What is Scrum?
In a nutshell, Scrum is a technique of Agile project management when the development is split into short periods of building tested and completed parts of the project within the timeframes called “iterations” or “sprints”. The main characteristics of Scrum are:
- Specific roles for each team member. A Team performs the development, Scrum Master assists them, and the Product Owner brings his vision for the product
- Scrum is focused on monitoring the feedback from the team. This allows every member of the team to have an up-to-date vision of the project
- Each iteration should end with a properly functioning increment
The secret of Scrum’s flexibility is in the continuous communication between all the members of the process. It is achieved by several types of scheduled meetings that keeps everyone aware of what’s going on, helps to develop an understanding of the Product Owner’s vision and improve the development process. The most important scrum meetings are the following:
- Refinement of the backlog (Product Owner shows his wish list to the team)
- Sprint planning (A team picks up top features from the backlog and decides how to implement them)
- Daily Scrum (А daily meeting for 15-minute standups)
- Sprint review (An analysis of the sprint)
- Sprint Retrospection (An analysis of mistakes, and learning)
When you hear about Agile, it almost certainly involves the use of Scrum. The philosophy of Scrum can be expressed in the words “inspect and adapt”. This is the essence of the Scrum technique which allows you to cope with unpredictable circumstances, flexibly respond to all incoming changes and deliver a shippable product at any stage of the project’s lifecycle.