Scrum Overview

This is a transcript for a video titled Scrum Overview. You can find the video on YouTube.

Introduction

Scrum is a simple framework that is fully described in the Scrum Guide. The guide is authored by the creators of scrum : Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland. This video draws on that guide and provides an overview of what it contains.

Getting Started

Scrum often starts when someone has an idea for a product

It’s such a good idea that money is provided, and a scrum team is assigned to turn the idea into a real product

Scrum Roles

The scrum team consists of a product owner, development team and scrum master

Product Owner

The product owner is one person. They represent all stakeholders and have ultimate responsibility for the product

Development Team

The development team usually has between three and nine members that do the work to create the product. Between them, they possess all of the skills needed to create the product that the organisation has asked them to create

Scrum Master

The scrum master helps the scrum team by encouraging teamwork, removing impediments to progress and coaching the team to operate within the rules of scrum

Product Backlog

One of the first things the scrum team do is to create a product backlog. This is a list of all the work needed to create the product. The product owner sets the order of the items in the backlog to reflect what they think is most important

We accept that we cannot predict the future and think of all the work required up-front. Instead, we expect the product backlog to evolve over time as we learn more and the stakeholders needs become clearer.

We also accept that things might change, so we only detail work that we expect to do imminently. When we have enough detailed items, we’re ready to start work.

The Sprint

The work of Scrum teams is done in a series of sprints where each sprint can be up to one month long. The focus of a sprint is to deliver value in the shape of a potentially releasable product increment.

To provide maximum time for product creation, scrum minimizes and prescribes formal events. The first event is sprint planning.

Sprint Planning

At sprint planning, the product owner presents product backlog items that they would like the development team to work on. The development team accepts or rejects the proposed items. This continues until the development team declare that they cannot accept any more work.

Sprint Backlog

The product backlog items taken into the sprint form the sprint backlog. These items are often decomposed further to create a plan for the sprint.

Sprint Goal

The scrum team then craft a sprint goal to provide focus during the sprint.

Definition of Done

As the work of the sprint progresses, each item on the sprint backlog is worked on until it is done. The concept of “done” is defined by the scrum team so that everyone on the team knows what it means.

Daily Scrum

The development team meet every day to discuss their progress towards the sprint goal. If necessary, they re-plan their work.

At any time, if the development team find that they have extra or lesser capacity, they re-negotiate the content of the sprint with the product owner.

Product Backlog Refinement

During the sprint, a number of product backlog refinement sessions are held. The product backlog is examined and further detail is uncovered for those items likely to appear in the next two to three sprints. In total, these refinement sessions can consume up to 10% of the capacity of the development team.

Sprint Review

As the sprint nears it’s end, the sprint backlog items that are done are packaged into a potentially releasable product increment. This should be complete enough that no work remains to be done and the product owner can release it immediately, if they choose to do so.

Product Increment

The product increment is presented to stakeholders at the sprint review meeting where the purpose is to gain feedback. This feedback will likely affect the content or ordering of the product backlog.

Sprint Retrospective

The final event in a sprint is the sprint retrospective. The scrum team consider how they have performed with regard to people, relationships, processes and tools. The purpose is to identify, then implement, improvements. This may affect the content of the definition of done

At the end of the sprint, the next sprint starts immediately. There is no gap between sprints. This iterative process continues for as long as is required.

And that’s it. That’s scrum. For your free copy of the scrum guide, PDF copy of this video, or audio podcast of this video, please see below.