What is Scrum?
Scrum is a framework that helps you apply Agile insights and principles in practice. Basically it comes down to introducing the thinking behind the Agile Manifesto into your organisation in a practical way.
What is Scrum?
Scrum originated back in the early 1990s and describes in a set of ground rules how to increase effectiveness of your team and also of your organisation. It is a so-called Empirical framework, so the ground rules contained in the Scrum Guide are based on transparency, inspection and adaptability.
The core of Scrum
The core of Scrum is working with a multi-disciplinary team to produce short cyclical results. Collect feedback on that result from the customer and/or user and take that feedback into the next cycle.
This means dividing the goal or end product into small steps and discussing with the customer or end user after each step whether you are still on the right track. After all, in this ever faster-changing digital world, it is possible that the goal changes along the way and then, as an organisation, you can respond immediately.
Scrum in practice
Scrum touches the whole organisation and that means you have to implement it carefully. Normally, you start from two sides, the business side and the IT side of one domain.
Both engage in conversation to discover things like products, services, vision and roles. Analysis of current environment is part of this to see which disciplines are needed in a Scrum team, for example, or which Scrum teams need to work closely together.
Scrum Roles
Within the Scrum framework, there are several roles: Scrum Master, Agile Coach, Product Owner, Developer and, of course, Customer. Learn more about what these roles mean in practice in our Agile Starters training.
Sprint, Backlog, Sprint Review, Retrospective, Refinement
All terms covered in our Agile Starters training. This training is about understanding these terms and we put particular emphasis on how to apply this in your organisation or team.
Sprint
Short cycle of less than one month in which the team achieves a result together. We also call this an 'increment' because it is often part of the end goal or product.
Backlog
This is the so-called TODO list of the Product Owner. The Product Owner owns the service or product and is therefore responsible for what will be delivered by the team. The backlog is therefore always in the correct order; the most important thing is at the top and the team tackles things from top to bottom.
Sprint Review
This is the moment when the team, the product owner and the scrum master talk together with the customer and/or end user about the delivered result and the next step towards the end product or goal. All feedback is collected and included in the next iteration (Sprint).
Retrospective
A core concept in Scrum is Retro or Retrospective in full. This is the moment when the team looks back at the previous period or Sprint and examines what went well, why that was the case and how they can maintain it. And the team also looks at what can be improved next time by learning from the mistakes or mistakes that were made.
Refinement
Refinement is a very important concept in Scrum. It's about making large chunks of work to achieve the end goal or product smaller so that it fits into a Sprint. It is important that the team can show or test something to the end user or customer after each Sprint.