What is scrum
In our previous article we briefly spoke about the subjects of agile methodology and its most used frameworks. Now, let’s elaborate upon the topic of Scrum framework and explore it in detail. On the one hand, we are going to define the terms of Scrum Team, Scrum Events and Scrum Artifacts. On the other hand, we will look into the matter of the work processes through Scrum.
As you already know, Scrum is a lightweight agile framework that allows people to produce value via flexible solutions. Its values are commitment, respect, focus, courage and openness. The Scrum team is committed to achieve the goals while supporting each other and being open about the work. Members of the team are to be able to fucus on the end result and not hesitate to accept a challenge.
Scrum Team
A Scrum Team is an essential unit of the framework. Each of the team members is a highly skilled and experienced individual to create value every Sprint. Generally, a Scrum Team is rather small, as, according to the Scrum Guide, smaller teams show higher productivity rate due to better communication. A Scrum Team consists of one Scrum Master, one Product Owner and several Developers.
Developers are people responsible for building the product. They are cross-functional, which means the can play different roles according to project needs.
A Product Owner is a person accountable for increasing the value through defining the features that is needed in the product.
A Scrum Master is an individual whose role is helping and protecting everyone as well as running the meetings. In other words, the Scrum Master is a leader of the Scrum Team.
Scrum Events
Sprint is the main event within Scrum framework. It is term-limited with the duration of not more than three weeks. All other events happen within Sprint.
Sprint is always initiated by Sprint Planning, where all the work that should be completed during Sprint is arranged. Then, the team meets every day for the Daily Scrum event, where the work progress is discussed. Finally, there is the Sprint Review event. Its goal is inspecting the current Sprint results and future planning.
In addition, a Scrum team holds Sprint Retrospective event, where people discuss the effectiveness of the working processes: what was done right and what can be improved.
Scrum Artifacts
Scrum’s artifacts are associated with work or value. They are created to increase the transparency of the meaningful data.
Scrum artifacts are:
- Product Backlog is a document with the information referring to the product creation and improvement.
- Sprint Backlog is a list containing the data about the goals of a single Sprint.
- Increment is a definition of working processes unit that was completed.
Let’s summarize the information above and see how a Scrum team functions.
Within Scrum the project is broken up into smaller cycles of planning, building, testing and reviewing. The goal is to get an increment at the end of each of these cycles. These incremental releases are sprints.
At the beginning of the project a product backlog is created, where the product owner lists prioritised features, also known as user stories. The product backlog can be changed if the situation requires so.
The highest priority user stories are included into the sprint backlog. During the sprint planning the team, the scrum master and the product owner discuss the top-priority user stories and determine what can be done for the next sprint. Thus, the sprint backlog is created.
Throughout the sprint of one to three weeks the team has daily scrum meetings, where they discuss the progress of the work. And, finally, at the end the sprint review occurs where the increment is presented to the stakeholder.
All this workflow is repeated multiple times till the project is complete.
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