Scrum or V-Cycle?

Question

Contextual Information

I have problems in describing the Development Process of my project.

I'm doing my internship in an enterprise as an Information Systems designer and Java EE developer, for graduation. I need to talk about the development process and the project organisation in my report.

I asked my boss about the development process they are performing in the enterprise and he confirmed to me that it is Scrum.

My subject is about Intranet. We have started by the most complex module in the intranet. The expected period of time to finish it is 5 months. After we finish this module we start another one.

So during these 5 months, we are expecting to specify the requirements of the module, to design an Information System which satisfy the requirements, to design a software architecture, to develop then integrate then test then validate, and then to move to another module. These steps make me feel that we have used the V-Cycle described here.

However, we have been doing Scrum practises such as doing a daily follow-up between the Scrum Team and the Scrum Master ( what have you done yesterday? have u got any difficulties? what will you do today?... ) during a meeting of 5 minutes. We are a team of 3 persons, we have a Scrum Master, and 2 Product Owners.

I talked to my boss and he said he will divide 5 months into sprints of 2 or 3 weeks ( a sprint of designing, a sprint of implementing a working prototype...,.., a sprint of testing ).

However, what I learnt at my college is that every sprint gives us a version, a product which we can use but that we need to improve.

Sorry for this long text, but I needed to make you in my context to be able to help me in describing the development process of this project. Thank you a lot!

My Question

Could these be Sprints?

• Gathering Requirements
• Information Systems Design
• Defining the Software Architecture
• etc.

Answer 1

Unfortunately, you aren't doing Scrum. You simply apply certain practices, but not following the mindset. You are close when you are saying that "... every sprint gives us a version, a product which we can use but that we need to improve". However, sprints not necessarily produce versions and in Scrum we are aiming for feedback at the first place.

So, we do Scrum in order to receive faster feedback on our product. Of course, you can use the scrum practices - we use a couple of them, too -, but your processes far from a Scrum process.

When you describe your process, forget about Scrum, describe the process, and when you are done with your draft, update your essay with the Scrum tools and how they help you or your organisation. Be realistic and don't put something down that might look good, but you don't actually do it.

Answer 2

On Scrum.

You can NOT do a sprint of design, one of coding, one of testing. Every sprint must do everything to deliver some working functionality.

On V-model

That link is not to an image of the V-model. However it is popular misconception.

The V-model has no arrow of time. It does have dependency arrows. You can not do this until you have done that. Scrum does not violate the V-model. However while V-model says that you can not test, until you have written the code. Agile states that you can, and should write the tests before writing the code. Agile also says that you don't have to do all of this before you do that. (Don't do all of the design, then all of the coding, then all of the tests)

For agile (the basics):

• Do as much design as is needed to be able to write the next test that will fail.
• Write a test that will fail, but no more.
• Write as much code as is needed to get the code to pass.
• Refacter code, and re-run tests.
• Start the process again.

You see there is an order, it is the same as the V-model, except the original V-Model does not recognise that we can write tests before production code. It also does not recognise coding as design. (code is the biggest part of the design)

On what your company is doing.

There is no nice way to say this, it is waterfall. The only good thing about waterfall, is that if you are a contractor, you can keep the project going for a very long time, without the customers/managers realising that there is anything wrong.