Software Projects are considered as long and forcible processes. Many software projects are completed with a %50 success and customer satisfiaction. Many companies in highly developed countries experienced such processes and developed some metodologies to overcome that problems. “Agile” has become the most powerfull of these metodologies during that period. After using “Agile”, those companies increased their success rate to %80 which carried a large amount of outcome in return.

Agile is the fastest and the most secure metodology among the known metodologies in software development. While many companies in the world are getting through Agile, many companies in Turkey do not which causes the companies consume their resources.

Starting from Tukey, ACM is in progress of generalizing Agile, which makes the software projects more effcient and everlasting.

Current Situation and the Problems

Software Project are planned up to following variables:

1- Customer Requirements

2- Time

3- Resource

4- Competition

5- Quality

6- Vision

As these variables affects the Project at the beginning, they also change during the Project. That brings the need for a structure which is highly adoptable to those changes.


The problems comes with the changes of the enviroment variables are the following;

1- Uncontrolled processes

2- Integration of indefinite bussiness process and indefinite development process.

3- Evaluation of these variables only at the beginning of the Project.

Waterfall and Iterative aproches are insufficient in solving the problems above. Besides, these approches makes the projects more complex with the changes of these enviroment variables. Agile metodologies can handle the changes of these variables readily.

What is Agile?

Agile is conceptual framework developed to make the software processes more flexible, powerfull and shorter. Agile splits the projects into small modules called iterations regardless of the project’s scale. Every iteration is a Project itself. The Project leaders check each iteration at the end of the Project period in order the iteration not to be out of scope. In “Agile” every iteration takes weeks instead of months . This is because of the interaction between the team members . This also secures the recovery of retrospective analysis and design errors. Furthermore, since every module is a stand alone Project, customer satisfaction is achived easily by continious delivery.

In the abstract “Agile” supplies

- Efficent

- Flexible

- Low error rated

- Fast

- Cheap

solutions.

SCRUM

Agile has sub branches that are the same in concept but different in appliance. The most popular of the these branches is SCRUM. SCRUM gets its name from rugby, small teams coming together for a goal which became popular in 90’s.

SCRUM is a framework for splitting and managing a project, by which even large scaled project can be hadled easily. Every split implementation in a project is a called a sprint in SCRUM. Since SCRUM is contains management metodologies, it can even be used in the bussiness workflow of a company. SCRUM needs daily meetings and continuos chase which comes up with a fast and agile product. SCRUM master keeps some charts and tables to manage the work. These charts help him to estimate the velocity of the team which brings better time estimates and better project management. An ordinary SCRUM process is as follows:

As the figure shows, each process in a SCRUM sprint is in interaction with each other.

To understand the SCRUM basics better the following glossary will be helpfull.

Sprint
A sprint is the figure above. It represents a set of modules to be complited for one iteration in Agile.

Product Owner
The person who commissions the project, and defines the requirements and priorities for the product.

Product Backlog
A prioritized list of all the desired changes to the product being developed, put together by the product owner.

Sprint BackLog
A list with items that will be completed in the current sprint, taken from the product backlog.

Impediment
Impediments are things that get in the way of the progress of the project. The SCRUM Master is responsible to look for and remove these obstacles so that they do not slow down or impair the project.

Daily SCRUM Meeting
A 15-minute SCRUM meeting is held every day. The SCRUM Master asks the three questions, and all members of the team and interested parties take part and give feedback. The meeting should be held at the same place every time, so that people know where to go.

- What have you accomplished since the last meeting?

- Are there any obstacles in the way of meeting your goal?

- What will you accomplish before the next meeting?

Sprint Planning Meeting
A meeting at the beginning of a sprint where the sprint is planned. Items from the Product Backlog are selected to be completed in the sprint, based on the priorities set by the Product Owner.

Sprint Review Meeting
A sprint is closed with a Sprint Review Meeting where the progress made in the last sprint is demonstrated, the sprint is reviewed, and adjustments are made to the project as necessary.

Advantages of SCRUM:

Fast products

High-Quality software by flexible backbone

Cost reducing

High customer satisfaction by continious delivery

High motivated teams