What is Scrum and How to get started with it?

Wondering what scrum is and how it helps the team to enhance their productivity, overcome challenges, meet deadlines, increase efficiency and ultimately lead to a better product? If you’re a product manager and looking for What is scrum and how to get started with it, you’re at the right place.

In this post, we will explore all about scrum, its artifacts, principles and underlying process that helps the team to transform the way they operate, foster collaboration and achieve remarkable outcomes.

What is Scrum?

Scrum at its core, is a framework used by the development teams to address complex adaptive problems while maintaining the creativity and productivity of the product. At its essence, Scrum breaks down the traditional, rigid methodologies, encouraging teams to adapt to change smoothly.

The Scrum manifesto was originally derived from the sport of rugby where the term Scrum refers to a method in which members of both teams come together in tight formation to contest the ball. Much like a rugby team, Scrum teams also collaborate with each other, adapt to the changes, make quick decisions and develop products that meet the ever changing requirements.

Unlike waterfall and other traditional methodologies where projects follow a leaner approach, Scrum promotes iterative development through short cycles called sprints. Each sprint is 2 weeks or 3 weeks long, focused on delivering a tangible product increment. This iterative process allows teams to learn, adjust, and improve the product continually, ensuring that the end result not only meets but often exceeds expectations.

The Scrum Processes

Scrum methodology operates on a set of well-defined processes that contribute to its dynamic and effective framework. These processes involve the collaboration of team members, the use of specific artifacts, and the engagement in various events to ensure transparency, inspection and adaptation during the development process.

Scrum Roles

Scrum teams consist of three key roles such as Product owner, Scrum master and developers that closely work together to achieve the product objectives and goals. Each scrum team is typically small in size mainly consisting of 10 to 15 team members that collaborate with each on a daily basis to ensure quick resolution of issues and challenges.

1. Product Owner

In Scrum, Product Owner is the most important figure and often referred to as the voice of the customers. He is responsible for defining and prioritizing the product backlog, making decisions and ensuring the end product meets the users and stakeholders needs. He makes most of the decisions of the products such as which features to keep or remove, what are the priorities and when a particular feature is considered done and ready to release. He acts as a bridge between the development team and customers.

2. Scrum Master

While Product owner is responsible for decision making, Scrum master acts as coach, facilitator and fulfill the needs of the development team. He identifies and eliminates all the blockers and obstacles that hinders the performance of the scrum team. He is also responsible for organizing the meetings such as daily stand up, sprint planning, review and retrospective.

3. Development Team

The Development Team is a self-organizing, cross-functional group responsible for delivering increments of a product at the end of each sprint. Unlike traditional team structures, the Development Team in Scrum comprises professionals with a variety of skills, working collaboratively to transform items from the Product Backlog into a potentially shippable product. They participate in the scrum events, provide updates, discuss challenges, obtain feedback, identify areas of improvement and incorporate insights for future iterations.

Scrum Artifacts

Scrum Artifacts are the special tools or repositories of information used by the scrum team to define, plan and execute the product development. They provide a structured way for the team to understand what needs to be done, how it should be accomplished, and the overall features and priorities of the product.

1. Product Backlog

A product backlog serves as a blueprint for the product in Scrum and contains a prioritized list of product features specifications, enhancements and fixes that needs to be accomplished. It generally contains what we need to do. It is created and maintained by the product owner. Regular refinement sessions often known as product refinement are held to review, re-prioritize, and add or remove items from the backlog.

2. Sprint

Scrum Sprint is a time-boxed period, typically lasting two to three weeks, during which the Scrum Team works to turn the selected items from the Product Backlog into a potentially shippable product increment. Scrum team participate in the sprint planning, daily standup and sprint review and retrospective meetings to discuss the work progress, address challenges and work on improving the team efficiency.

3. Increments

An Increment is the sum of all completed items or features at the end of a Sprint. Each developed feature or increment meets the criteria of definition of done and are ready to release to the user or stakeholders.

Scrum Events

Scrum events are time-boxed gatherings or meetings of scrum teams that are designed to facilitate communication, collaboration and adoption within the team. Each event has a specific purpose and contributes toward the success of the development process.

