Dynamic. Lisa Welch.
26 October 2021
Developing the dynamicLMS with Scrum
At Dynamic, we are constantly developing the dynamicLMS. Using Scrum for LMS development allows us to expand its functionality to provide a diverse platform for our clients; but what is Scrum and how do we use it for LMS development?
What is Scrum?
Scrum is a project management methodology used to ensure that development of functionality is able to be completed without obstacles. The Scrum Master protects their development team from other project noise to allow them to focus on creating the world’s best LMS platform for business.
How Dynamic use Scrum for LMS development
Our development is done in sprints. Sprints are short periods of development which aim to provide a deployable product. By dividing the development into sprints we can ensure continuous development and allow the team to focus on the right areas.
All of the requirements of the product are written into a product backlog – these requirements are called stories and are used within each sprint. The development team provide time estimates on each of the stories to allow for sprint planning.
Throughout the sprint several ceremonies take place, and these ceremonies provide clear communication between the development team, project manager and product owner. The ceremonies include:
- Sprint planning – during which the whole team discuss the stories (work) required ensuring that requirements are clearly understood prior to starting development. The development team commit to completing the sprint work and therefore the amount of work included must be realistic and achievable within the available time.
- Daily Scrum (Stand-up) – a daily meeting takes place to allow the team to update everyone on their progress. This short meeting provides information on what the team member did yesterday, what they are doing today, and if they need to raise any issues with the team.
- Sprint review – at the end of the sprint the team get together with the product owner and demonstrate the work completed within the sprint. This ceremony provides a platform for continual feedback of the functionality and enables any issues to be picked up early. Any feedback from the product owner is taken on board and created as new stories to be picked up in future sprints.
- Sprint retrospective – this ceremony ensures that the team evaluate the previous sprint, thinking about what went well and what didn’t. This way the team can learn from any mistakes and ensure that they are not repeated in future sprints.
Testing the best LMS for online learning
Throughout the Scrum process, testing is continuously performed. Testing is very important in ensuring that the product delivered and deployed is stable and meets the requirements set out.
During each sprint, as each story is developed, it must pass a code review – this is the first stage of testing, ensuring that the code itself is written in a logical manner with no obvious issues. Following the code review the story goes to a tester for manual testing. A tester runs through a set of test scripts making sure that the functionality works as intended and that no issues are present. If issues are found, they are reported and picked up before the story can be marked as done.
At the end of the sprint the functionality created is placed on a development environment for User Acceptance Testing (UAT) by the product owner.
As each sprint should create a potentially shippable product, once accepted by the product owner, the functionality can be deployed to the production site. This process continues for each sprint until the completion of the product.
Managing the project through JIRA
At Dynamic, we use Atlassian JIRA software to manage our development projects. JIRA allows us to have a view of the project and its progress instantly.
JIRA holds all of the stories for the project in a backlog with clear estimates of time on each story. This makes planning sprints easy, as the Scrum Master can see how long each story should take and can place the correct amount of work into each sprint.
Sprint progress is simply tracked on the sprint board, displaying what functionality is in development, testing or done and if there are any issues that need to be resolved. It provides a clear view of progress and allows the Scrum Master to see if the sprint is on track.
Reporting through JIRA provides a Sprint Burndown Chart – this shows the amount of work left to do versus time. These are useful to predict whether the sprint is on track and when it will likely be completed.
Delivering an LMS for business
At Dynamic, our clients expect the best LMS for their business. They expect it to be free of bugs, up to date and packed full of new features. Scrum is the tool our development team use to help us meet and exceed those expectations.
If you would like to find out more about Scrum, the Scrum.org website https://www.scrum.org/resources/what-is-scrum provides further detailed information on the process.
If you want to know more about the dynamicLMS. and how it can help your team achieve more, get in touch today.
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