A Quick Guide to Spikes in Scrum

A Quick Guide to Spikes in Scrum

The scrum product owner certification is based upon the visualizing the requirements of the clients and fulfilling them with a high level of efficiency. The product owners are very much responsible to complete the projects and deliver them in the required timeframe. For this purpose, the concept of spikes comes into existence.

Fulfilling any of the projects requires proper research so that various situations and questions can be understood to arrive at inclusions. Sometimes the story is too complex. Here comes the importance of spikes. The spike can be referred to as an experiment that will help in providing the developers to evaluate the functional-based increments by providing the unfamiliar essentials.

 Following are the circumstances in which spikes are to be used:

 • When there is risk or uncertainty factor.

 • When the whole story becomes too much complex.

 • When there is a need for a time boxing concept.

 • When research-related requirements are to be fulfilled.

 All the developers who are involved in the task of programming have to use the concept of the spike. Under this, the largest story has to be broken into spikes that will enable the developers to make proper decisions and reach solutions to develop the final product. The period associated with spikes can range from a few hours to one full day. For all those spikes that take more than one day, it is required to be entered into the backlog.

 The spikes are categorized into two types which are mentioned as follows:

These are used in various methods to determine the solution domain. An example can be to evaluate new technology for an organization.

These are referred to as the spikes that help in regulating the solution behavior. An example of this can be evaluating the page flows of an organization.

 There are several benefits of using the spikes. Some of them are mentioned as follows:

 • They help in addressing the uncertainty and risks efficiently associated with the products.

 • The spikes can help in breaking down the complex stories into smaller ones so that the teams can reach the solutions easily.

 • The spikes are very much helpful for breaking down the larger stories into smaller ones.

 • The spikes can be very much helpful in providing the right solution to the problems.

 • The spikes help in making the decision-making process easy.

 • They help in measuring the efforts and analysing the results that are obtained at the time of time boxing

 • The spikes are also responsible for providing the collective based ownership and shared base of responsibilities.

 • The spikes are considered to be acceptable and estimable.

 • Spikes also help to provide different results of the discussions, collaborations, experiments and research projects.

 • The spikes also help in providing the technical and financial-based stories for a given set of problems.

But to achieve these benefits, one needs to learn this art of breaking down the stories into smaller ones. Here comes the importance of scrum product owner certification only. One can enrol for the certification at StarAgile, one of the top-rated scrum training institutes in India, to master the art of spike.