The World’s famous Agile Scrum in a nutshell
The most popular Agile framework is called Scrum. It’s typically conflated with Agile itself.
So what’s Scrum?
It is a framework that makes easier the development of complex products. Since Scrum is a framework and not a methodology, it’s descriptive, not prescriptive.
If you imagine Scrum as a boxing manual, it will suggest general guidance on boxer stance, jab, cross, hook and uppercut, but it will not let you know exactly how to punch or to move and specifically which physical activities you should do.
Scrum can assist the team to build products with rapidly changing requirements, which makes it very effective for software development.
Scrum first gained worldwide popularity when two software industry pioneers, Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwarber, introduced it at a conference in 1995. Since then, they have continued to make enhancements to improve the way it works, and they credited as the official inventors of Scrum.
The most reliable online resource on Scrum is the Scrum Guide, which you can find at scrumguides.org. It is not more than 20 pages and you can look through the whole guide in less than an hour. As a matter of fact, Scrum concepts appear so uncomplicated, that you can start applying Scrum in just a couple of hours. Although the principal concepts are relatively simple, there are many details in Scrum that may take more time to apply and get comfortable with. A large number of experienced Scrum practitioners still encounter difficulties, even after using it for a lot of years.
The Scrum Guide puts it rather clearly and briefly. Scrum is simple to understand and difficult to master. Scrum is lightweight. It only consists of three roles, five events, and three artifacts.
The Scrum team has three primary roles: the scrum master, the product owner and the development team.
The Scrum team builds products iteratively and gradually in a period of one month or less. Each month is split into two sprints and each sprint (usually) is split into two weeks. Each sprint comprises strategically decided product iterations. Each sprint starts with an event called Sprint Planning, in which the development team works along with the product owner to decide which items in the product backlog will be built.
The Scrum team then defines the sprint goal, brief wording in a few lines, to present the high-level goal of the current sprint. Then the development team comes up with a plan to convert these items into a usable and shippable product. This plan, the sprint backlog, is a subgroup of the product backlog. It includes product backlog items selected for the sprint, plus a stand-alone related list of tasks for the development team.
The development team builds the product and synchronizes their work daily in an event called the Daily Scrum. The Scrum Master and Product Owner collaborate with the development team throughout the sprint.
At the end of each sprint, the development team has a product increment, which is basically the integrated and usable product built to that point.
The Scrum team reviews the product increment with a group of stakeholders in an event called the Sprint Review. From this review, the Scrum team plans future work based on their findings.
The sprint ends with another event which is called Sprint Retrospective and is an opportunity for the scrum team to become more efficient. In this event, every aspect of their approach, other than the product increment, is reviewed.
Going back to the boxing example, you can easily compare Scrum to Boxing. It is easy to learn the rules of boxing — where you are allowed to hit, where you are not when you win when you lose. However, when you play against an experienced boxer, instantly you start wondering if he has more hands than you because the number of punches your face is getting cannot be even tracked. In order to win such a game, one has to train over and over. Gain knowledge and skill by trying, failing, and trying again. So yes, is simple to understand but difficult to master.
That’s Scrum in a nutshell.
