Scrum is a process framework used to manage product development and other knowledge work. Scrum is used to provide a means for teams to establish a hypothesis of how they think something works, try it out, reflect on the experience, and make the appropriate adjustments. That is, when the framework is used properly. Scrum is structured in a way that allows teams to incorporate practices from other frameworks where they make sense for the team’s context.
The principles behind Scrum is that it provides transparency. The team must work in an environment where everyone is aware of what issues other team members are running into.
Daily Scrum and Sprint Review meetings allow for frequent inspection to allow the team an opportunity to reflect on how the process is working. This adaptation allows for teams to constantly investigates how things are going and revises those items that do not seem to make sense.
Scrum is a framework that allows development teams flexibility to respond to changing situations. This framework has sufficient control points in place to ensure the team does not stray from the desired goal, and that issues can be identified and resolved and process adjustments made while the effort is still underway.
The Scrum Lifecycle starts with a prioritized backlog, but does not provide any guidance as to how that backlog is developed or prioritized.
The Scrum Lifecycle consists of a series of Sprints, where the end result is a potentially shippable product increment. Inside of these sprints, all of the activities necessary for the development of the product occur on a small subset of the overall product. The Scrum Lifecycle includes, but is not limited to:
- Establishing the Product Backlog.
- The product owner and development team conduct Sprint Planning.
- As the Sprint progresses, development team perform the work necessary to deliver the selected product backlog items.
- On a daily basis, the development team coordinate their work in a Daily Scrum.
- At the end of the Sprint the development team delivers the Product Backlog Items selected during Sprint Planning. The development team holds a Sprint Review to show the customer the increment and get feedback. The development team and product owner also reflect on how the Sprint has proceeded so far and adapting their processes accordingly during a retrospective.
- The Team repeats steps 2–5 until the desired outcome of the product have been met.
Scrum’s contribution to the software development world is a simple, but effective approach to managing the work of a small collaborative team involved in product development. It provides a framework and set of simple rules that allow an appropriate amount of planning, control over the work, and risk identification and mitigation and issue identification and resolution.
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