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title: "SCRUM at FieldBuddy: efficiency and performance"
canonical: "https://help.fieldbuddy.com/space/FBDOCS/blog/4860051457/SCRUM%20at%20FieldBuddy%3A%20efficiency%20and%20performance"
format: markdown
---
**How Scrum boosted FieldBuddy’s number of releases per year**
*You might be wondering how the FieldBuddy Swift development team is able to deliver up to** ****25 releases a year****, without compromising the quality of the application or the implemented features. *
*In this blog, we will discuss an important topic that often isn’t visible when you don’t work inside the company. However, it will impact the whole performance of the team, as well as the quality and the efficiency of the products and services proposed by the company: the implementation of the Scrum framework.*
## **What is Scrum?**
Scrum is an agile software development process to manage software projects. Basically, it will help teams to work together by implementing three principles: (1) *visible progress*, (2) *constant inspection*, and (3) *adaptation*. Teams are encouraged to learn through experiences, self-organisation and continuous improvement. In order to achieve these principles, the framework has its very own way to divide the final product into periods of 2 weeks, where each period has their own goals and amount of work defined. These short periods are called **Sprints**. And as some of you may know, Scrum is divided into **4 main events**: the daily Scrum, the retrospective, the sprint planning and the sprint review.
## **How is Scrum implemented at FieldBuddy?**
FieldBuddy decided to implement Scrum inside its team to improve results, because we are sharing the same principles when working and because of its many benefits. Although the framework is giving us methods to follow for all these events, each company has their own unique way to implement them inside of their teams. When we first started using Scrum, we adapted it to match our team’s needs and requirements, to take as many benefits of it as possible. And throughout the years, FieldBuddy never stopped adapting Scrum to get the best out of it.
The FieldBuddy Swift development team is a small team, so it was challenging to deliver completed Sprints due to external factors that could impact it. That is why the decision was made to work towards **releases**. At FieldBuddy, each period of time is defined for one major release of the FieldBuddy products. Does that mean that we can’t use Scrum anymore, because we don’t work with Sprints? Of course not! We simply adapted the method for our needs and our team size, and since we have done that, we work more efficiently than ever before. The way we plan our releases was also adapted, to meet realistic deadlines.
The two most important Scrum meetings that we introduced at FieldBuddy are the Daily and the Retrospective.
#### On a daily basis: **dailies**
The daily Scrum concerns the FieldBuddy development team. Each day at the same time, the team has a short meeting planned to discuss what they are working on currently and to share their advancement about it. That allows the team to visualise the progress toward *the final objective*, to quickly identify if there will be a delay in the planning and to find solutions to avoid it (different distribution of tasks, readjustment of the planning...). If a developer is facing a blocking issue, he can share it during this meeting so that the other members can bring ideas to help him get out of the problem. The Daily thus allows everyone to express themselves without fear of being judged. It widely contributes to strengthening team cohesion, as well as developing the ability, as a team, to quickly identify and adapt to every situation on a daily basis.
#### On a monthly basis, or when it’s needed: **retrospective**
Another major event is the Scrum Retrospective. The main objective is to plan ways to increase quality and efficiency. At FieldBuddy this event includes the whole technical team. Three major subjects are discussed:
- What worked well?
- What could be improved?
- What will we do to improve the work during the next step?
Every team member has a chance to express himself about these 3 subjects. Often the retrospective is presented in the form of an exercise or game. That allows everyone to participate actively. At FieldBuddy we try to vary the type of exercise proposed as often as possible to make sure it is not redundant and to keep the team dynamic during the meeting. We are using a nice tool that allows us to complete the exercise remotely, while keeping it dynamic and attractive: [https://metroretro.io/](https://metroretro.io/)
Here is an example of a Retrospective proposed during a meeting at FieldBuddy:
This exercise helps identify problems alongside the whole team and helps to find solutions altogether. After everybody puts their thoughts into the 4 categories on the board, it’s easy to identify *recurring topics*. It shows if the team works well together or not by checking the density of the notes left in each category. The objective here is to discuss *every topic or main topics* to see what can we do to keep the positive outcomes and what can we improve.
By simply discussing the four categories, a lot of feedback comes out and* a list of actions *that the team can implement during the next iteration will be established. The second part of the retrospective is to list these actions and discuss how they can be implemented in the future. These actions will be reviewed during the next meetings to see if they were successful.
The retrospective is an exercise discussed during our weekly meetings, which takes place every 2 weeks. In these meetings we also make the **review** of our last 2 weeks of work, and discuss the next **planning**.
Scrum meetings are usually led by the person with the role of *Scrum master*. However, these meetings can be led by any member of the team, and it is even a very good exercise! Thus, as an intern, I was given the opportunity to organise and manage a few Daily and a few Retrospectives, and I was able to get feedback from the team on how it was done, and what I could still improve. Changing the person in charge of these meetings also keeps it dynamic and gives everyone the opportunity to express themselves and improve their leadership skills.
## **What additional value does it bring to the company and the team?**
The implementation of Scrum inside FieldBuddy improved the team work and the results on so many levels. Everybody inside the team has a chance to talk, to share advancements and successes. That keeps the motivation high inside of the team. When problems show up, we can quickly identify and discuss them, so we can find solutions altogether. It does not only apply to the products that we offer, but also to other problems that can sometimes happen inside the company: communication or planning problems, architecture issues… The fact that we spend some time together discussing all these subjects on a regular basis allows the team to learn from each other and to continuously improve! We believe that it’s really important to keep sharing successes and solutions, and to celebrate them.
FieldBuddy is now able to deliver a quality and tested product much faster. Before, our product FieldBuddy Mobile had only 1 or 2 releases per year although these releases contained a lot of features: this way of working was really not flexible. Now, for our FieldBuddy Swift mobile application, we were able to increase the number of releases to **24 releases in 2021**, which is as many releases as** ****2020 and 2019 combined together!**
Our goal for the upcoming months is to maintain this pace in terms of publications, and to ensure their quality. However, we believe that there is always room for improvement, and that we can continue to improve every day!
*NB: This article has been written by Adeline Blum as some of the goals of her internship. This French student from the CESI Ecole d’Ingénieurs Strasbourg joined our team on September 20, 2021. She has been working on FieldBuddy Swift and she participated at different project management events throughout her internship that will end on February 10, 2022. **[Adeline’s LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/adeline-blum-44b728195/)*