Soffront has adopted the Scrum project management framework, which is one of the most popular development methodologies in corporations today. By rethinking project management, the Scrum process was designed to change the world of work by helping companies to focus on what’s most important to them now.
To implement Scrum, organizations like Soffront gain the ability to prioritize large projects into manageable chunks of work. The product owner, who is responsible for the business value of the project, creates a product backlog, which is essentially a giant “to-do” list related to a project. Items may be added to or deleted from the backlog at any time during the project, and the items that are most important are the first items on the to-do list for the responsible team.
Once the product backlog is established, team members meet together to develop a sprint backlog. A sprint is a time period, usually two to four weeks, during which team members address the most important priorities in the product backlog. The sprint planning session establishes the sprint backlog as well as a detailed task list associated with the backlog. The team meets every day to discuss their progress during a process called “daily scrum.” A ScrumMaster is selected to keep the team focused on their goals.
When the sprint has ended, the product should be “potentially shippable.” In other words, the results should be deliverable to the appropriate person in the company or suitable to put in a customer’s hands. The team responsible for the sprint ends the project with a sprint review and retrospective before choosing a new set of items from the product backlog and setting off on a new sprint.
Scrum is actually a rugby term published in the Harvard Business Review in 1986. The authors of a study compared high-performing, cross-functional teams to the scrum formation used to restart a rugby game after either an accidental infringement or when the ball has gone out of play. By utilizing the Scrum project management framework, Soffront hopes to remain flexible and innovative in the Cloud CRM industry.
“We at Soffront are very excited to have adopted the Scrum process, and we expect to stay agile and competitive in the demanding market,” says the Soffront company blog. “The autonomy, individuality, and freedom to work are what we hope teams look forward to with the scrum process implementation.”
Edited by Juliana Kenny