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Scrum Methodology: An Introduction to the Scrum Process

The scrum methodology was developed as a response to rigid project management approaches such as the waterfall method, which didn’t adapt to the needs of agile product and software development teams. We’ll explore the scrum methodology in-depth, but before that, let’s start with a simple scrum definition.

What Is Scrum?

Scrum is a project management framework that facilitates team collaboration on complex product and software development projects. The good news is that scrum is easy to understand. The bad news? It’s hard to master.

What Is the Scrum Methodology?

The scrum methodology emphasizes teamwork in project management. It stresses accountability and iterative progress toward a well-defined goal. Scrum is part of agile software development and teams practice agile . The name comes from the sport of rugby, where scrum is a formation where everyone plays a specific role, but everyone is working towards a quick adoption of strategies.

The necessary collaboration required for a successful scrum is facilitated by ProjectManager , online and project management software that connects scrum teams wherever they work. Collaborative to the core, our platform delivers real-time data that allow scrum teams to comment on tasks during a sprint, share files and much more. Get started today for free.

Scrum vs. Agile

Scrum is a part of the agile process, but certainly not the only part. Agile is a large tent, but scrum is an important pillar. Think of scrum as a framework by which you can implement agile development. Agile doesn’t have a set of steps to follow, so scrum provides a means to apply agile to your project. There are many frameworks that you can use in agile development, such as extreme programming or feature-driven development, but scrum’s simplicity and autonomy are selling points.

The scrum methodology can also be used as an entry point to other agile practices. It’s also not solely a framework for software but can benefit many other kinds of projects.

When Should You Use the Scrum Methodology?

Any team that’s working to produce an end product can use scrum methodology, whether it be a software program, marketing campaign, website or even a new product or building. In reality, it can be applied to any project in any industry. A good rule of thumb is to use the scrum methodology if your project requires that you figure out how to do a significant amount of the work. If you’ve executed many similar projects before and you know how to approach the project again, you can opt for a waterfall approach.

Scrum in Software Development

Scrum is commonly used in software development as developers execute the work that’s required to complete each sprint. The framework was formalized for software development projects. Scrum allows for constant feedback and flexibility and software developers can focus on developing one or more features within a particular time frame referred to as a sprint which is usually one month or less. When the product is finished, it’s ready to be released.

Scrum in Product Development

Product development teams use scrum similarly to software development teams. When product development teams employ the scrum methodology, they break down long-term plans into sprints. During this time, they’ll work on only select projects to make frequent product updates that hit the marketplace as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Scrum in Project Management

The scrum process is led by the scrum master who aims to remove obstacles to the work getting done. Scrum teams meet daily to talk about roadblocks that could sidetrack projects. It’s ideal for managing projects that require fast development and testing, especially amongst a small team.

What Are the Artifacts of the Scrum Methodology?

In the scrum methodology, the term artifact refers to key concepts that are used by the scrum team to develop products in an agile environment. We’ll go through the most critical artifacts that every scrum team needs: product backlog, sprint backlog and product increment.

• Product backlog: The product owner makes a list of work that needs to be done, and they’ll place it in order according to priority. This is building your project backlog . They do this by determining what is a must-have item, which is less critical and those that don’t fit into the timeframe allotted. That means the value of each item must be clear. What is their impact and risk and how the item might help in the learning process?
• Sprint backlog: The sprint backlog can be simply defined as the set of user stories in which the scrum team will be working in a single sprint. It’s important to make sure that the most critical user stories are always the ones that are being worked on and none of them fall through the cracks.
• Product increment: The term product increment refers to all the product backlog items that have been completed during a sprint. It can also be used to describe the sum of all the completed backlog items and user stories.

The scrum methodology theory has evolved with time. Scrum experts have suggested that there are actually 7 scrum artifacts . This expanded vision can be very helpful to further define the scrum team’s objectives.

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What Are the Scrum Events in the Scrum Process?

These scrum events or scrum ceremonies foster team collaboration and ensure that there’s a constant line of communication among the scrum team members through the product or software development life cycle.

