What is Scrum in Agile Project Management?

Agile is one of the project management methodologies with an iterative approach that continuously improves a product or project delivery. In Agile there are many frameworks and Scrum is one of them, used in project management. This article discusses Scrum, its values, ceremonies (events), artifacts, and roles.

Scrum is an Agile project management framework that is mainly used in software development and in any industry to deliver products and services. Scrum provides a structured and adaptive method for scrum teams to work together in a collaborative way to deliver software iteratively and incrementally. The Scrum methodology is founded on the 3 pillars of empiricism namely Transparency, Inspection, and Adaptation.

Scrum Roles

The Scrum Team is self-organizing, cross-functional, and focused on one objective or goal at a time.

The Scrum Team consists of a group of professionals who work together collaboratively to deliver the product or service using the Scrum framework. There are 3 Roles namely Product Owner, Scrum Master, and Development team included in a Scrum Team. Each role has its specific responsibilities.

1. Product Owner: The Product Owner owns and manages the product and maximizes the product value.
2. Scrum Master: The Scrum Master is responsible for implementing and improving the Scrum Process and facilitating the Scrum events.
3. Development Team: The development team is responsible for the product increments by meeting the specific Sprint goals defined.
4. Scrum ArtifactsbScrum artifacts help to define the structure and document the process of what is planned and what must be completed for the final project deliverable and provide guidelines for the product development plan. There are three Scrum Artefacts namely Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog, and an Increment, which are created by the development team during a product development process.
5. Product Backlog: The Product backlog is a prioritized and ordered list of features and requirements planned in a product to be completed.
6. Sprint Backlog: The Sprint backlog is a list of product backlog items included in a Sprint, which are planned to be completed in the current Sprint.
7. Product Increment: The product increment is the piece of work completed and delivered at the end of a Sprint as planned in the Sprint Planning meeting. This adds an increment of features and fixes to the existing product and is high enough quality to be potentially shippable. The product increment meets the Definition of Done for the current Sprint.

Scrum Events

1. Sprint: Sprint is a fixed-length event of 1 month or less which includes planning, daily scrum, review, and retrospective. A Sprint consists of ongoing development which results in Product Increment.
2. Sprint Planning: Sprint planning is an event to define the Sprint Goal and determine the Product Backlog items to accomplish the Sprint Goal.
3. Daily Scrum: The Scrum Team daily for 15 minutes or less to review the progress of the current Sprint and plan for the day about what is going to be worked on.
4. Sprint Review: The Scrum Team including all stakeholders meets 1 hour or less per week of a Sprint duration, to review the Product Increment delivered and plan for items to work on next.
5. Sprint Retrospective: After the successful completion of a Sprint and product increment, the Scrum team reviews the work about how it went, what issues were faced, and how it was solved and decides on improvements. Retrospective event is timeboxed to 45 minutes or less per week of a Sprint duration

Five Scrum Values

The Scrum values are fundamental principles that help to create successful and collaborative teamwork. This assists teams to adapt to change and deliver products in an agile and iterative way.

1. Focus: The Scrum team focuses collectively on the Sprint goal for achieving the objectives of the Sprint.
2. Openness: All team members and stakeholders are open and transparent about everything being worked on and planned including challenges faced which helps to address issues collaboratively.
3. Respect: Scrum Team members respect each other’s skills and expertise and learn from each other.
4. Courage: The Scrum team members should have the courage to express their opinions and make decisions for the benefit of the Team and Project.
5. Commitment: The individual Scrum Team members commit to achieving the Sprint and Product goal.

Scrum in Action

Below is the sequence of how Scrum is in Action:

1. Scrum typically begins with the Product Owner creating the Product Backlog Items and the prioritized product backlog items are refined during the Product Backlog refinement meeting.
2. The Sprint planning meeting or Grooming meeting leads to a time-boxed Sprint where the prioritized Product Backlog items are added to the next Sprint.
3. The Sprint is an iterative event that begins after the previous Sprint is completed. The Sprint is marked by the Daily Scrum meeting. The Sprint has the Sprint Review meeting and is completed when all testing is completed, acceptance criteria are met and the Definition of Done is accepted and ready for potential delivery. The current Sprint ends with this.
4. The Sprint Retrospective meeting analyses how Sprint was, what went well what issues were faced, and what can be improved.
5. Again the next sprint cycle begins and the next iteration is activated and this cycle goes on until the end of the product lifecycle.

