Breaking Down the Scrum Process

If you’re someone in the software and tech sector, you might have a daily scrum scheduled for tomorrow morning, right? Practiced mostly in agile methodologies, these short meetings with your core teams are essential cogs that drive tech projects toward success. But what exactly is a scrum and what does it entail?

Today we’re discussing in short, a topic we’ve already talked about in detail and that is Scrum. ?Let’s get started.

What is Scrum?

Scrum meetings are short brief meetings that span an average of 15 minutes with the core intent of keeping everyone on the same page. Conducted usually standing, scrums are led by scrum masters and have different events and artifacts within them. However, there is a lot more to scrum than just daily stand-ups, scrum events, or artifacts. Let’s dive a bit deeper.

Scrum is a heuristic framework that is based on lean thinking and empiricism. It is closely connected to the agile methodology.

Agile Scrum Methodology

A common misconception is that agile and scrum are the same thing, but this is not entirely true. To put it simply, scrum is a framework whereas, agile is a project management philosophy.

Agile methodology believes in continuous improvement in an incremental fashion. With agile, you take small yet frequent actionable steps that ultimately lead to the successful completion of a project. Agile methodologies advocate for constant communication and clear collaboration with clients.?

Roles in scrum

There are different stakeholders and participants in scrum, each with their own purpose and responsibility.

Events in scrum

Scrum ceremonies and events are the components that make up a scrum. These may differ from company to company, but the general principles remain stagnant. Let’s have a look at some of the scrum events below:

·????????Sprint planning: As the name suggests, this is when developers, managers, and clients discuss the tasks for the upcoming sprint and what milestones are to be achieved.

·????????Sprint: The sprint is the actual development time for the items or tasks listed in the sprint backlog. Each sprint usually spans from one to two weeks.

·????????Daily scrum/standup: Daily scrums are the regular check-ins for developers and the overall progress of a sprint.

·????????Sprint review: Sprint reviews showcase the incremental progress made by the team to the stakeholders involved.

·????????Sprint retrospective: Sprint retrospectives are dedicated time slots to look back and reflect on the effectiveness of the scrum, and what can be improved from the next sprint.

Scrum Artifacts

Scrum artifacts are information essential for the scrum team to develop the product and progress with the project. These help the team draw up a clearer picture of the product and create the necessary steps to develop the product. There are 3 main scrum artifacts.

·????????Product backlog: The product backlog entails the main list of tasks that need to be done. This is usually maintained by the product manager or owner.

·????????Sprint backlog: The sprint backlog consists of bug fixes, tasks, or items that need to be addressed by the development team in the sprint. Think of it like a to-do list for the dev team.

·????????Product increment: This is the end-product of a sprint, including all increments outlined in that sprint planning.

In a Nutshell

When the first paper about scrum was published back in 1995, it didn’t include all the modern lingo that is widely used for this process nowadays. Meaning, companies, and individuals changed and developed things along the way, so they fit better with their mold. The effectiveness of scrums depends on the situation and the company dynamics.

Scrum and agile are not rigid and promote flexibility and malleability. Companies that use agile methodologies tend to be more elastic when it comes to working with clients and this can be a major plus point.