Scrum: Artifacts, Roles & Events

What is SCRUM?

Scrum is a lightweight framework that helps people, teams and organizations generate value through adaptive solutions for complex problems. The term Scrum comes from the game of rugby.?

Scrum is widely used by software development teams, whereas its principles and methods can be applied to all fields. Scrum describes the set of meetings, roles, and artifacts that helps teams to manage their work effectively. Scrum is one of the most popular Agile frameworks used in project management.

SCRUM Artifacts

1. Product Backlog

A Product Backlog is a single source of the tasks for which the team works. It consists of all the tasks/items/tickets that are desired to be developed in a product.? The most important tasks are listed at the top of the product backlog so the team knows what to deliver first.

2. Sprint Backlog

A Sprint Backlog consists of the list of work items that the team needs to complete in the current sprint.

3. Increment

It is the piece of code that helps in achieving the product goal. All increments together should work effectively. With each sprint, we get a number of increments that measure the progress of our project.

SCRUM Roles

1. Product Owner

He/She is responsible for prioritizing the product backlog items in order to ensure that they are delivering the most value and, also to achieve the desired outcome that the team seeks to accomplish for a product. He also ensures that the product backlog items are transparent, visible and understood by the stakeholders and team. He also manages the stakeholder meetings and release management.

2. Scrum Master

Scrum Master helps everyone understand scrum practices, both within the Scrum Team and the organization. They help to remove the impediments to the team’s progress and also helps the scrum team to maintain focus on creating increments that meet the definition of done. They also ensure that all the scrum meetings take place and are positive, productive and kept within the timebox. They also remove the barriers between the stakeholders and the Scrum Team.

3. Developers

It is a self-organizing, cross-functional and self managing team who works together to deliver the increment of value during a sprint. They share the same norms and rules, and ensure that they meet the requirements of DOD(Definition of Done).?

SCRUM Events

1. The Sprint

It is a short, time-boxed period where a team has to accomplish the number of tasks that are planned in the sprint planning meeting.

2. Sprint Planning

This meeting usually takes 2 hours for a one week sprint and approx. 4 hours for a 2 week sprint. In this meeting, the scrum team gathers to plan the work, set the story pointers and the deadlines. The purpose of this meeting is, each team member has the clarity for each task that is assigned in the sprint.

3. Daily Standup / Daily Scrum

This is the meeting where every single day for 15 minutes, the team gathers together to report any issues or progress on their tasks. We discuss three questions: What are you working today, What did you have worked yesterday and any blockers?

4. Sprint Review

Sprint review meeting held at the end of each sprint. This is the meeting where we showcase the demo to the product owners and the? stakeholders about the work we have done in the sprint. The agenda of this meeting is to gather feedback, so we can work on it in the coming sprints.

5. Sprint Retrospective

This meeting is also held at the end of each sprint. This meeting is usually for the scrum team where we address three questions: What went well in the sprint? What didn’t go well in the sprint and what we can improve for the coming sprints.

Thank you for reading!