• Sprint Planning: Using the product backlog, teams start with the highest priority items and determine how to achieve this objective. A good tip when sprint planning is to do the due diligence and only start with ready items. Also, remember that planning is a short process, so don’t get bogged down in the details. Simply get to work on meeting the objectives and keep the plan collaborative. The team should also ask the product owner and stakeholder questions.
• Daily Scrum Meeting: These are 15-minute meetings where everybody in the scrum team talks about the tasks they’ll be working on during the day and share any roadblocks or difficulties they’re facing. There’s no need to make this daily scrum meeting longer, as there are other meetings such as sprint reviews and sprint retrospectives to explore more complex topics.
• Sprint Review: You want to look back on the sprint and see what worked and what didn’t. You can then take the information and apply it to future sprints to replicate the positives and reduce the negatives. Begin the sprint review process by thanking participants, offering short introductions and setting ground rules for the discussion.
• Sprint Retrospective: The sprint retrospective meeting gives the scrum team a space to reflect on the last sprint and determine what went well and wrong. Stakeholder and customer feedback are also gathered to prioritize user stories and improve product performance.
• Backlog Grooming: Once through this cycle, it starts over again by going back to the backlog and taking the next ready item at the top of the priority list. Backlog grooming consists of improving the scrum process through the prioritization of work based on prior experience and continuing to refine the work to make it as efficient as possible.

What Are the Main Roles In a Scrum Team?

As with anything in project management, the scrum methodology needs people to be executed. For this purpose, it defines three scrum roles , a scrum master, a product owner and a development team that’s made up of several team members.

• Scrum Master: The scrum master , as his name suggests, is a scrum methodology expert. He guarantees that everybody in the scrum team understands how the framework works and helps them adapt to the agile environment. He leads scrum meetings.
• Scrum Product Owner: The scrum product owner manages the product log and oversees sprint planning and actively participates in scrum meetings. In a sense, they act as a project manager because they lead backlog grooming and prioritize user stories to help the teamwork better.
• Scrum Development Team: The scrum development team is simply made up of all the team members who develop software or products. They must work closely with the product owner and adhere to the scrum master’s suggestions.

What Are Scrum Values in the Scrum Methodology?

Scrum values are the guiding principles of the scrum methodology. They’re simple statements that work as agile best practices. The agile values come from the Agile Manifesto , a document with the guiding principles of the agile project management methodology. Let’s quickly explain what they’re about.

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools: Processes and tools are important in software development, but individuals and how they interact with those processes and tools are more important.
• Working software over comprehensive documentation: Before the Agile Manifesto, software developers focused heavily on documentation. This value states that while documentation is important, focusing on developing the software should be the primary goal of the scrum team.
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation: This value explains that collaborating with customers to create a high-quality product is much more important than drafting a rigid contract that limits product development, as it used to be done in the old software development days.
• Responding to change over following a plan: This value states that agile is a project management methodology that seamlessly adapts to change based on an iterative product development cycle and not a rigid project plan.

Advantages of the Scrum Methodology

There are many unique advantages that scrum offers that can entice you if you’re considering using scrum for your team.

• Flexibility: If your project undergoes frequent changes, scrum provides adaptability that other methods don’t. It’s easy to pivot without losing the hard work you’ve already completed.
• Visibility: Stakeholders feel more involved as they’re able to see progress incrementally instead of solely during outlined check-in points in the project.
• Efficiency: The goal is to deliver work as efficiently as possible, a goal that’s often achieved within scrum’s short sprints.

Disadvantages of the Scrum Methodology

There are challenges with any project management methodology and scrum is no exception.

• Scope creep: The lack of a definitive project end date can result in using more resources than you originally anticipated.
• Requires a small, committed team: It’s challenging to achieve success with scrum if you have a large team or if team members aren’t committed to project success.
• Not ideal for all projects: If you have a fixed project scope and timeline that cannot move, it likely isn’t suitable for scrum.

History of the Scrum Methodology

The scrum process has its origins in the early 1990s. Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber came up with the process, which they presented to the Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages & Applications (OOPSLA) conference in Austin, Texas in 1995. They formalized the methodology in a published paper called “SCRUM Software Development Process.”

The name scrum, however, was inherited from a paper published in 1986 by management experts Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka, called “The New New Product Development Game.” They were using the word scrum as it related to rugby as a means of stressing the importance of team collaboration for project success. By 2001, Sutherland and Schwaber and 15 other software development leaders created the Manifesto for Agile Software Development . Shortly afterward, the Agile Alliance was founded. Schwaber co-authored with Mike Beedle, the first book on scrum, Agile Software Development with Scrum , in 2001.

The Scrum Alliance was founded in 2002 by Schwaber, a chairman, with Mike Cohn and Esther Derbry. They later added a certification arm to the organization, with Certified ScrumMaster programs.

Glossary of Scrum Methodology Terms

Before defining the framework of scrum, here’s a short list of some of the more common terms used when working within a scrum environment.

