At Spark Genius, we believe that adaptability and project changes are not only a part of any product’s life, but very beneficial as well! If Edison had just gone with the very first light bulb he invented, where would we be now? In order to deal with changes and requirement changes, we develop your sites using what we call the Scrum methodology.
No, we are not rugby players (we’re not quite that daring) but we have found that using Scrum techniques with our clients’ projects helps us to achieve goals and design requirements in a shorter amount of time and more effectively. What is Scrum? Before we can answer that, we first have to discuss the old way of doing things.
Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and iPhones were just pipe dreams, computer projects were designed using the Waterfall method. In a waterfall approach, all system goals, features, and functions are decided on at the very outset. A very rigid development structure is then followed, and there is very little leeway in terms of project changes. While this approach may be good for massive multinational software projects, it does not provide enough flexibility to make the changes that a typical web site project needs.
Enter Scrum! If you imagine the fast-paced, always changing game of rugby, then you are imagining the Scrum development methodolgy; we’re just passing around keyboards and code instead of footballs. Scrum is based on the notion of very short mini-deadlines (called sprints) with flexible specifications that allow a team to deliver a working product (if not the full product) at the end of every sprint. A general outline of how a Scrum project might go is as follows:
- Brainstorm all of the features you want your project or web site to have, and write them all down
- Decide on the priority of these features and split them into different iterations
- For each iteration, divide the features and requirements again into sprints. Sprints should take between 3-10 days, and no more than 30. (At Spark Genius we like our sprints to be about five days.)
- During each sprint, try and knock out all of the features for that sprint and make sure that the system is deliverable at the end of the sprint.
- Rinse and repeat!
By following a Scrum development methodology, at the end of each iteration we can say, “Look, here’s the site, it’s going great!” If the client then comes back and says, “Yes, it does! But we’ve decided we really need to do X not Y,” then the change is caught early and is much easier and more cost-effective to change. Both the developers and the client are happier, and projects get done on time and are on budget more often than with the old Waterfall method. Scrum is fantastic for web development because web sites are dynamic, and can be very easily changed. After much experimentation, we at Spark Genius use the Scrum methodology to make sure that your project is a success.
