Introducing MicroScrum!

Having attended various sessions at TechEd, DDD and DotNetDevNet on Scrum, I wanted to try implementing it. Trouble was, the size of the team for my current project is small (2 or 3 developers, including me) and Scrum’s intended for larger teams. So, I took the elements of Scrum that I felt still applied and, well, applied them!

Here’s what we are now doing:

We work in sprints—the tasks making up each sprint go into TFS as work items (or rather, they will be going into TFS: haven’t got around to that bit yet!). Every morning, we have a “Scrumlet”. We use it to run quickly through the tasks listed and attach estimated remaining times. It’s also a chance to re-focus efforts for the day. I keep a burn down chart up to date for my own and team’s reference. The chart is a great way to manage time and it keeps my project manager happy. Its visible nature means that the impact of moving someone onto another project is readily apparent.

I add to each sprint a couple of recurring tasks, namely the running of unit and functional tests, plus the updating of documentation. (I think of the latter as continuous integration for documentation.)

Early indications are that using “MicroScrum” is a great way to ensure project delivery remains on track, or at least that problems are seen earlier.