Scrum – An Agile Framework

Scrum is an example of an Agile framework and comes from the notion of a rugby scrum where all players work together to discuss the plan. A Scrum team is made up of a:  

• Product Owner – who represents the client and gathers all of the requirements for a project. They communicate this information to the Scrum Team during planning sessions, and create user stories which become development tickets. 
• Scrum Master – who runs each of the sprint meetings and is responsible for removing any issues or barriers that any team member faces. 
• Development team – who implements the tasks or tickets in the sprint (the development team includes designers in Scrum)

The team is self organized, focusing on experience and continuous improvement. They implement the workload through a series of sprints.

Sprints are time-boxed increments of work, normally between 1-3 weeks. A sprint is made up of a series of meetings including:

• Sprint planning – meetings where the tickets, or work, in that sprint are discussed and understood as a team (focus is given to tickets deemed a priority to the project as opposed to a ‘nice-to-have’)
• Daily standups – a short daily meeting to discuss what each team member worked on the day before, what they will work on today, and any blockers (hindrances to getting a task done) or issues they are facing
• Sprint review – meetings to review what has been completed in the sprint and to see if the sprint goal has been met
• Sprint retrospective – team meetings to discuss what worked well and any difficulties encountered during the sprint (this problem solving supports improvement in the next sprint).

Scrum is not about detailed upfront planning. Teams only plan in detail the tickets that are being brought into the sprint they are working on. At the sprint planning meeting the highest priority tickets are estimated by the team and ultimately, over time, the team gets a sense of how much work they can complete during a sprint. This allows the team to get an understanding of how long it might take to complete the MVP as they can start to project their ‘cadence’ or rhythm.