discover too late that the market despises the user interface (UI).
UX works with QA to provide consumers with a positive experience, and transparency must be evident on both sides to succeed. If QA's role is to identify the customers' needs, front-end objectives, and technical issues, then UX works to ensure the team's solutions translate into a pleasant experience for the users. In practice, UX focuses on the UI by group testing, analyzing usage data, and making suggestions to the QA team based on user feedback. If QA fails to consider the market's needs or properly communicate them to the UX team, then things like group testing and data analytics will be frustrating and expensive to implement.
Clear expectations and open two-way communication between QA, UX, and programmers will do much to solve problems before they occur. Prevention saves money, time, and effort. Delivering a relatively bug-free product is only one facet of a successful launch; companies must rely on QA to identify the customers' needs at the project's conception and to maintain a spirit of collaboration between all team members.

For more information about software quality assurance and testing, visit Magenic who have been one of the leading software development companies providing innovative custom software development to meet unique business challenges for some of the most recognized companies and organizations in the nation.

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