Figure 1: Comparison of Agile versus the Norm. A site of how Agile is
run compared to a normal team. Retrieved from September 23, 2014.
http://bit.ly/1v4YDvO
The Agile Team
I’ve explained what Agile and the start, but do you know what is Agile? Agile is a very interesting methodology. The main reason for this is the Artifacts or derivations of the Agile Methodology. Whether you are doing Extreme Programming, Agile Unified Process or Adaptive Software Development each of them have their own different approach to an Agile Team. Even so, the most popular agile method used today is the Agile methodology, Scrum.
Within Scrum, the agile team is composed of the product owner, scrum master, and self-functioning team. Scrum can be divided into these steps:
1. The product owner creates the user stories and prioritize each story to the product backlog.
2. The scrum master helps the team function smoothly; removing any un-needed factor, as well as making sure the deliverable are finished on time.
3. Finally yet importantly, the cross-functional helps with the creation and testing with the product.
One thing that helps the agile team function is the scrum meeting which one of the members within the self-functioning team holds. These meetings allow the team create the necessary backlogs. Not only does the self-functioning teams help in this process, they govern themselves in what is necessary and are organized in understanding their abilities and duties. Without the full cooperation of the team, it will be hard to communicate and process through the project smoothly.
Backlogs
With the agile team, they run and proceed with certain Agile artifacts such as product backlog, sprint backlog, sprint burndown chart, and release burnout. There are two main components to the sprint within the Scrum methodology- the product backlog and the sprint backlog. The backlog is primarily a collection of functionality and/or requirements that is needed for the project and what has been finished. A sprint backlog is a list of requirements that finished at the end of each day to understand the status of the project. As a sprint backlog keep tracks of the accomplishment, the product backlog has a collection of items that need to be completed by the deliverable date.
Figure 2: An example of an Agile Backlog. Retrieved September 23, 2014.
http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/uploads/blog/SprintBacklog.jpg
Importance
The Scrum methodology requires these artifacts because it helps create the flexibility working on the project. The artifact helps provides which functionality are important to finish and which one has a dependency with another functionality. Furthermore, the backlogs help determine how time will be divided up and individualize between each participant within the group. With this team, you meet regularly to determining what is working and what is not. A discussion is created base on these topics and whether something will be finished dependent on how well or slow the team is on the user stories.
As stated from my previous post, as I have started on my journey within Agile. We created our user stories and set up our Agile team. We have delegated each person as a position depending on the sprint, which will be discussed later on. Exploring the usage of a backlog is very intriguing. Being able to track our progress is a major help compared to most projects I have worked on. Being able to really live and experience our progress presents a spite of happiness and an accomplishment.
Reference
Engum, E. A., Z. Racheva, and M. Daneva. “Sprint Planning with a Digital Aid Tool: Lessons Learnt”. Software Engineering and Advanced Applications, 2009. SEAA ’09. 35th Euromicro Conference on. Web.
Melo, C., et al. “Agile Team Perceptions of Productivity Factors”. Agile Conference (AGILE), 2011. Web.
Najafi, M., and L. Toyoshiba. “Two Case Studies of User Experience Design and Agile Development”. Agile, 2008. AGILE ’08. Conference. Web.
Ramanujam, R., and Ickjai Lee. “Collaborative and Competitive Strategies for Agile Scrum Development”. Networked Computing and Advanced Information Management (NCM), 2011 7th International Conference on. Web.
Vlaanderen, K., et al. “The Agile Requirements Refinery: Applying SCRUM Principles to Software Product Management”. Software Product Management (IWSPM), 2009 Third International Workshop on. Web.
Image
Agile Team(2012) Retrieved from September 23,2014. http://blogs.seapine.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/SelfOrgTeam_9_0611_v2.png
Sprint Backlog(n.d)Retrieved from September 23,2014. http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/uploads/blog/SprintBacklog.jpg
Tech Thoughts with Bowen 
From reading just this post, it is confusing as to what “cross-functional” is. I understand the “cross-functional team” to be the way the teams are organized. Everyone on the team should have at least enough experience that the team as whole can complete the objectives in the sprint. It would have been helpful if cross-functional was defined in the previous sentence.
Furthermore, the sprint backlog is not a daily compilation of user stories. Before each sprint, during the sprint planning session, items from the product backlog are put into the sprint backlog. Each item has a time estimate on it and based on the number of people and their availability, the sprint backlog has a total number of hours it can hold. Once the sprint backlog has items in it with the time estimates equal to or close to the hours allotted, the sprint backlog is closed. The status of how the sprint went comes from the burn-down report. Besides some confusion and a few typos, this post is pretty good.
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An organised and informative article. The graphics support the article really well. Especially, the image at the start of the article grabs the attention of the reader .The division of the article into side headings makes it clear and easy to read. The introduction could have been better and a typo in the last part of the article has to be corrected. Overall, a very crisp and clearly written article which gives a good understanding of the agile team and backlogs.
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I really like the way you started the blog with an image which really grabs the attention and makes me read through it . As i go through it i understand the kind of members in the agile team but you haven’t described the responsibilities of each of the team members in details. The table for the sprint backlog clearly explains me how a backlog would look like with the user story example. Over all it is an interesting read with examples in the form of images and tables . A little more details about everything would have been more helpful.
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