Scaling Scrum

Scaling Scrum refers to applying the Scrum principles and practices to handle multiple Scrum teams working on the same project or product in large organizations. Below are some of the approaches to scaling scrum:

1. SAFe – Scaled Agile Framework: One of the popular Scrum frameworks for scaling agile and lean practices in large organizations. This is to minimize dependency. The main purpose of SAFe is to synchronize the efforts of multiple teams and facilitate the delivery of value at scale.
2. Scrum of Scrums: This is a framework that provides a lightweight way to scale Scrum. Helps organizations to scale Scrum while implementing the core principles of Inspection, Adaptation, and continuous improvement.
3. LeSS – Large Scale Scrum: LeSS is an Agile framework that extends Scrum principles and practices to large-scale development across multiple teams.
4. Nexus: Nexus is a scrum framework designed for scaling Scrum, which focuses on integration, transparency, testing, and minimizing dependencies across teams to deliver a product increment.
5. Scrum at Scale: A comprehensive and lightweight framework with a defined set of roles, events, and artifacts based on organizational goals.

Advantages of Scrum

Below are some of the advantages in using the Scrum:

1. Increased Agility and Adaptability: Scrum is iterative and incremental, embracing change and uncertainty which allows flexibility and adaptability to changing requirements and customer needs.
2. Enhanced Team Collaboration and Transparency: Scrum promotes Team Collaboration between teams and transparency at all levels to help maintain a consistent pace of work.
3. Faster Time-to-Market: Scrum promotes faster Time to market and faster return on investment using short iterative cycles and delivering value at regular intervals.
4. Reduced Costs: Scrum helps to lower costs and reduce risk due to less documentation and control.
5. Improved Efficiency and Quality: Scrum leads to higher quality work and customer satisfaction through continuous feedback and improvement.
6. Collaboration and Team Empowerment: Scrum helps in increased motivation and team satisfaction through collaboration and empowerment.

Disadvantages of Scrum

1. Scrum frameworks do not allow changes in their sprint.
2. The Scrum framework is not a fully described model. If you wanna adopt it you need to fill in the framework with your details like Extreme Programming(XP), Kanban, and DSDM.
3. It can be difficult for Scrum to plan, structure, and organize a project that lacks a clear definition.
4. The daily Scrum meetings and frequent reviews require substantial resources.

Criticisms and Challenges

Generally, Scrum is widely adopted and praised for its flexibility and iterative approach embracing frequent changes. But it also has many challenges and criticisms. Below is some of the list of criticisms and challenges of Scrum:

1. Inefficient to handle large projects: While handling large and complex projects, Scrum is considered ineffective in large organizations as they need additional frameworks by scaling Scrum.
2. Lack of detailed Documentation: The Scrum principle places more emphasis on working software over comprehensive documentation. In some instances this can be an advantage, but it could be a challenge in environments where detailed documentation is needed.
3. Highly focused on processes: Some say that Scrum can become too focused on ceremonies and artifacts and less emphasis on actual results and innovation
4. Role Ambiguity: The Scrum roles like Scrum Master, Product Owner, and Development team may not fit into the traditional organizational structure and this can lead to confusion and discontent among existing team members.
5. Overemphasis on Time-Boxing: Generally, all Scrum events and processes are time-boxed and this could lead to incomplete and low-quality work as the development team needs to rush the development and delivery.
6. Resistance to Change: Organizations with exiting teams may be reluctant to transition from existing methods of development to the Scrum framework as it requires a cultural shift within the organization and this can hinder the successful adoption of Scrum methodology.
7. Technical Debt Accumulation: Focusing on frequent and time-boxed delivery can lead to technical debt accumulation and quality concerns.
8. Difficulty in Estimation: Estimating in Scrum using estimation techniques can be challenging and inaccurate if the team members are familiar with old estimation methods including hourly estimation.
9. Distractions and Interruptions: Frequent meetings and interruptions in mainly to the development team can disrupt the team’s focus and flow during sprints impacting timelines and productivity.

Conclusion

Scrum in Agile Project Management promotes collaboration, and transparency and helps in delivering value to the customers and company in short iterative cycles. Scrum enables the team to respond to change quickly based on evolving requirements to deliver product increments based on customer needs. Scrum is the most popular framework of Agile Project management methodology.