• Burndown chart: A burndown chart shows much effort is left compared to time
• Burnup chart: Measures the increase in a measure against time
• Definition of done: The definition of done (DOD) is one of the seven scrum artifacts. It’s an acceptance criterion agreed upon by the scrum team
• Product backlog: A product backlog is work to be done in a specific order
• Product backlog refinement: When the product owner and team add detail to the product backlog, also known as backlog grooming
• Scrum board: A scrum board helps scrum teams manage their work
• Scrumban: Scrumban is a hybrid methodology that combines scrum and kanban project management
• Sprint: Short tasks, one following immediately after the completion of another
• Sprint backlog: What the team needs to complete the sprint
• Sprint goal: The purpose of the sprint
• Sprint planning: Sprint planning is a spring event where scrum teams plan their upcoming sprint
• Sprint retrospective: Short post-mortem of the sprint
• Sprint review: Short review of the sprint to help add improvements to the next one

How ProjectManager Enables the Scrum Process

Scrum methodology requires collaboration and flexibility. ProjectManager , online work and project management software connects scrum teams and gives them the tools they need to work in an agile environment. Our tool delivers real-time data that keeps everyone updated and communicating no matter where they are, how they work or what role they have in the project.

Create and Manage Scrum Boards

Our multiple project views mean that other departments can collaborate on Gantt charts or our sheet view. But scrum teams will use our scrum board view, which allows them to manage their backlog of user stories and work together when planning a sprint.

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You don’t want to get in the way of your self-directed team, but you need to know what they’re doing. Our real-time dashboard tracks six project metrics. There’s no setup required as with inferior products. Our custom workflows allow you to apply triggers that set actions automatically to free your team to focus on their work. Plus, task approvals give you control of status changes.

Collaborate With Your Scrum Team

Not only is our software ideal for scrum, but it can also work with more traditional methodologies like waterfall or a hybrid of many project management methods. Our tool allows you to collaborate with other departments in your organization that aren’t agile. It’s the only work and project management tool you’ll need to deliver success.

ProjectManager is project management software that’s uniquely positioned to help project managers through every phase of their work, regardless of the methodology. Being cloud-based, it collects real-time data and has the tools to help teams collaborate, giving them the autonomy required of scrum with the monitoring and management to keep on schedule and within budget. See how it can help you and your team by taking this free 30-day trial.

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What is scrum?

Scrum is a lightweight framework designed to help teams collaborate on complex products iteratively and incrementally to deliver high value. It is built on the principles of empiricism and lean thinking.

How it works

Scrum values, empiricism and iteration.

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What is the scrum framework?

Scrum is a lightweight yet incredibly powerful framework. Scrum relies on cross-functional and self-managing teams to deliver products and services in short cycles, enabling:

• Fast feedback
• Quicker innovation
• Continuous improvement
• Rapid adaptation to change
• Delighted customers
• Reduced time from idea to delivery

The term scrum comes from a 1986 Harvard Business Review article ( The New New Product Development Game ) in which authors Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka made an analogy comparing high-performing, cross-functional teams to the scrummage used by rugby teams. Ken Scwaber and Jeff Sutherland first introduced scrum as a framework at the Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages & Applications (OOPSLA) conference in 1995 in Austin, Texas.

Though it has its roots in software development, today scrum is used in almost every industry so that teams can solve complex problems and deliver innovative products and services that truly delight customers.

The basics of scrum in under 10 minutes

Scrum is the most widely used and popular agile framework. The term "Agile" describes a specific set of foundational principles and values for organizing and managing complex work based on the Agile Manifesto . The creators of the manifesto also considered the words "lightweight" and "adaptive," and eventually all agreed that "agile" was the most effective term for their purposes. The Agile Manifesto was published on February 11, 2001.

Scrum embodies agile principles by enabling teams to adapt quickly to changes (in market requirements, conditions, new regulations, etc.), prioritize customer feedback, and deliver work in manageable increments. Scrum is considered agile because of the agile principles and values it supports:

The Agile Manifesto explains how its creators came to value:

"Individuals and interactions over processes and tools Working software over comprehensive documentation Customer collaboration over contract negotiation Responding to change over following a plan

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more."

Scrum benefits

Practicing scrum offers several advantages, including:

• Minimized risk
• Enhanced ability to manage changing priorities 
• Ability to uncover bottlenecks in teams and organizations that get in the way of value delivery
• Increased transparency for stakeholders by delivering working product increments frequently
• Opportunities to inspect and adapt, thereby making course corrections based on what is learned

This framework incorporates inspection and adaptation at regular intervals, helping teams to continuously improve their interactions, reduce time to market, and increase customer satisfaction through regular feedback loops. Moreover, scrum's emphasis on transparency and collaboration fosters a more engaged and motivated team environment, which can lead to higher productivity and better outcomes.

