Supermarket System

Whole point of scrum is that you do not need to know all of the requirements and needs up front. As this is your first sprint the only thing you need to do is begin working on at least one peice of functionality which meets the definition of done i.e. it is potentially shippable to the customer.

At the sprint review you have the opportunity to get feedback as well as adding new PBIs anytime during the sprint.... By the sounds of it I reckon you have sufficient user stories to begin the sprint noting to "inspect" and "adapt" accordingly.... Hope that helps and good luck!

One thing that isn't clear Omar from your post is the intention of the class that you are taking. Is it a Scrum class, or a class on Software Engineering with no recommended methodology or framework?

If it is a non-scrum course, and you are being asked to create the first release of a product, you may have some difficulty approaching it in a traditional Scrum fashion (i.e. - just needing to know enough to begin the first sprint).

My thought is to perhaps approach the assignment through a story map exercise, where the initial scope of the project is laid out at a high level, and then prioritized by Minimum Marketable Feature (MMF). Your first release would then correspond to the highest MMF.

You could then "attempt" to lay out a preliminary roadmap of sprints to meet that first MMF, but this approach does have a few holes in it. Off the top of my head:

1) How would you support the feedback loops needed for an "Agile" approach (change scope and direction of MMF as needed)?

2) How can you plan your first release without knowing the velocity of your team?

3) What is your length of sprint?

Good luck to you.

Posted By Timothy Baffa on 04 Apr 2016 12:53 PM
One thing that isn't clear Omar from your post is the intention of the class that you are taking. Is it a Scrum class, or a class on Software Engineering with no recommended methodology or framework?

If it is a non-scrum course, and you are being asked to create the first release of a product, you may have some difficulty approaching it in a traditional Scrum fashion (i.e. - just needing to know enough to begin the first sprint).

My thought is to perhaps approach the assignment through a story map exercise, where the initial scope of the project is laid out at a high level, and then prioritized by Minimum Marketable Feature (MMF). Your first release would then correspond to the highest MMF.

You could then "attempt" to lay out a preliminary roadmap of sprints to meet that first MMF, but this approach does have a few holes in it. Off the top of my head:

1) How would you support the feedback loops needed for an "Agile" approach (change scope and direction of MMF as needed)?

2) How can you plan your first release without knowing the velocity of your team?

3) What is your length of sprint?

Good luck to you.

the class is just titled Software Engineering, its just to take you through the process of writing an SPMP, vision and scope document, and it just so happened that the instructor wants us to use agile dev, and do sprints and other stuff, i am in no way familiar in this but i need that grade. our system is what you would expect from a supermarket, you have an administrator, a manager , cashiers and the people who lift stuff from inventory to shelves, there is no ordering involved or online website for this, its a bare bone system. and our sprint should end by friday.
there is no feedback since all the teams are like chicken without a head.
and the problem is that since its university trying to emulate real life environment, there are people who only show up at the last day on presentation.
that i think is not on topic but, from what you're saying i should just tell my team to start working on what we have , and hope for the best?

the instructor wants us to use agile dev, and do sprints and other stuff, i am in no way familiar in this but i need that grade

I highly recommend to read the scrum guide http://www.scrumguides.org/, so you understand what the instructor is asking you and your team mates.

the class is just titled Software Engineering, its just to take you through the process of writing an SPMP, vision and scope document, and it just so happened that the instructor wants us to use agile dev, and do sprints and other stuff

Omar,

Unfortunate, but it simply does not sound like your instructor has a good appreciation of Agile.

Software Project Management Plan? Scope and Vision document? I would be very curious to hear your instructor's explanation on why software engineers need to create these documents (as opposed to business owners / product owners) in an Agile approach.

I would also want to understand his reasons for "sprinting". Does he view Scrum as iterative development only? What does he lump in as "other stuff"?

To answer your question, especially considering the short time frame given (sprint ending Friday), your team needs to work on (and complete) what is known at the time, as thin and free from meaningful functionality as it might be, so that it can be shown to the business and feedback received.

Perhaps you should not think of "release" in a traditional sense, with a first cut of highly-prioritized functionality. Instead, what can you build and show the customer, business, or end-user by Friday?

the "other stuff" is just me being a bit ignorant on what he wants us to do, and i do agree that we aren't the ones to do the vision and scope document, or the SPMP, and on top of that we are only 4 to 5 man teams, but in all honesty i'm dumbfounded on this entire course, we simply don't know what he wants from us.

so from what you're saying me and my team should just spew out something that has a working pile of bones.

Please spend some time (or as much as you can afford) trying to understand what Scrum/agile is all about. You can read the official scrum guide or any of the numerous articles/blog posts. It's going to be hard for you to organize as an agile team to develop this product without a basic understanding of the framework.

What I would recommend here, as a first thing, is to talk to your instructor and ask if he is willing to be the product owner for this product you are building. If he does, you don't have to figure out what to build, he as a product owner, will have that responsibility. This, combined with your basic understanding of the scrum framework, should help you get started in the right path.

What I would recommend here, as a first thing, is to talk to your instructor and ask if he is willing to be the product owner for this product you are building. If he does, you don't have to figure out what to build, he as a product owner, will have that responsibility. This, combined with your basic understanding of the scrum framework, should help you get started in the right path.

yeeaaaaah, about that, he said we are supposed to think of everything, so basically telling us to bite the dust. if anything we should just get things done for first sprint.

Posted By Omar Koleilat on 03 Apr 2016 11:46 AM

we are having trouble with our project mainly in the form of not enough user stories to group into features, up till now we have only found user stories for employee management, Inventory management, report management, and log management.
as for report and log management we weren't able to think of stories to put them in but we knew these are important.

In hindsight, this may be one of your "challenges" with this assignment. You selected a supermarket system, but it appears that your team did not spend enough time brainstorming all of the functionality that would be required to support a supermarket, hence your struggles with defining what an initial release and first sprint might look like.

I'm confused about your statement 'as for report and log management we weren't able to think of stories to put them in". To me, these seem to be epics that would have a number of stories associated under them, not the other way around.

My suggestion, since your instructor is leaving it up to your team to act as the Product Owner for this assignment, is to give considerably more time to defining the scope of a Supermarket system. Who are your users? Where are your potential interdependencies? Perhaps fleshing out a story map is a good first step.

Take the point of view of a customer. What would they need? Look at management - what are their requirements? Accounting? Inventory? HR? Point of sale?

Good luck.