Laméco's way of working

What is Scrum?

Scrum is a way of working that we at Laméco are big fans of. With Scrum, one works in short manageable sprints to make the process more efficient and to deliver the bigger picture with better quality.

The strength of working in sprints lies in the fact that the tasks we describe are clear, amenable and easy to estimate. This avoids problems such as:

• Unclear task, resulting in delivery not meeting expectations or requirements.
• Too little time, resulting in certain features not being achieved or being delivered late.

Parts Scrum

• Sprints
  A term often called at Laméco, and although we train hard for a marathon it has nothing to do with that. By a sprint we mean a short period of time (1 or 2 weeks) where a set of functions is described. Basically, it's like your to-do list of things we need to have done within this time.

• Scrum master
  It is very important to have a good Scrum master. This person has to make sure that the sprint goes well and completely and should have no interest on either side. The Scrum master is like the coach who gives tips from the sidelines, but is not a player himself.

• Scrum board
  We use Trello to keep track of the sprint tasks, to have a good overview of what has already been done and what still needs to be done. You can read more about Trello below.

• Sprint meeting
  A sprint meeting takes place at the beginning of a sprint. Here the whole team discusses which tasks need to be fulfilled during this sprint.

• Sprint review meeting
  Optionally, a review meeting (retrospective) can be held at the end of a sprint. It is recommended to hold this meeting both in a positive and a negative sprint. This keeps the team focused and improvements can be discussed immediately.

• Staging and live environments
  A staging environment is a clone of the live environment (website) to test points. This is not visible to the public; only people with access can see it. The live environment is the website/application as it will be online and viewable by anyone. The client is responsible for testing the tasks in "Ready for test" themselves and, upon approval, moving them to "Ready for live." An important point to remember here is that we can only put something live if all points of the website are approved! It is not possible to put some items live and not others.

The lists in Trello

• Backlog
  In the backlog, both parties can note ideas, problems or tasks that are not yet performed.

• Priority
  A client may discover a bug in between tasks that has a high priority. By placing the task in the priority list, we know that this item has higher priority and will pick it up faster.

• Waiting for feedback (Customer).
  In this column, Laméco puts tasks that are not yet clear enough and thus where we expect input from the client.

• To-Do (Laméco).
  During the sprint meeting, we determine which tasks will come into the sprint. These tasks are put into this list.

• Doing (Laméco).
  During the sprint, a Laméco employee takes on a task. He links himself to the corresponding card and he places the card in Doing so that the client and colleagues see that someone is working on the item.

• Ready (Laméco).
  Once Laméco is done with the point in Doing, it is moved to Ready. Since we work locally, the client cannot see this at this time.

• Ready for test (Customer).
  Once we are nearing the end of the sprint, we will move the tasks to a staging environment ready for the client to see and test. When this is the case, we will move these tasks to the Ready for test list.

• Ready for live (Laméco).
  The client can start testing and if a task is approved, the card can be dragged to Ready for live by the client.

• Live
  Once all tasks are approved by the client, we take a moment to move everything to the live environment and update Trello.

• Archive
  In this list you can find the completed tasks, (often the previous sprint) to see what has already been covered.