Scrum teams inspect each increment of functionality as it is completed and then adapt what will be done next based on learning and feedback, minimizing risk, and reducing waste. This cycle repeats and continuously gives the stakeholders, business, and the scrum team the opportunity to adjust to changing market conditions, competition, and other reasons for pivoting.

Are you interested in mastering the basics of scrum? Check out Scrum Essentials, an on-demand course exploring the framework's teams, events, and practices. Find out how to leverage scrum to increase customer satisfaction and adaptability to change.

Scrum's effectiveness lies in its simplicity and flexibility, described later in this page. While it is possible to practice scrum without embodying the scrum values and empiricism (i.e. mechanical scrum), the true benefits of adopting scrum can only be achieved when the scrum team and the organization embody the scrum values and empiricism. Along with organizational and culture shifts catalyzed by adopting those values, the framework has practices based on three core components: Scrum consists of: 

• Accountabilities
• Events 

These core components, along with a few simple rules, work together to create a cycle of continuous improvement and adaptation, ensuring that the teams and the organizations can respond swiftly to changes and deliver high-value products effectively.

Scrum accountabilities

Scrum has three accountabilities (previously called "roles") ensuring that every aspect of the shared work is managed effectively.

• Developers: Professionals in the scrum team who work together to create any aspect of the product. They create the product increment(s) during the sprint. People with any skill needed to build the product take on the accountability of a developer. Depending on the nature of the product, the skills will be different. 
• Product  owner : The product owner develops and communicates the product goal, owns the product backlog, and ensures the team is always addressing the highest value work. They also balance the needs of stakeholders, customers, and the team. They know and understand the domain, the market for their products, and they are passionate about delivering results that customers and users want and need.
• Scrum  master : The scrum master leads and guides the organization in its scrum adoption and practice. The scrum master helps the team build the product and become the best team they can be by guiding them to use scrum and embody agile principles. They coach the team toward effective use of the events and artifacts. Their day may include helping the team manage impediments, and they are often essential to the growth of the team as a whole as well as individuals. 

There are also many ways scrum masters serve the organization, including coaching the organization and stakeholders in scrum adoption and empiricism.

The scrum team is made up of these accountabilities. A team has one scrum master, one product owner , and the developers. The size of a scrum team is usually fewer than 10 people. The team is self-managing and cross-functional. Many responsibilities of a traditional project manager are divided between the accountabilities while other project management responsibilities may become unnecessary.

Scrum events

There are five events in the scrum framework. These events are valuable opportunities to inspect and adapt the product or the way the team works together (and sometimes both).

• The sprint : The core of scrum, a timeboxed period (less than one month long and frequently 1-2 weeks) during which one or more increments are created. The sprint contains all of the other events.
• Sprint planning : The entire scrum team establishes the sprint goal. The developers forecast what work they believe they can accomplish during the sprint to support the goal, and how the chosen work will be completed. Planning should be timeboxed to a maximum of 8 hours for a month-long sprint, with a shorter timebox for shorter sprints. Based on the sprint goal and the forecast, an initial plan is also created. The scrum team may invite other people to sprint planning to provide advice or input on relevant work.
• Daily scrum : During daily scrum, the developers inspect the progress toward the sprint goal and adapt plans as necessary. It's a brief daily event led by the developers to inspect and adapt. It is timeboxed to 15 minutes. Daily scrum is not the team's only opportunity to adapt their plans; they often communicate about needed pivots outside of this event. In daily scrum, the team may synchronize their daily work, identify blockers, and discuss collaboration that needs to take place. Daily scrum helps the team understand if their latest plans will get them closer to achieving the sprint goal and they pivot if needed. 
• Sprint review : The entire scrum team inspects the sprint's outcome with stakeholders and determines future adaptations. Stakeholders are invited to provide feedback on what that scrum team has achieved so far and on the future direction of product development. The product backlog is adapted based on these conversations.
• Sprint retrospective : The conclusion of the sprint, the retrospective is the team's opportunity to inspect their own interactions, collaborations, processes, tools, and any other factors they deem relevant to their ability to continuously improve.

Product backlog refinement

Refinement is a continuous activity used to prepare product backlog items for the upcoming sprint plannings. Teams may adjust details such as description, order, and size. It is not a scrum event. Some teams prefer a recurring meeting, usually done once or twice per sprint. Other teams prefer to refine backlog items as needed. 

While the product owner is ultimately accountable for the state and the content of the product backlog, they can delegate product backlog management to others (but cannot delegate the accountability). The buck stops with the product owner.

