Definition of Workflow with Scrum

Test-Driven Development Workflow

​The objective of every Developer during Sprint is to create increment at the end of Sprint to achieve Sprint Goal.

Scrum is a framework of roles, rules, and principles. It helps the Developer to discover and identify which is the best way to achieve their goal.

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In every Sprint, Developer has too many Work Items need to be completed - to create value.  But the questions are: How to make sure that each Work Item will be performed in correct steps, and the right work items will be chosen and performed at right time, to maximize value. Workflow will help the team to deal with these questions.

"Workflow is the sequential movement of work items from an activity to another in a process."
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Developer should create their own Workflow based on the shared understanding within the team. All the elements in workflow such as: Work Items, Work Item statuses (initial state, active state and complete state), upstream, downstream movement need to be identified based on empirical practice of developer to improve efficiency, effectiveness and predictability.

From the beginning of Product/ Project when the team is not mature, Workflow should be initiated as a visualizing and simple flow. The team will maximize the transparence, inspection, and adaption to the improve the flow during mature stages. 

What are the benefits from Definition of Workflow?

We will figure out the benefits of Definition of Workflow from an example with a team applied  TDD - Test-Driven Development.

TDD is a software development process based on the repetition of a short development cycle. It starts with designing and developing tests for every small functionality. TDD cycle defines: Write test case, make it run, write the code and make it right by refactoring until the code passed the test case.

• Self-management, Transparent & Visualization of Workflow: In Sprint Planning, Scrum team will plan how many Product Backlog Items need to do in Sprint. They will create plan and strategy for each Product Backlog Item such as: How to write the code to make sure it can pass the test cases, etc... And during the Sprint, they can aware of how many works items ready for testing or need to be refactored, how many work items have been done.  From the example above, Developer can manage their in-progress work items and to-do list effectively. The transparent & visualization will bring right communication in right time, eliminate of lost, delay and waste time: respond quickly, proactive.

• Less stress for Developer, avoid overloading: Visualizing Board can help  Developer to easily figure out the bottleneck situation, unassigned work items. Then team can balance the workload for each member.

• Inspect, Adapt - Opportunity to improve: During the time to apply to workflow, Developer will find out something is not suitable, or no longer suitable for their team. It's an opportunity for them to create an improvement for their workflow. E.g add more or remove a column from Sprint Board - to make their works move more effectively and smoothly.

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In conclusion, similar to Definition of Ready, Definition of Workflow is not a "Stage of Gate". It is a good practice to let Developer maximize the value of their works. Therefore, Definition of Workflow must be created and owned by Developer based on their needs and empirical practices. When they are able to manage and determine the Workflow, the transparency will be increased significantly.

NOTE: Scrum guide 2020 updated - "Development team" changed to "Developer".