Scrum is a popular management framework. Initially, it was made for software development. However, it is now also used in other fields like marketing, project management, sales, and so on.
Scrum is an agile framework to boost productivity and deliver products that meet the quality bar. It does this by breaking down complex tasks into smaller parts. The team then focuses on one piece at a time. Scrum rests on three pillars:
Transparency
Inspection
Adaptation
All this will get clearer when we look at Scrum’s primary components, roles, events, and artifacts.
Note: Before going further, we can take a quick look at Agile-Scrum's parent methodology.
To use Scrum, we require people-specific roles and events to ensure the project's working goes smoothly. We also require artifacts that describe the features of the product.
The Scrum team consists of three roles: the product owner, the Scrum master, and the Scrum team.
The product owner does the following:
Defines and sequences the work to be done
Manages the product backlog
Increasing the Return on Investment (ROI) of the product
Manages the development team
The Scrum master does the following:
Keeps things organized and helps remove impediments that could slow down the development team
Guides and coaches the members about the Scrum methodology
The Scrum team does the following:
Executes the projects
Consists of cross-functional members responsible for developing and testing the product
Scrum consists of 5 events: the sprint, sprint planning, daily scrum, sprint review, and sprint retrospective.
It is a time-boxed fixed-length iteration that typically lasts 2–4 weeks. The team collaboratively defines a scope of work to achieve a goal that's valuable to the product owner, and then makes their best effort to complete that body of work during the sprint.
This defines the work and the goal the team wants to achieve in the upcoming sprint.
This is a 15-minute time-boxed meeting for the team to coordinate their work toward achieving the sprint goal. Each person tells what they did the day before, what they plan to do on the way, and if they have any impediments
This is a collaborative meeting to show what was accomplished during the sprint, and get feedback on the work shown to stakeholders
This is a chance for the team to reflect on the successes and failures of the sprint.
Scrum consists of three artifacts: the product backlog, the sprint backlog, and the increment.
This is an ordered list of features with the things the product owner sees as producing a greater ROI.
This helps keep the team focused on what they need for the current sprint, without the added noise of everything in the full product backlog. It provides transparency in understanding the progress made toward the current sprint goal.
This is the final result of a sprint. It is potentially shippable or deployable. This means it needs to fully meet the definition of "done," with all the proper testing and cleaning up.
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