What Is Scrum?
Scrum is a lightweight framework. It helps teams collaborate, self-organize and learn from experience. Thereby, enabling teams to generate value frequently through adaptive solutions to solve complex problems.
The Scrum journey starts with stakeholders having an idea to develop a product. Stakeholders / Management empowers a product owner to collect their ideas, requirements and features. Product owner make a list of ideas requirements and features. And then orders them in a product backlog from high priority items to low priority items.
Scrum Development Team
Product owner works closely with Scrum development team to take some items from backlog and convert them into a product increment. A Scrum development team is self-organizing and cross functional, collectively they have all the necessary skills to take some ideas / features from product backlog and convert them into a product increment.
Sprint
A product increment is a usable working product. Stakeholders regularly reviews the product increments. Based on the review feedbacks from stakeholders, product owner reorders the product backlog for next iterations. The Scrum framework has a number of iterations known as Sprints. Each sprint is time-boxed to a month or less but most teams now days run two weeks sprints.
Product and Sprint Backlog
At the beginning of each sprint the product owner and Scrum development team have a Sprint planning meeting. At the meeting, identify the Sprint Goals and high-priority items from the Product Backlog for that Sprint. The developers then breaks down the product backlog items into tasks to create a Sprint Backlog. The development team then executes the tasks from Sprint backlog to achieve the Sprint goal.
Daily Scrum
Development team meet every day for 15 minutes to synchronize amongst themselves. This meeting also ensure that team is making forward progress identifying if any impediment. These short daily planning meetings know as “Daily Scrum”, continue every day until the Sprint is over.
Sprint Review
At the end of the sprint the team delivers a usable product increment that meets definition of done (DOD). The DOD has agreed upon a list of activities that will help get a product increment. A sprint review is a meeting where the product owner gathers feedback from stakeholders on the product increment and review / prioritize product backlog items for the next sprint.
Sprint Retrospective
Based on the feedback, product owner reorders the backlog items. This ensures that for each sprint, Scrum team is working on the most valuable items. Thereby, regularly delivering business value to stakeholders in iterative and incremental way. In addition to Sprint review the Scrum team has a Sprint retrospective meeting to discuss and identify:
What went well?
What to improve?
Action items for improvement initiatives for next Sprint.
Also throughout the sprint product owner and development teams continuously elaborate the product backlog items. It involves breaking up larger requirements to clearer and smaller items along with ordering them as per business value. The activity is known as Product backlog refinement.
The Scrum Master
Finally, throughout the entire Sprint, there is a Scrum Master.
The Scrum Master serves the Product Owner, the Development Team, and the organization to achieve goals and objectives. Also, helps the teams to achieve their goals by providing support and guidance.
The Scrum master ensures that all Scrum teams adapt seamlessly to the Scrum framework. It enables the teams to solve complex problems through adaptive solutions.
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