SCRUM and Product Development in Social Media

SCRUM and Product Development in Social Media Jayasooryan K V

Product Development Manager

McFadyen Consulting Inc.

SCRUM and Product Development in Social Media

Introduction

In the last decade, agile methodologies have emerged as an important tool in software product development.

While the effectiveness of agile and scrum in traditional product lifecycles has been well established, much needs

to be explored and documented about its implementation in the areas of software development for social media,

social commerce etc. From a practitioner’s perspective, this document looks at the potential benefits of scrum

implementation in social media product development.

SCRUM and Product Development in Social Media

Scrum Overview

A product owner creates a prioritized wish list

called a product backlog.

During sprint planning, the team pulls a small

chunk from the top of that wish-list, a sprint

backlog, and decides how to implement those

pieces.

The team has a certain amount of time, a sprint,

to complete its work - usually two to four weeks

- but meets each day to assess its progress (daily

scrum).

Along the way, the Scrum-Master keeps the

team focused on its goal.

At the end of the sprint, the work should be

potentially shippable, as in ready to hand to a

customer, put on a store shelf, or show to a

stakeholder.

The sprint ends with a sprint review and

retrospective.

As the next sprint begins, the team chooses

another chunk of the product backlog and

begins working again.

(Source:

http://scrumalliance.org/pages/what_is_scrum)

Over the past couple of years, social media products

have really taken off in the market place. Be it

facebook applications, twitter dashboards, social

media integrators, image sharing applications or just

social media plugins, these products now cater to a

variety of users from the individuals to the

corporates. They have found their way into all the

platforms including web, mobiles and tablets. While

each of these applications is unique with its own

stakeholders and business models, the development

of these applications are controlled by some

common constraints and challenges. Scrum helps

the developers and product owners address these

challenges – some which are listed below – in the

best possible manner.

Time-to-market

The social media space is a rapidly evolving one, with

sweeping changes taking place on a daily basis. An

innovative feature addition by a competing

application would see users flock to it, discarding the

application they were using till today. It is imperative

that product owners are always analyzing the actions

of competitors, and conceptualizing and prioritizing

feature additions accordingly. The scrum

methodology helps to implement this in a timely

fashion, by helping bring the highest priority

features to the market as quickly as possible. The

product thus remains updated with the changing

user expectations.

Cross-functional Teams

Social media product teams are often small yet

cross-functional, consisting of web developers,

designers, testers, mobile app developers etc. It will

be very difficult for a team lead / analyst in a

traditional SDLC model to estimate the amount of

time and effort required to complete the user

stories. The best way to approach this, therefore,

would be through an agile method like scrum. Scrum

brings the team together during each sprint planning

and asks them to come up with the best estimate

from their side. By splitting up each user story into

the smallest testable units, the team can pool its

knowledge and experience together in estimations.

Changing Requirements

While this is endemic to almost all software projects,

it is particularly evident in the case of a fast-changing

industry like social media, where the product

features are continuously evolving in response to the

changes in the marketplace. A traditional SDLC

model, with its excessive stress on documentation

SCRUM and Product Development in Social Media

and signoffs, will not be flexible enough to adapt to

these changes. Scrum presents the best possible way

of handling this. The product owner can change the

product catalog and reprioritize the features as per

requirement. At the end of each sprint, the team can

take up the features which are in priority at that

point of time. In other words, once the backlog for

the current sprint is finalized, the product owner has

the flexibility to change the product backlog at will.

Changing Platforms

This is not a problem that traditional software

projects would encounter, as almost all of them are

developed on a stable application / architecture that

itself has undergone a lot of testing. However, in

case of social media products like facebook

applications and games, this is a major issue as the

underlying platform (eg: facebook) and its API are

also evolving along with the product. This

necessitates periodic and structured testing of the

product during development. One way to approach

this using scrum is by taking up the bug list during

sprint planning, prioritizing the bugs and handling

them during the sprint. Another way can be to set

aside a quality sprint after 2 development sprints to

handle the bugs.

Productivity

While productivity is an aspect that is important to

any industry, productivity for social media product

development is still more important. Since the time

to market and flexibility towards changing

requirements are the key success factors for social

media applications, the productivity of the team

becomes crucial. Scrum helps increase productivity

by transferring more power during development to

the team, eliminating unwanted documentation, and

allowing each team member to do his/her job in the

best possible manner. The result is a happier team,

faster development cycles and a better product.

Conclusion

Scrum is not a panacea to all the problems in social

media product development. It is important that the

customers and the product owners know exactly

what they are expecting from the product. It is also

important that the product concept is relevant,

usable and fills a gap in the user experience. With

these conditions satisfied, the success of social

media products depend to a large extent on their

development cycle. And here, scrum can really be

the difference.

About Us

Jayasooryan K V works as a Product Development

Manager at McFadyen Consulting Inc., an

ecommerce solutions provider with over 15 years

of experience in Oracle-ATG consulting and

implementation, spanning across more than 150

ATG projects. McFadyen Solutions are developing a

social commerce product that is to be fully

launched later this year and is currently in beta.

Email: jayasooryankv@gmail.com