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.

1. SCRUM and Product Development in Social Media
SCRUM and Product Development in Social Media
Jayasooryan K V
Product Development Manager
McFadyen Consulting Inc.

2. 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.

3. SCRUM and Product Development in Social Media
Scrum Overview of these applications are controlled by some
common constraints and challenges. Scrum helps
 A product owner creates a prioritized wish list the developers and product owners address these
called a product backlog. challenges – some which are listed below – in the
 During sprint planning, the team pulls a small best possible manner.
chunk from the top of that wish-list, a sprint
backlog, and decides how to implement those
pieces.
Time-to-market
 The team has a certain amount of time, a sprint,
to complete its work - usually two to four weeks The social media space is a rapidly evolving one, with
- but meets each day to assess its progress (daily sweeping changes taking place on a daily basis. An
scrum). innovative feature addition by a competing
 Along the way, the Scrum-Master keeps the application would see users flock to it, discarding the
team focused on its goal. application they were using till today. It is imperative
 At the end of the sprint, the work should be that product owners are always analyzing the actions
potentially shippable, as in ready to hand to a of competitors, and conceptualizing and prioritizing
customer, put on a store shelf, or show to a feature additions accordingly. The scrum
stakeholder. methodology helps to implement this in a timely
 The sprint ends with a sprint review and fashion, by helping bring the highest priority
retrospective. features to the market as quickly as possible. The
 As the next sprint begins, the team chooses product thus remains updated with the changing
another chunk of the product backlog and user expectations.
begins working again.
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,
(Source:
would be through an agile method like scrum. Scrum
http://scrumalliance.org/pages/what_is_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
Over the past couple of years, social media products the smallest testable units, the team can pool its
have really taken off in the market place. Be it knowledge and experience together in estimations.
facebook applications, twitter dashboards, social
media integrators, image sharing applications or just Changing Requirements
social media plugins, these products now cater to a
While this is endemic to almost all software projects,
variety of users from the individuals to the
it is particularly evident in the case of a fast-changing
corporates. They have found their way into all the
industry like social media, where the product
platforms including web, mobiles and tablets. While
features are continuously evolving in response to the
each of these applications is unique with its own
changes in the marketplace. A traditional SDLC
stakeholders and business models, the development
model, with its excessive stress on documentation

4. SCRUM and Product Development in Social Media
and signoffs, will not be flexible enough to adapt to becomes crucial. Scrum helps increase productivity
these changes. Scrum presents the best possible way by transferring more power during development to
of handling this. The product owner can change the the team, eliminating unwanted documentation, and
product catalog and reprioritize the features as per allowing each team member to do his/her job in the
requirement. At the end of each sprint, the team can best possible manner. The result is a happier team,
take up the features which are in priority at that faster development cycles and a better product.
point of time. In other words, once the backlog for
the current sprint is finalized, the product owner has Conclusion
the flexibility to change the product backlog at will.
Scrum is not a panacea to all the problems in social
Changing Platforms media product development. It is important that the
customers and the product owners know exactly
This is not a problem that traditional software what they are expecting from the product. It is also
projects would encounter, as almost all of them are important that the product concept is relevant,
developed on a stable application / architecture that usable and fills a gap in the user experience. With
itself has undergone a lot of testing. However, in these conditions satisfied, the success of social
case of social media products like facebook media products depend to a large extent on their
applications and games, this is a major issue as the development cycle. And here, scrum can really be
underlying platform (eg: facebook) and its API are the difference.
also evolving along with the product. This
necessitates periodic and structured testing of the
product during development. One way to approach
About Us
this using scrum is by taking up the bug list during
sprint planning, prioritizing the bugs and handling Jayasooryan K V works as a Product Development
them during the sprint. Another way can be to set Manager at McFadyen Consulting Inc., an
aside a quality sprint after 2 development sprints to ecommerce solutions provider with over 15 years
handle the bugs. of experience in Oracle-ATG consulting and
implementation, spanning across more than 150
Productivity
ATG projects. McFadyen Solutions are developing a
While productivity is an aspect that is important to social commerce product that is to be fully
any industry, productivity for social media product launched later this year and is currently in beta.
development is still more important. Since the time
to market and flexibility towards changing
requirements are the key success factors for social Email: jayasooryankv@gmail.com
media applications, the productivity of the team