1. Backlog Refinement

In Scrum framework, Backlog refinement refers to the process where scrum comes together and organizes and refine the items in the product backlog. This iterative activity ensures that the items in the backlog are well-written, clear, prioritized and ready to work for the upcoming sprint. This event is mainly the responsibility of the product owner. He constantly gets feedback from the customers & stakeholders and keeps a lookout on the recent trends to ensure the backlog aligns with the emerging market demands.

2. Sprint Planning

Once the backlog is refined, the Scrum team conducts a Sprint planning event to decide what they will do in the sprint. Product owners present the backlog with the list of features, items and fixes, while the development team selects the items to include in the sprint. Once the items are selected, the team then breakdown the items into smaller manageable tasks and subtasks. The team then further defines the sprint goals, a comprehensive summary of what they want to achieve in the sprint. Sprint planning meetings usually last for a few hours and at the end of the meeting the team commits to deliver the selected item by the end of the sprint.

3. Sprint

A sprint is the actual period where the scrum team works on the selected backlog items to deliver the potential shippable product increments. It is time-boxed and usually 2-3 weeks. However, sometimes a sprint can be 4 weeks long, depending on the needs of the scrum team. During the sprint, product owners or stakeholders can redefine the goal of the sprint as well as remove or add the items. Development teams conduct daily standups to keep the team aligned, discuss progress, challenges and blockers that they are facing.

4. Daily Stand Up

The daily stand up or daily scrum is a brief daily meeting (usually lasting 15 minutes) where the developers come together and report what they did yesterday, what they will do today and what are the impediments they are facing. The purpose of daily scrum is to enhance communication and collaboration between the team members and align the work progress with the sprint goal.

5. Sprint Review

At the end of each sprint, a sprint review meeting is held to represent the work increment they have completed during the sprint to the stakeholders. They give the form of the features that meets the definition of done and get the feedback from the product owner, stakeholders and teammates. This meeting allows the product owner to inspect the product and organize the backlog for the next sprint. For a sprint of 2 weeks duration, sprint review meetings usually last for 2 hours.

6. Sprint Retrospective

Sprint retrospective is one of the most critical events in the scrum framework that takes place at the end of each sprint. Its primary purpose is to reflect what went well and what went wrong in the sprint. It opens a gateway for the team to learn about the challenges, blockers and where they need improvement. The team engages in open and honest communication, share their perspective and experience and discuss how to improve their work efficiency in the next sprint.

Scrum vs Agile

Although Scrum and Agile are related concepts in software development, they represent different aspects of the development process. While, Agile definition revolves around a broader philosophy and set of principles outlined in the Agile Manifesto, Scrum is a specific framework within Agile, providing a structured approach with defined roles, artifacts, and events.

Agile methodology places emphasis on values such as continuous collaboration with customers and the ability to adapt to changing requirements. Scrum introduces specific artifacts like the Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog, and Increment, complemented by time-boxed events like Sprint Planning, Daily Stand-up, Sprint Review, and Sprint Retrospective to achieve collaboration and adopt the team and product according to the changing requirements.

In summary, Agile is a philosophical approach guiding values and principles for software development, offering flexibility and adaptability. There are various agile frameworks such as Kanban, Scrum, extreme programming and others. Scrum, on the other hand, is a specific framework within Agile that provides a structured and prescriptive way to implement Agile principles.

How to get Started with Scrum?

Getting started with scrum is easy and straightforward. It offers clear roles, artifacts and events that makes it effortless for teams to understand the scrum methodology and implement it for the development process. The farmework’s structured approach ensures transparency and helps the team to recognize the challenges and resolve issues more effectively and quickly.

Various events such as daily standup, sprint planning, review and retrospective create a rhythm and helps the team to track the progress, remove blockers and keep the product owner and stakeholders up to date about the project progress.

Moreover, the time-boxed nature of scrum events such as sprint ensure quick release of product features and get feedback from the potential customers and stakeholders. This iterative nature of scrum not only promotes adaptability but also ensures the product can align with changing requirements and customers needs.

However, transformation from waterfall to Agile methodology scrum can take time and effort as it may require cultural adjustments in the organization. It may influence team dynamics, communication patterns, and overall project management approaches. Scrum meetings such as daily standup, sprint planning, review and retrospective might pose challenges for the team.

But once the team becomes accustomed to this framework the long term benefits make the initial effort highly worthwhile. Scrum’s adaptability to changing requirements and priorities enables teams to make rapid adjustments in the product to align it with customer needs.