What is Scrum?
- Scrum is a process framework which was being used to manage complex product development post 1990.
- Scrum Guide contains the definition of Scrum. Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland developed Scrum and they are the co-authors of Scrum guide.
- Scrum in software development lies under the broader umbrella of Agile which is a light weight framework guided by Agile common manifesto and principles used for developing and sustaining complex products. It is a framework within which emphasizes the business value delivery, within which people work on complex adaptive systems being highly productive and creative.
- Scrum focus on incremental and iterative software development in time boxes that embrace inspect and adapt cycle based on feedback received from the stakeholders. It also warrants the need for tighter collaboration among individuals to promote stronger team work throughout the development cycle to deliver greater business results.
- Scrum may not be perceived as a process or a technique used for developing products, rather, it is cofounded on the principle of empirical process control theory which asserts that knowledge comes from experimenting and experience and making decisions on known set of results, thus making the approach to optimize predictability and control risk.
- As per Scrum Guide, Scrum is:
- Lightweight
- Simple to understand
- Difficult to master
- The Scrum theory operates on three principles; Transparency, Inspection and Adaption.
- Scrum framework mainly consists of 5 values; Focus, Openness, Commitment, Courage and Respect.
- Scrum advocates 3 roles; Development Team, Product Owner and Scrum Master.
- A Scrum Team performs 4 events as per the recommended time boxes in Scrum Guide; Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint retrospective, Sprint Review.
- An optional event in Scrum is Product Backlog refinement.
- Scrum recommends 3 artifacts; Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog, Potentially Shippable Product Increment
- Other miscellaneous artifacts that are part of Scrum are “Definition of Done”, “Burndown Chart “
- The rules of Scrum bind together the events, roles, artifacts, governing the relationships and interaction between them. The rules of Scrum define various parameters to nurture normal development teams into hyper productive teams.
- The time boxes in Scrum are termed as “Sprint”. Every Sprint has a defined Sprint Goal for the development team to accomplish.
- In Scrum, the Product Owner has the exclusive authority of cancelling a Sprint, if the Sprint Goal is redundant.