What is scrum?
15 min
Beginner
By the end of this lesson, you'll be able to:
- Define scrum
- Define each role on the scrum team
- Explain the three scrum artifacts
- Describe the scrum events and ceremonies
Explore scrum
Scrum is a popular agile framework. Scrum is focused on following a set of rules and delivering in time-boxed increments. It encourages teams to self-organize and continuously improve.
👇 Here's an overview of the entire scrum process.
What's a sprint?
The first part of the cycle to explore is sprints. In scrum, the team delivers work incrementally in short, time-boxed cycles called sprints. A sprint duration can be between one and four weeks long, depending on the team.
Sprints help break down a project into manageable, bite-sized tasks. This way, the team has the flexibility to reprioritize tasks as the project changes.
What are artifacts, events, and roles?
Compared to kanban, scrum is more rigid and prescriptive. It has specific artifacts, events, and roles your team must practice. These can all be customized and adapted, but many teams aim to follow the original scrum framework closely.
What are the scrum artifacts?
Artifacts are items that provide key information to make the sprint cycle successful.
👇 Click to explore each artifact in more detail.
The product backlog is the primary list of work that needs to get done. This is usually a long list of features, requirements, and fixes. It is, essentially, the entire team’s to do list.
The product backlog is used as an input to decide what to work on for the next sprint.
What are the scrum events?
Scrum events, also called ceremonies, are full-team meetings to ensure everyone is in sync.
Each team approaches scrum events differently. Some teams find that doing all the events is too repetitive, while others find them 100% necessary. Ask your team lead or scrum master how your team approaches events.
👇 Click the tabs below to explore each event and its details.
The sprint planning meeting is to plan the work to be completed in the upcoming sprint and determine a sprint goal.
Work items are pulled from the product backlog to the sprint backlog in the meeting. At the end of the session, everyone on the team must be clear on the sprint goal and the tasks to be completed.
Who's on the scrum team?
The people on the team bring the scrum framework to life. There are specific roles that should be on every scrum team.
Each scrum team should have one product owner, one scrum master, and five to seven development team members.
👇 Click to explore each role and their responsibilities in more detail.
Product owners understand the business, customer expectations, and market trends. They set the vision for the product and ensure the development team delivers the most value to the company. Each scrum team has only one product owner.
Their responsibilities are to:
- Craft the product vision
- Build, manage, and prioritize the product backlog
- Provide clear guidance on which features to deliver next
- Decide when to ship the product
Let's review
👇 Review the image below. You should recognize each component now!
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next lesson
Use a scrum board in Jira
- What's a scrum board?
- Find your workflow
- View sprint dates
- Explore the backlog
- Let's consider an example