All about Scrum

When you use Scrum for project management, you form a team that will work together to quickly develop and test a deliverable. The work is completed in short cycles, and the team meets daily to discuss current tasks and clear up anything that's blocking their progress.

Scrum is a framework that materializes or brings that philosophy to life. In fact, Scrum came before the Agile Manifesto and served as an inspiration for the entire Agile philosophy.

Scrum as a framework for developing, delivering, and sustaining complex products. That means a team can use Scrum to create valuable products for their users, even when the environment or industry they're in is hard to predict and there are many risks.

Scrum works best for projects where the team and management are open-minded, adaptable, and value continuously learning how to be a better team.

Empiricism.

This is a fancy word for a simple concept: that true knowledge comes from actual, lived experience. The Scrum founders emphasize that we shouldn't try to assume that things will go exactly as planned or try to predict the future in an uncertain world. Instead, if you're using Scrum, you're ensuring that each decision you make in your project is based on real experience and hard data. So each iteration and increment is understood as a mini-experiment where we can learn really valuable things to help improve the project.

Empiricism is built on three foundational pillars. Those pillars are transparency, inspection, and adaptation, and they're also the three pillars of Scrum.

• Transparency means that we make the most significant aspects of our work visible to those responsible for the outcome. Everyone must be transparent. This includes everyone from Scrum Team members to senior sponsors, and even our users. Transparency also encourages more collaboration and fewer mistakes.

• Inspection refers to conducting timely checks towards the outcome of a Sprint goal to detect undesirable variances. This means that we're always checking in on our progress and deliverables so that we can detect any undesirable changes. When teams work in an Agile way, a stakeholder review of their work is a necessary opportunity for growth and progress. The more inspections that take place, the more improvement a team experiences in their work. There's real value to be gained from deliberate inspection while you have a chance to change and improve.

• Adaptation means that we're continuously searching for ways to adjust our project, product, or processes to minimize any further deviation or issues. In Scrum, and in Agile as a whole, for that matter, we embrace change so that we are always improving. So when we adapt, we change aspects that do not work or could be better.

Transparency and inspection gives Scrum Teams the information and opportunity they need to identify improvements or changes. Although adaptation includes immediate fixes to problems, it may also be about implementing a change so future projects don't repeat past mistakes.

Scrum Teams work and behave according to five core values: commitment, courage, focus, openness, and respect.

1. First, there's commitment. This means personally committing to achieving the goals of the Scrum Team. For example, maybe a member of the team is struggling to overcome something that is blocking their work from getting done, like a new technology that is proving difficult to learn. In this case, another team member who is familiar with the technology can put their own work aside to step in and help their teammate learn the technology.

2. The second value is courage. Scrum Team members must have the courage to do the right thing and work on tough problems. In any project, there's a body of work that needs to get done. Some of the work will be relatively simple, and some will be complex with many risks. An example of courage includes taking on a hard task that you know will require you to learn a new skill. Courage could mean telling your team that you're stuck and you need help. It might also mean calling out a negative behaviour within the team to openly discuss and address the behaviour. Demonstrating courage when responding to challenging situations can strengthen the team's resilience.

3. Third, there's focus. This refers to everyone focusing on the necessary work within the Sprint and the overall goals of the Scrum Team. For example, a team member is working on a solution that involves a new technology and is very difficult. Allowing that team member to focus on that difficult yet necessary part of the solution is key, and their teammates help get it across the finish line. They know that focusing on the solution will speed up the team's progress in the long run, so it's worth the investment now.The Scrum Master, a role often assumed by the project manager, helps the team to focus on the Sprint and product goals by facilitating their activities and events on a daily basis.

4. The fourth value is openness. For Scrum to work, the team and its stakeholders agree to be open about all the work and the various challenges that come with performing the work. Openness is essential to a productive Scrum Team. In order to gather data, team members must be willing to share their observations and experiences. If a team member runs into an issue within the project that they aren't sure how to fix, they should share it with the team. Another team member may have a very quick and easy solution, or at least valuable insight into some options on how to handle their issue.

5. The fifth and final Scrum pillar is respect. Team members should respect the opinions, skills, and independence of their teammates. When you respect the independence and contributions of others and feel respected yourself, you're more likely to listen and hear any feedback. This is crucial in making the product or business as successful as possible.