What is Scrum?
Scrum is a popular project management framework that helps teams work together more effectively by following its three pillars: transparency, inspection, and adaptation. Transparency means that all team members clearly understand the project’s goal and their roles in achieving it. Inspection refers to the regular progress reviews that the team conducts to identify any problems or areas for improvement. Finally, adaptation means the team is willing to change how they work to achieve better results. By following these three principles, Scrum teams can deliver high-quality products promptly and efficiently.
History
In rugby, “scrum” is a term used to describe restarting play after a minor infraction. In 1986, Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka wrote “The New New Product Development Game” for Harvard Business Review, explaining that self-organizing teams are more innovative in product development and delivery using rugby as a metaphor.
Jeff Sutherland, Ken Schwaber, and Mike Beedle took the concepts from this paper—including the metaphor—and applied them to software development. They termed their new method ‘Scrum,’ after the rugby term that explains how teams take the ball and get it back into play again.
In 1993, they first debuted this method at Easel Corporation. A few years later, Schwaber and Beedle documented their successes in the book Agile Software Development with Scrum. And in 2004, Schwaber followed up with his account of events called Agile Project Management with Scrum—which just so happened to include information on his collaboration with Primavera.
Purpose
The Scrum process aims to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of a business’ product development through a set of frameworks, policies, and values. This methodology also helps ensure high-quality outcomes that meet user needs and business objectives while promoting a culture of continuous improvement and adaptive planning.
What Makes up the Scrum Framework?
Three attributes comprise the Scrum methodology: Scrum roles, events, and artifacts. Below are the descriptions of each attribute.
Scrum Team
The Scrum roles in a Scrum team include the Scrum Master, Product Owner, and Development Team.
- Scrum Master – A Scrum Master assists the team and organization in improving their effectiveness through coaching, teaching, facilitating, and mentoring.
- Product Owner – The Scrum Team’s Product Owner ensures that the team produces the most valuable product possible.
- Developers – These are individuals who collaborate to produce the product.
Scrum Events
The Scrum events—also dubbed the 5 phases of Scrum—ensure project progress and alignment with the organization’s goals. These events create regularity and minimize other meetings.
- Sprint – Short cycles of work, typically one month or less. Sprints contain all other Scrum events, and a new one starts immediately after the previous one ends.
- Sprint Planning – Not to be confused with Scrum planning, which talks about the structure of the project as a whole—Sprint planning specifically involves planning the work to be completed during the Sprint.
- Daily Scrum – The developers hold a daily meeting to discuss their progress toward the Sprint Goal. They identify any issues that impede their progress and adapt their plans accordingly.
- Sprint Review – A Sprint Review is an event during which the Scrum Team and key stakeholders assess the previous Sprint. Furthermore, they discuss any changes that have taken place in their environment. The event concludes with attendees collaborating and making decisions on the next steps.
- Sprint Retrospective – The Scrum Team uses this opportunity to discuss their successes and failures from the last Sprint so that they can improve for future Sprints.
Scrum Artifacts
The plans and work that can be inspected and allow for future adaptation; Each artifact has its record, which helps the team understand if they are making progress.
- Product Backlog – A backlog is an ongoing list of changes to the product. It’s what the Scrum Team uses to plan and track their work.
- Sprint Backlog – The Developer creates a list of work for Sprint that is highly visible to everyone, which may change as they learn more information.
- Increments – Small pieces of work that help you move closer to the Product Goal are called “releases.” You can have as many releases as you need during the Sprint.
Achieve operational excellence
Advantages and Disadvantages of Scrum
Scrum offers numerous advantages, but it also has some downsides.
Advantages
Scrum is a system that can help teams finish projects more quickly and efficiently. Here are its key advantages:
- Scrum is a system that helps groups of people finish project goals quickly and without wasting time or resources.
- Scrum is a way to ensure you are using your time and money effectively.
- Large projects are divided into smaller, more manageable sections. It makes it easier to complete the project without feeling overwhelmed.
- Developments are checked and tested during the sprint review.
- It’s a good choice for projects that move quickly.
- The scrum meetings allow the team to see what the team needs to accomplish and what progress has been made.
- Scrum is flexible and responsive to feedback from customers and stakeholders.
- Short sprints make it easier to change things based on feedback.
- During daily scrum meetings, each team member’s effort is visible.
Disadvantages
Although Scrum has many benefits, there are a few drawbacks. In some cases, Scrum is combined with other project management techniques, such as Kanban, to help resolve these issues:
- When people use the Scrum method, scope creep often happens. It’s because there is no set end date for the project.
- If people are not committed to the project or don’t work well with others, the project is more likely to fail.
- It can be challenging to use the Scrum framework on large teams.
- The framework can only work if the team has people who have done this before.
- Daily meetings can sometimes make team members frustrated.
- If anyone on the team leaves while we are still working on a project, it will hurt the project.
- Quality is hard to ensure until the team goes through a lot of testing.
Steps of the Scrum Process
The Scrum process is an Agile methodology that helps teams complete projects quickly and efficiently. Here are the steps of the Scrum process:
- Create the product backlog – The product owner makes a list of all the project tasks called the product backlog.
- Delegate tasks and oversee progress – The Scrum team meets regularly to discuss the project’s progress and what needs to be done. They then take large tasks and create smaller, more manageable ones.
- Create the Sprint backlog – The group implements a plan and builds a Sprint backlog.
- Determine the timeframe of the Sprint – The length of each Sprint is selected based on the task, with a standard of two to four weeks.
- Accomplish the Sprint – The team meets daily during a sprint to give updates, and the project manager assesses progress based on new information.
- Analyze the results – Product owners and stakeholders analyze the results of each sprint.
What Happens to Gantt Charts and Other Documentation?
Gantt charts are common for projects but not for Scrum. In its place, various other types of reporting tools like Burndown charts (both Sprint and release), task boards, backlogs, sprint plans, release plans, and metrics charts exist to communicate progress more effectively.
A plethora of Agile project management software provides this information as a dashboard. The only required artifacts for Scrum teams are:
- The product backlog items list
- The sprint backlog details
- The team’s current release burndown chart
- Their active Sprint’s burndown chart
Other forms of documentation are optional, and each team decides whether to use them.
FAQs About the Scrum Process
Put simply, the Scrum methodology consists of initiation, planning and estimates, implementation, review and retrospective, and the release phase.
Understanding the difference between Scrum and Agile may help to think of Agile as an umbrella term. Many frameworks fall under the Agile umbrella, including Extreme programming (XP), Kanban, Scrum, etc. Even though Scrum is a form of Agile project management, not every team using Agile practices uses Scrum specifically.
In many cases, the project manager takes on the role of Scrum Master, but this is not always so. There are various transformation permutations possible. One example would be a project manager who has also been serving as a domain or subject matter expert and might make a better Product Owner instead.
The traditional approach to estimating and planning relies on defining all requirements before defining any tasks. In contrast, Agile estimating and planning to use a top-down methodology to forecast.
Rob Paredes
