What is Scrum: Understanding Scrum Methodology

Borrowing from the dictum of democracy, Scrum is a framework of the people, by the people, and for the people as well. It brings to the professionals the opportunity to address their problems irrespective of nature, whether simple or complex. Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland have designed the framework aiming for the betterment of teamwork, which, after all, will induce fruitful results and meet customer needs and wants.

Scrum follows a more realistic means of approach to deal with complex and unforeseeable problems instead of following a digital technique. Rather than a process that is clearly defined, Scrum can be called as a base that can be applied to several facilities. The whole setup of Scrum consists of Scrum Teams, their identities, and artifacts associated with the entire working setup, and each of them is important to the whole function.

The Scrum Framework

Scrum itself is a framework promoting effective team collaboration and productivity, along with taking into account complex problems addressed by the members of the team functioning within the framework.

According to the Scrum guide, given by its designers, the framework stands on three pillars: transparency, inspection, and adaptation. These three qualities, co-existing within the framework, ensure efficient collaboration amongst the team members. Moreover, the team members work as a crew and not as isolated individuals, thereby respecting each other’s decisions and ideas, and even the stakeholders are made aware of all the list of actions being planned for the development of the product.

Are you a professional who is aspiring to be a Certified ScrumMaster? Then check out the CSM Certification Training Course now.

What is a ScrumMaster?

Scrum functions on a self-facilitating team that manages the entire process on its own. In other words, the organization of the team depends on the team itself. No one person decides the action; rather, it’s a collective effort.

Apart from this, in the Scrum network, work and functions are divided into short phases and are distributed amongst the members in the domain. This system of operation ensures authentic outputs, unlike when one individual is loaded with work. 

A Scrum Master’s responsibilities include the promotion and proper implementation of the practices, values, theory, and rules of Scrum by educating the people interacting with the software about it. In doing so, he helps customers make the best out of their interactions with the Scrum team.

Anyone can choose this as a career option and can become a certified Scrum Master with due training. And if you do choose to take this path, here is an insight at what to expect at a Scrum Master interview.

Detailing Scrum: Understanding Scrum Values and Principles

The Scrum framework confines itself to software development activities. To get a proper hang of what Scrum is, we must know what could be addressed as ‘Scrum values and principles.’ The Scrum values and principles are what constitute the Scrum framework. 

Scrum takes into consideration the following values that revolve around it:

• Commitment

  Members within the Scrum framework are committed not only to the people but also to each other and the goals that are intended to be achieved. One of these goals is termed as ‘sprint-based goals’ in which team members are required to keep their goals realistic and be efficient enough to achieve them within a short period.

• Focus

  Focus is an iterative-incremental approach. Delivery on time and meeting the expectations of the target audience works as an impetus to stay motivated and focused on the goals. This further saves the company from jeopardizing its position and reputation.

• Openness

  Openness, which is also synonymous with transparency, is one of the primary criteria in every professional field. No person can handle the operations of a company or an organization alone and hence has to work with a team. To work with a team, one needs to be open about ideas and issues because being opaque can cause miscommunication, thereby dismantling the entire functioning.

• Respect

  Respect is very much the same as openness. Respecting each other’s ideas helps maintain harmony amongst the members of the team functioning within the Scrum network.

• Courage

  The Scrum framework has specifically been designed for the business sector where risks and the requirement to change under any circumstances or for any prospect in the future go hand-in-hand. Team members should be courageous to welcome any such change or challenge. This will increase the chances of the betterment of the performance of team members and inevitably of the company. It is one of the approaches that inspired the Agile Manifesto, articulating a set of values and principles to direct decisions on how to produce software of higher quality more quickly.

What is the Scrum Methodology?

Having learned about the values and principles of Scrum, it is essential for us to remember that this framework is solely concerned with good team collaboration and performance, and is not a strategy but an idea which has been given the shape of a framework. Now, to provide a successful execution to a project, one has to follow a particular agile methodology and nothing better than Scrum, the most successful of the agile methodologies.

With scrum methodology, the product owner works very closely with the development team to identify the functionality of systems, which is known as the product backlog. The product backlog comprises bug fixes of problems and the remediation of other requirements that ensure the smooth functioning of the software.

Having said that, even though Scrum is a subset of the Agile software development methodology, both approaches are nuanced in their ways and do have some key differences.

Decoding Why Scrum is a Success

Scrum over the years has garnered much popularity and is commonly used by various development teams across sectors. In fact, 70 percent of development teams use Scrum or Scrum version, according to the 12th annual State of Agile survey.

The foremost reason for its popularity is its simple framework and ease of implementation when judged in comparison with other, more complex alternatives available in the market. Moving on, the various certifications offered by Scrum to trainers, developers, coaches, and Scrum Masters have also added to its credibility. The inclusion of these facilitators into the framework allows Scrum to collect feedback and learn from the experience of each of the members involved, which in turn helps it evolve and underlines its success.

Moreover, Scrum’s success can also be attributed to the very environment it builds, enriched with collaboration and feedback, which in turn ensures a motivated and goal-oriented team.

To sum up, Scrum follows the empirical scientific method. It replaces a structured algorithmic approach with a heuristic one that tackles unpredictability and solves complex problems with respect for people and self-organization.

Needless to say, if you are a business yet unaware of the immense potential of Scrum, you need to learn about it now because believe us when we say that it should be your next career move. And if you still need convincing before making the leap, go ahead and weigh the pros and cons of Scrum project management.

Scrum Artifacts give away information the whole idea about the project undertaken by the Scrum team, i.e., even the stakeholders are made aware of all the list of actions being planned for the development of the product under development. The people at this level are the Scrum Master, Developers, Product Owners, testers.

Loooking forward to be a Certified ScumMaster? Try answering these CSM Exam Questions and assess your level of understanding of the concepts.

Conclusion

Though designed specifically for software development teams, the Scrum framework is also applied in other business sectors of education as well. Though it consists of methodology for successful execution, it is better to view it as a framework for an easy understanding of it. The Certified ScrumMaster Training Course helps you get a better understanding of the scrum framework and its methodologies.

Scrum’s recipe for success is driven by the desire to keep pace with the changing landscape of technological developments and come up with modern solutions for modern problems.