This post is a summary of the often misunderstood scrum framework.

Scrum Poster

Introduction

Scrum is a basic process structure for developing, delivering and sustaining complex products. Scrum consists of roles, events, artefacts and rules that govern the relationship and interaction between them.

Scum make relative efficacy of product management and work techniques to help the continuous improvement of the project, product, team and working environment. Scrum is best used with small, highly flexible and adaptive teams employing iterative and incremental knowledge transfer.

Scrum is an empirical process upheld by the pillars of Transparency, Inspection and Adaption.

• Significant aspects of the process must be visible to those responsible for the outcome.
• Frequent inspection of artefacts and progress toward a scrum goal. Best performed by diligent skilled inspectors.
• Process and product adjustment made as soon as possible to minimize undesirable deviation. This is done during:
  • Sprint Planning
  • Daily Scrum
  • Sprint Review
  • Sprint Retrospective

Values – Basic and fundamental beliefs that guide or motivate attitudes or actions.

• Commitment
• Courage
• Focus
• Openness
• Respect

Teams

A self-organizing, cross-functional team consisting of:

• Product owner
• Development team
• Scrum Master

Deliver product iteratively and incrementally, maximizing feedback opportunities.

Product Owner

• Maximizes the value of the product resulting from the work of the development team.
• Manage the product backlog
• Product owners’ decisions are visible in the content and ordering of the backlog, which must be respected by the organization.

Note that Scrum does allow the product owner to delegate the actual work performed “The Product Owner may do the above work or may delegate the responsibility to others. Regardless, the Product Owner remains accountable.”

Development Team

3 to 9 professionals

• Organize and manage their own work
• Decide how to turn backlog items into ‘Done’ increments
• Cross-functional
• Team members have no titles and there are no sub-teams
• The team is accountable, not any specialists in the team

Scrum Master

Servant-leader and scrum expert for the development team. They serve in the following ways.

Product Owner

• State goals, scope and domain
• Effective product backlog management
• Clear concise backlog items
• Help with agile practices
• Facilitate Scrum events

Development Team

• Self-organization and cross-functionality
• Create high-value products
• Remove impediments
• Scrum coaching
• Facilitate scrum events

Organization

• Leading and coaching
• Planning implementations
• Help organization enact empirical product development
• Improve productivity
• Work with other scrum masters to

Scrum Events

Purpose:

• Create regularity
• Minimized need for non-scrum meetings
• Formal opportunity to inspect and adapt
• Enable critical transparency and inspection

Attributes:

• Timeboxed but can end when completed

The Sprint

• 4 weeks or less, to create a useful and releasable “Done” increment
• Has consistent duration during the project
• Starts immediately after the previous sprint ends
• Has a goal, a design and flexible plan to guide the construction

Sprint Planning

• Plan created by the collaboration of the entire team
• Maximum of 8 hours for a 4-week sprint
• Answers the questions
  • What can be included in the upcoming sprint
  • How can it be achieved?
• Inputs to process include:
  • Product Backlog
  • Latest product increment
  • Projected development team capacity
  • Past performance of the development team
• The sprint goal is achieved by implementing sprint backlog items
• Sprint backlog = Sprint Backlog Items + Plan to Deliver Sprint Backlog Items
• Development teams design the system and plan the work to deliver the sprint backlog items. Backlog items are decomposed into tasks of 1 day or less.
• At the end of planning, the team should know how it will work to accomplish the sprint goal

Sprint Goal

The Sprint Goal is any coherence that causes the development team to work together rather than on separate initiatives.

Daily Scrum

• 15-minute daily event to plan work for the following 24 hours
• Focuses on progress toward the scrum goal
• Typical format is each team member states:
  • What did I do yesterday to help accomplish the scrum goal?
  • What will I do today to help accomplish the scrum goal?
  • Any impediments to team members or team achieving the sprint goal

Sprint Review

• At most 4 hours for a 4-week sprint
• Inspect sprint increment
• Adapt the Product Backlog
• Attendees collaborate on what should be done next to optimize value
• Includes the following:
  • Product owner explains what was done and what not
  • Development team analyses what went well, what not, and how problems were solved
  • Development team demonstrates and answers questions about the increment
  • Attendees collaborate on what to do next
  • Review market conditions and how they affect the project
  • Review budget, timeline etc.

Sprint Retrospective

• At most 3 hours for a 4-week sprint
• Team inspects itself and comes up with a plan for improvement
• Purpose:
  • Analyze the sprint with regards to people, relationship, process and tools.
  • List and order what went well and possible improvements
  • Create a plan to implement possible improvements

Scrum Artifacts

Artefacts are work of value. Produced to provide transparency and hence opportunities for inspection and adaption. Artefacts defined to maximize transparency of key information, so everyone shares a common understanding.

Product Backlog

• An ordered list of all items required by the product. Single source of all requirements for the product.
• The product backlog evolves with the product and its environment.
• Product backlog lists
  • Features
  • Functions
  • Requirements
  • Enhancements
  • Fixes
• Product backlog item included the attributes
  • Description
  • Order
  • Estimate (To be updated)
  • Value
  • Test plan (optional)
• Product Backlog Refinement is the process of adding the following to product backlog items. Development teams decide how and when. Capped at 10% of team capacity.
  • Details
  • Estimates
  • Order
• Product Backlog Items with enough refinement so that they can be reasonably done in a sprint are candidates for the sprint backlog
• The Development team is responsible for all time estimates

Sprint Backlog

Sprint Backlog = Set of product backlog items selected for the sprint + plan to deliver the backlog items

• All work required to meet the sprint goal
• Includes at least one process improvement task identified in the retrospective
• Plan has enough details so progress can be tracked during the daily scrum
• New work identified is added to the sprint backlog
• Remaining estimate updated for work been performed or completed
• At any time, the progress and remaining work for the sprint is known
• The sprint increment is all backlog items completed during the sprint. Must be inspectable and measurable.

Increment

The following is true of the increment:

• A sprint must produce a done increment
• A done increment is inspectable and supports empiricism
• The increment is a step toward a vision or goal
• The increment must be usable

Artefact Transparency

Optimizing value and controlling risk is based on the perceived state of the artefacts. Transparency of the artefacts enables these decisions to be made on a sound basis. The team is responsible for ensuring transparency of artefacts and events.

Definition of Done

Single shared definition of what it means for an increment to be done. The definition of done can come from the organization or team within the organization. A done increment must be usable. Each increment is additive to the previous increments.