What is scrum?
If you’re just getting started, consider Scrum as a method for accomplishing tasks as a team in manageable chunks at once, with ongoing experimentation and feedback loops to learn and improve as you go. Scrum enables individuals and teams to collaboratively and gradually generate value. As an agile framework, Scrum gives people and teams exactly the perfect amount of structure to fit into their workflows while also including the necessary best practices to cater to their individual requirements. That sounds fantastic, you might be saying. “But where do I begin?”
The scrum I’m referring to can be utilised for various types of teamwork, even though software development teams use it most commonly. This is only one of the many benefits of scrum. Scrum is a set of meetings, tools, and roles that help teams organise and manage their work. It is frequently thought of as an agile project management framework.
Due to the fact that scrum is built on continuous improvement, an essential component of agile, many people mistakenly believe that scrum and agile are interchangeable terms. However, whereas agile is a way of thinking, scrum is a structure for completing tasks. You can’t really “go agile” since it takes the entire team’s commitment to alter how they view providing value to clients. However, you may start thinking that way and practise integrating agile ideas into your work by using a framework like Scrum.’
The scrum framework is heuristic; it is based on ongoing learning and adaptation to changing circumstances. It recognises that the team will learn from experience and that they do not have all the answers at the beginning of a project. With re-prioritization integrated into the process and brief release cycles, Scrum is designed to enable teams automatically adapt to changing conditions and user requirements so your team can continuously learn and develop.
Scrum artifacts
Artifacts are used in Scrum product development to track what has been completed and what is left on the to-do list. A product backlog, a sprint backlog, and an increment with your definition of “done” are the three artefacts that makeup scrum.
• Product Backlog
This is the major task list that needs to be completed and is kept up to date by the product manager or owner. The development team and the company owner collaborate during a product backlog grooming session to prioritise work that has been backlogged. During the backlog refining process, the product backlog may be adjusted. The input for the sprint backlog is this dynamic collection of features, requirements, improvements, and fixes.
It functions as the team’s to-do list. Because things may become obsolete as we get new knowledge or as the market shifts, the Product Owner continually reviews, re-prioritizes, and maintains the product backlog. This is because there may be better ways to address problems or as the market evolves, products may become irrelevant.
• Sprint Backlog
Prior to delivering selected product backlog items, some tasks must be finished. The development team can choose to implement these as time-based user stories, or bug fixes, within the current sprint cycle. The team selects the items it will work on for the sprint from the product backlog during the sprint planning meeting.
A sprint backlog could be adaptable and change throughout the sprint. The team’s primary sprint goal, or what it hopes to accomplish during the current sprint, cannot be compromised.
• Increment
This refers to everything that was completed during a Sprint, including all of the product backlog items, as well as everything that was produced during all prior Sprints. How much progress has been made is shown by the product increment. The tangible result of a sprint is referred to as a (or Sprint Goal). During the end-of-sprint demo, where the team displays what was accomplished during the sprint, the majority of teams typically show the “increment.” Since it’s frequently used to refer to a milestone, the sprint target, the team’s definition of “Done,” or even just an increment, you might not hear the word “increment” in everyday speech.
It’s critical to keep an open mind about how you maintain everything, including your artifacts. Your team may be under unnecessary stress as a result of your definition of “done,” therefore you should reconsider and choose another term.
Successful scrum requires three key roles.
The development team, the scrum master, and the product owner are the three essential roles of a scrum team. Additionally, because agile teams are cross-functional, in addition to developers, the development team also consists of testers, designers, UX experts, and ops engineers.
The scrum product owner
The advocates for their product are the product owners. They put a lot of effort into comprehending the demands of the business, the client, and the market before setting the engineering team’s workload priorities accordingly. Owners of effective products:
• Build and oversee the product backlog.
• Work closely with the team and the business to make sure everyone is aware of the tasks in the product backlog.
• Clearly specify for the team which features to provide next.
• Make a decision regarding the product’s shipping date with a preference for
• Make a decision about when to deliver the product, leaning toward more frequent delivery.
They concentrate on the business aspect and are in charge of the project’s return on investment. They regularly prioritise them, validate the advantages in stories to be included in the Product Backlog, and translate the project’s vision to the team.
The scrum master
The scrum champions in their teams are the scrum masters. In order to improve their use of the scrum process, they coach teams, product owners, and the company. the team leader, encouraging them to follow the methodology’s procedures and regulations. The Scrum Master oversees the project’s obstacle reduction and collaborates with the Product Owner to maximise ROI. The Scrum Master is responsible for keeping Scrum current and for giving teams any necessary coaching, mentoring, and training.
A competent scrum master has a thorough understanding of the team’s work and may assist them in enhancing their transparency and delivery flow. He or she plans the necessary resources (both human and logistical) for sprint planning, stand-up, sprint review, and the sprint retrospective in his or her capacity as the facilitator-in-chief.
The scrum development team
a team of experts with the requisite technical skills who work together to build the project and execute the stories they agree to at the beginning of each sprint. They are the leaders in promoting sustainable development strategies. The best scrum teams are small, co-located, and often comprise five to seven people.
Team members cross-train one another since they have different skill sets, preventing any one person from becoming a bottleneck in the workflow. Strong scrum teams are self-organizing and take a very “we”-focused approach to their tasks. To ensure the completion of the sprint successfully, all team members support one another.
Scrum’s basic framework is straightforward. The roles, actions, and rules are all simple to comprehend. Its semi-prescriptive approach actually aids in clearing up any confusion in the development process while allowing companies to inject their unique flavour into it.
Even though the development team is used to a standard waterfall paradigm, it could take some time to completely understand scrum. For a new team, adjusting to the ideas of shorter iterations, daily scrum meetings, sprint reviews, and choosing a scrum master could be difficult.
Scrum is a tempting framework to adopt for your company or team because of its success in building complex hardware and software products across a variety of industries and verticals.
Would you love to know more about Scrum and its methodologies? Garden Academy is hosting a special Scrum Masterclass on Saturday, 26th November 2022. Click the link below to register.
https://gardenacademy.io/scrum-masterclass
https://gardenacademy.io/scrum-masterclass