Agile methods provide all the tools for a software development team to work in an envi-ronment that challenges them and gives the team the flexibility to satisfy customers.
However, agile frameworks require the teams to be self-sufficient and able to manage the project. The agile methods give the guidelines when implementing the methods, not a guide on how it is done, which is the reason why companies and other teams use the methods slightly differently. There are many ways agile methods are used and it all de-pends on how the development teams learn to use them. Because there are many ways to use the tools of the methods, the only way to truly know if a tool is useful is to try it.
Scrumban was a method where the best features of Kanban and Scrum are gathered for the team. The implementation of the Scrumban gave the group of students the
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opportunity to try out both Kanban and Scrum. The idea behind so many Scrum methods was to give the perspective of how these methods could be used in the working environ-ment and what everyone could be expecting when they start working for different com-panies.
However, there were quite a lot of mixed thoughts during the implementation and im-provements of the Scrumban method. The tools that made sense from the get-go were daily scrums and the product backlog. These tools once put into motion, became a part of the project management without issues.
Adding the sprints to the method felt like the right thing to do and it gave clarity on how much work could be done during a short period of time. But it felt like the team lost a sometime on them as well. Each sprint would require one day where the team would plan each sprint. Those were days when both retrospective and sprint reviews were held.
The scrum retrospective part was very important for each sprint because it gave a voice to the concerns inside the team. Every member could talk about problems they had with the sprints, which then could be solved together and only if every member agreed to it, would the solution be put in place or at least tried out. When the tool was implemented, it was quite plainly used, the Scrum Master not really knowing what questions to ask and what the issues could be with each sprint. It took a few weeks to get it going in the direction of improving sprints.
Sprint reviews gave the team guidelines how to present their work they had managed to accumulate during the sprint. This tool also implemented quite simply, just by having a simple presentation on the current product and adding images for comparison. The rea-son the product was not shown but pictures was because the project was mainly refac-tored.
Another problem with the sprints was that each member had one day a week to write their thesis, which gave the sprints a distorted picture of the whole process. In the end it felt like the team could have worked without the sprints and focus on having weekly meetings with the customer where all work done was presented.
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The Scrumban method gave a chance for the team to try out new ways of working. Only through trial and error and experimenting with different Agile tools could the team find the right tools to work with.
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