SCRUM Style Best Suited for Fresher Developers

One of the key concern that freshers’ developers, mostly under probation period, have been found to have is biased behavior of the manager in-charge towards a set of developers in assigning development tasks primarily during training period. This is the time when managers have also rate these developers and it is a very tricky part for the managers to take the right judgement. Thus, what can be the most effective way which creates win-win for both, freshers developer in terms of having them work/learn at their will and also managers be able to make the right judgement.

To crack this problem and create a fair playground for all, I have found that SCRUM style is best to work with freshers’ developers. Once the training is over, and an assessment exercise is done, the manager comes to know who stands where in terms of various aspects. However, without using judgement solely based on assessment result, he may use SCRUM style to have the freshers work on a sample case study project in order to determine effectiveness and productivity of each of the developers. Following can be some of the techniques:

1. Plan for a sample product to be built using pre-decided technologies
2. Create a product backlog consisting of features that needed to be developed with appropriate prioritization
3. Set a sprint timeline of two-three weeks based on your evaluation requirement.
4. Do sprint planning to review the features, create user stories, do effort estimate and  task the stories.
5. Assign the stories to individual developers based on model such as planningpoker or so.
6. Do SCRUM daily standups to see where each developer is.
7. Carry this exercise for 2 or 3 sprints and you would be able to figure out the velocity of individual developers. Additionally, this may well be used to judge about the capabilities of the developers and assign them on upcoming projects appropriately.
8. This would also have the consent from team as it would be evident to all as to whose velocity is higher than others.

Thus, this process may well create a fair playground for both fresher developers and the concerned managers. Please let me know what you think about this.