Agile- Understanding Scrum Part 4(Scrum Artifacts)

In this post i am going to talk about different artifacts involved in scrum. We will talk about what these artifacts are and how these are utilized practicing scrum.

Product backlog –
1) What is it – It is list of features containing short description for all functionality desired in the product. It need not to be end to end long description, instead it can be short description sufficient to create a development task. The more detailed information will evolve sprint by sprint based on user feedback.
2) Content – it contains Features, Bugs, technical work(example- environment setup) and knowledge acquisition(example – evaluate a library for use).  In general the features are listed as user story, which is written from user perspective. It is more of language like “As a user I want to ….”, with this format its easier to understand the end goal of the story.  There is not difference in feature or bug, when it’s written in user story format.
Rules - It should be visible to all who cares to see it(value transparency) .  Work at the top of the product backlog should be sized and understood by the development team and product owner both. If the product backlog is not ready, then sprint planning is cancelled.

Sprint Backlog –
1) What is it – during sprint planning meeting, scrum team picks up top priority item from product backlog and moves it to sprint backlog. 1 item from product backlog can have 1 or many corresponding items in sprint backlog.
2) Content – Sprint backlog is list of tasks identified by scrum master to be completed during sprint. While picking up these items it’s important to estimate the effort as well, so that you have clear idea on how many items can be addresses in given sprint.

Burndown chart –
1) What is it – Each day, estimated work examining in the sprint is calculated and graphed by scrum master, resulting in sprint burndown chart.
2) Content – Burndown chart shows more of the progress over time for the team. Horizontal sprint show sprint and vertical axis shows amount of work remaining.  Work remaining can be in any unit like story points, days or anything else. The burndown chart also helps understanding the estimation accuracy. If the progress line is coming above ideal work line, which means your work is completing slower than expected, hence you underestimated the timeline. And if you overestimate the time required, the progress will appear ahead of schedule, means below the ideal work line.