What is Scrum?

Scrum is a method used by teams to work together in order to reach a goal. It is agile most commonly used by software developers but can be applied to nearly any project. It is an iterative and incremental agile software development framework for managing product development. It defines a flexible, holistic product development strategy where a development team works as unit to reach a common goal. It is a better way of working for effective team collaboration on big projects.

Basically, Scrum leverages the innate traits and characteristics in people to allow them to do great things together.

Why should you use Scrum?

The framework Scrum is enough powerful to change project management across every business, every industry, and even across life in general. Using Scrum will make you more agile, discovering the ways to react quickly and respond with more accuracy to the changes that you encounter. Basically it will help you to accomplish what really needs to be done by keeping you focused, collaborating and communicating.

Scrum has already been applied to many projects and teams everywhere in the world. It is a famous way of working. Militaries use it to prepare teams for deployment and universities rely on it too, to deliver complex projects to clients.

So no matter what you are working on, you should try Scrum. Whether it is the development of an app or a video game, planning a wedding or birthday, or managing your company, you have to give it a try. How does Scrum work?

It is very hard to develop complex software or build big product for customers. Scrum has the best structure for that. It allows teams to deals with that difficulty. However the main process is really simple. Its core is regulated by 3 roles.

Core roles of Scrum

Scrum has 3 core roles which are those committed to the project in the process, and a range of ancillary roles.

The core roles are the ones producing the product. They depict the Scrum team. Although you can encounter other roles in real projects.

• Product owner

The product owner determines what must be built in the next 30 days or less. He manages the prioritization of the backlog during the development. He makes sure that the team delivers value to the business. Product owner may also be a member of the development team.

As shown on the figure below, the product owner represents a proxy stakeholder for the development team. His communications tasks to the stakeholders are to take care of releases announcements, milestone reviews organization, and to ensure visibility of the product backlog.

• Development team

The team works on what needs to be built in 30 days or less, and demonstrate the work. And the product owner determines what to build next, based on the demonstration. The team is ready to do whatever is decided. It is like a car and the product owner the driver.

• Scrum Master

Scrum master helps improve the project from start to end. He facilitates the scrum. He is the enforcer of the rules. He has to help the product owner with the product backlog, to coach the team, and educate others involved with the project on scrum principles.

Scrum events

• Sprint

It is the unit of development in Scrum. It is an effort restricted to a duration. The duration is fixed in advance and is between one week and one month. There is a planning meeting at the start of each sprint. At the end there is a sprint review-and-retrospective meeting where they make review of progress.

• Meetings

1) Sprint planning meeting

A sprint planning is held at the beginning of every sprint cycle. During the meeting, the next work is selected, and the sprint backlog is prepared.

2) Daily scrum meeting

A project team communication occurs each day during the sprint. This is called a stand-up meeting or daily scrum. This meeting has to happen at the same location and same time every day. The meeting is set to 15 minutes and only the core roles speak. Even if some team members are missing, the meeting starts.

3) End meetings

At the end of a sprint cycle, the sprint review meeting and sprint retrospective are held. At the sprint retrospective all team members make a resume of the past sprint, and suggest what could be improved. The sprint retrospective has three-hour time limit and is facilitated by the scrum master.

The main artifacts of Scrum process

The first artifact of scrum process is the Scrum itself. After that, there is the product backlog. It is the complete list of the functionality that remains to be added to the product.

There is the sprint backlog. It is the to-do list for the sprint. It is the list of tasks the team needs to perform in order to deliver the functionality it committed to deliver during the sprint.

To summarize, Scrum is a successful way to manage a project. Instead of providing every details on how the work will be done, much of it is left up to the development team. Because the team will know best how to solve the problems encountered.