Even if you are new to project management, you definitely must have heard about Scrum; it’s a very well-known Agile project management methodology.
According to a PMI report, over 50% of project managers who use an agile framework use the Scrum process at some point in time. But like you, many other people who are new to project management don’t clearly understand Scrum and stay confused about it.
Well, even if you don’t know a single thing about Scrum, by the end of this guide, you will learn everything about the what, why and how of this agile methodology? Also, if you’re new to project management, then you must check out a definitive guide on how to crack PMP Certification by ExcelR.
A Brief History of Scrum
The word “Scrum” (in the context of product development) was first used in The New New Product Development Game by Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka, which they wrote in 1986 for Harvard Business Review.
The authors saw that conventional frameworks were no longer suited to project management. Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka described how large corporations like Honda and IBM succeeded by letting small autonomous teams take on projects without rigorous authority and control. They compared this “holistic method” to “Scrum in rugby,” where the ball is passed within the team members as they move as a unit up the field.
Since then:
- In 1995, Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber presented Scrum at OOPSLA.
- In 2001, Sutherland, Schwaber, and 15 other developers created the Manifesto for Agile Development.
- In 2002, Schwaber began the Scrum Alliance and started offering Scrum certification.
- In 2016, the first fully scalable Scrum was formalized.
What Is Scrum Process?
In simple words, Scrum is nothing but a project management approach that proposes freestyle principles and processes to improve project delivery.
In Scrum, the time and cost requirements of a project are fixed. This is achieved by using time boxes, backlogs, and meetings.
Scrum is a highly adaptive framework based on an iterative model. It uses small teams to make speedy progress through sprints and helps complete projects quicker.
Ultimately, Scrum allows teams to create a healthy tension and help them deliver the right thing as fast as possible that too in the right way. At its core, Scrum helps to improve teamwork, obligation, communication, and speed of development.
It focuses on promoting self-realization and self-organization. It leaves the team with the liberty to execute the work in their own way. And to make sure that the team doesn’t violate the given freedom, there are fundamental aspects that should be followed.
These three pillars / fundamental aspects are:
- Transparency: All the critical aspects of a project should be visible or communicated to the head project manager as well as to stakeholders. Great Scrum teams always share information constantly.
- Inspection: There should be Scrum events / meetings every now and then to analyze project progress and potential problems and their solutions.
- Adaptation: Adapting to new changes quickly and making adjustments are made accordingly.
Scrum Roles
Every Scrum team comprises the following roles:
- Product Owner – They are responsible for communicating with stakeholders outside the team and figures out what the team should work on.
- Scrum Master – The job of a Scrum Master is to facilitate Scrum events and make sure that there are no blockers and distractions, and improving the processes for smooth operations.
- Development Team – It’s responsible for product increment and works closely with the product owner to choose product increments, but how it needs to be done is only decided by developers.
Scrum teams are self-organizing, where each team member decides how to accomplish their work instead of getting instruction. Scrum teams are also cross-functional, which means that the scrum team should have people with a variety of skills and capabilities needed to accomplish the task.
How Do Scrum Teams Work?
Scrum teams work in sprints (short time-boxed periods) to create potentially releasable product increments. These sprints last for about two-four weeks. And during this period, Scrum teams use Scrum artifacts to track the sprint input and output to maintain this fast pace.
Let’s explore these artifacts one by one:
Scrum Artifacts
1. Product backlog
A product backlog is nothing but a list of all the features desired by stakeholders, fixes, and maintenance that the team has to work on.
Since sprints are usually short, the team can only work on a few items at a time. It is the responsibility of the product owner to prioritize the items in the product backlog, so the team chooses from the tasks having high priority. The product owner regularly refines the backlog with the development team to keep it up to date.
2. Product backlog item
A product backlog item is an element or a task of work in the product backlog. In simple terms, Product Backlog Items make up the Product Backlog. This can include changes requirements, specifications, new feature requests, or bugs.
3. Sprint backlog
A sprint backlog is a list of items and tasks selected by the team to complete. Scrum teams select the tasks during the sprint meetings.
Scrum Meetings (a.k.a. Scrum Ceremonies)
Some specific meetings take place during the development and the work process. These meetings are commonly known as the Scrum ceremonies. Mainly, there are four types of Scrum meetings / ceremonies:
- Daily Scrum
- Sprint planning meeting
- Sprint review meeting
- Sprint retrospective meeting
1. Daily Scrum
During the sprint, there happens a meeting daily where team members discuss the progress and the problems they’ve faced. The summative goal of a daily scrum is to know:
- What have team members done in the last 24 hours?
- Their plans for the next 24 hours
- Any issues they are facing in completing the sprint backlog
These meetings shouldn’t be longer than fifteen minutes, and the only goal of the meeting should be to clarify the challenges that the team faced on the previous day. The reason for conducting these meetings on a daily basis is to prevent problems piling up in the background.
If any team member has any questions or concerns, they should be raised at the daily Scrum meeting.
2. Sprint planning meeting
The ultimate goal for a sprint planning meeting is to discuss and agree upon the series of product backlog items to complete in the upcoming sprint.
Let’s suppose, a sprint is of a week; then, one hour has to be set aside for sprint planning. Sprint planning meetings always happen before a sprint begins.
3. Sprint review meeting
After the end of a sprint, these meetings take place to look over the progress made during the sprint where the Scrum Master and product owner will analyze if the results match the expectations or not.
4. Sprint retrospective meeting
As the name suggests, the whole agenda of sprint retrospective meetings is to look back at past sprints and retrospect.
It is an opportunity for the team to examine itself and create plans for further improvements.
Sprint retrospective meetings should have a safe space for each team member to share their honest feedback on what’s going well and what’s not going well and the scope of improvements. There should be minimum finger-pointing and more brainstorming.
Ready to Implement Scrum Process?
So, now you have understood the basics of Scrum process and are ready to take off with Scrum. But wait, hold on! Implementing it is not as easy as you think; understanding the concepts is indeed easy, but putting them into practice is not easy.
At its core, the Scrum process is about making sure that teams work together on worthwhile projects in the most efficient way. Burnout is real, and over the long term, it’s guaranteed to weaken motivation and decrease productivity. And Scrum gives project managers the freedom to sail in their own way.
This post is contributed to actiTIME by Krishnamraj S., Senior Trainer for PMP, Agile, PRINCE2, MS Project, and ITIL, with over 21 years of experience in project management and training.
