SCRUM

Overview

Goals

LEAP aims at building experience and knowledge among higher education students on emerging lean and agile industry practices empowering them to effectively transition into the professional world, focusing on engineering disciplines. The project further aims at closing the new digital divide by promoting the development of high quality digital content for higher education linked to both academic and industry needs. Lean practices will encourage students to design solutions that meet needs while minimizing the deployment of resources. Agile practices expose students to industry cycles in which design is integrated throughout production processes, as opposed to only in the early stages of production, ensuring that the final product effectively addresses consumer needs. LEAP deploys serious games that encourage learners to adopt industry roles, to think critically for addressing community and societal needs through agile engineering solutions, to practice on the application of industrial process management in the context of their higher education curricula, and to take into account environmental responsibility issues in service design and implementation. Recognizing the importance of supporting educators on integrating the proposed innovative learning methods and tools into their teaching practices LEAP will further develop good practice guidelines and instructor support content.

Learning Objectives

SCRUM, which refers to the related popular agile design methodology, which aims to ensure that software best addresses the needs of target users. SCRUM includes roles, namely SCRUM Master, Team Member, and Product Owner (typically the customer). The team prioritizes tasks and delivers a product incrementaly in cycles that are called "SCRUMS". The application includes two scenarios that show how agile can benefit sectors beyond software engineering. The scenarios focus on urban design and agricultural design.

Context

“SCRUM” model is deployed in the context of agile design. The SCRUM model is applicable in small teams that work in small to medium sized projects. Team members have roles. For example, the SCRUM master is the overall coordinator. The product owner is the person that decides whether the outcome of implementation actually meets needs; typically this person is the customer. Team members work with the SCRUM master to implement a project. Design and implementation of a project are interleaved and not separated as in more traditional project implementation approaches. At the beginning of a project implementation team members in collaboration with the customer brainstorm to identify the features that the final product must have. Each feature is documented in a small note typically on a board. The team members in collaboration with the customer then decide which features will be implemented in the first iteration of development, which in the second, which in the third, and so on. Once the features to be implemented in an iteration are agreed upon, the team members go into a “sprint” of implementation, which is intense. Typically, during this time team members do not interact with external individuals. Rather, they interact only with the SCRUM master, who acts as a buffer protecting the team from distractions. At the end of a sprint all team members, the SCRUM master, and the product owner have a meeting. This meeting is called a “SCRUM”, giving its name to the overall process. During the SCRUM participants decide whether the result is the desired one. They further identify the features that will be implemented in the next sprint. The product owner, i.e. the customer, may “accept” or “reject” the result. Rejection is not uncommon. If a release is rejected a new prototype is built in the following sprint. The related application will be a single player game that will recreate the development of a product using the SCRUM methodology described above. The player will be able to assume any of the traditional SCRUM roles, namely SCRUM master, product owner, or team member. The following scenarios are planned, which demonstrate that the SCRUM methodology can be applied beyond its traditional use in software engineering: designing a university campus (civil engineer), designing a garden (agricultural engineering).