Scrum artifacts

Scrum artifacts enable transparency, inspection, and adaptation. They provide visibility into the work being completed so that anyone—the team, stakeholders, managers, etc.—can inspect the results and identify areas where an adaptation may benefit the product.

• Product backlog : An ordered or ranked list of everything that might be needed to improve the product, along with the product goal. The product goal is the commitment to the product backlog and is part of the product backlog.
• Sprint backlog : It consists of the sprint goal plus the set of product backlog items the product owner and developers have forecasted they can complete during the current sprint (they may not finish them all), plus a plan for delivering the increment and achieving the sprint goal. The sprint goal is the commitment for the sprint backlog and does not change during the sprint (while the “scope of work” may actually change). As the plan changes (during the sprint or during daily scrum) those changes are reflected on the sprint backlog. 
• Increment: When a product backlog Item is completed (as per the quality attributes defined for the product - captured usually in the Definition of Done) in such a way that it delivers value and is usable, it becomes an "Increment." Each increment is additive because it does not break what has been previously completed and will continue to work indefinitely into the future when new PBIs are completed. The commitment to the increment is the definition of done.

Scrum artifact commitments

In the scrum framework, each artifact is accompanied by a specific commitment that ensures the work focuses on delivering quality and value. 

• Definition of Done for the increments : The Definition of Done establishes the quality measures for the product that the product backlog items must meet to be considered complete. Once a product backlog item meets the definition of done, it becomes an increment. 
• Sprint goal for the sprint backlog: A specific and singular goal for the sprint that clarifies the sprint's purpose. The sprint goal is the commitment to the sprint backlog. This goal helps everyone focus on the essence of what needs to be done and why. The sprint goal must allow the developers to be flexible about the exact "scope" of work that is done. The sprint goal brings cohesion to the work done during the sprint. 
• Product goal for the product backlog : A clear understanding of the product's overarching objective is essential for teams to effectively organize the work.The product may have multiple product goals over its lifetime, but only one at a time.

How it all works together

Scrum accountabilities, artifacts, and events work together within the sprint. The product owner defines the direction of product development with a product goal using information from stakeholders and users. They identify and define pieces of value that can be delivered to move closer toward the product goal.

The product owner ensures that the product backlog is ordered so that the team knows what is most important. The developers can help the product owner further refine what needs to be done, and the product owner may rely on the developers to make trade-off decisions. This is where refinement becomes an important practice for the scrum team.

Getting started

While the framework defines the bare essentials, here are some considerations to get started:

• Define the "product" and the "boundary" of the product
• Form new scrum teams
• Define product goal and a few product backlog items 
• Create a definition of done

During sprint planning, the scrum team collaborates to create the sprint goal. Based on the sprint goal, the developers pull work (usually from the top) of the product backlog and decide how they will complete it. The team has a set time frame, the sprint, to achieve the sprint goal. They meet at the daily scrum to inspect progress towards the sprint goal and plan for the upcoming day. Along the way, the scrum master keeps the team focused on the sprint goal and can help the team improve as a whole. 

Wrapping up the sprint

The scrum team shares its sprint results with stakeholders in sprint review. They may adapt the product backlog as part of that review and in sprint planning. 

The team has a sprint retrospective to discuss what went well and what didn't go well during the sprint. They may discuss collaborations, tools, communication, and practices that supported or hindered their ability to achieve their sprint goal. They develop action items based on what they discussed in order to improve future sprints.

In sprint planning, the team chooses the product backlog items for the next sprint and the cycle repeats. 

Transitioning to an agile framework such as scrum requires a new mindset and overall cultural adjustments. And, like all change, it doesn't come easy. But when teams and organizations fully commit to scrum, they'll discover a new sense of flexibility, creativity, and inspiration—all of which will lead to greater results.

The scrum value of commitment is essential for building an agile culture. Scrum teams work together to support each other in their pursuit of the product goal and sprint goals. This means that scrum teams trust each other to follow through on what they say they are going to do. When team members aren’t sure how work is going, they ask. Scrum teams only agree to take on tasks they believe they can complete, so they are careful not to overcommit.

Courage 

The scrum value of courage is critical to a scrum team’s success. Scrum teams must feel safe enough to say no, ask for help, and try new things. Agile teams must be brave enough to question the status quo when it hampers their ability to succeed.

Focus 

Every member of the scrum team focuses on the work at hand to support the sprint goal.

Openness 

Scrum teams consistently seek out new ideas and opportunities to learn. Scrum teams are also honest when they need help and open with their team and stakeholders about the challenges they face.

Scrum team members demonstrate respect to one another, to the product owner, to stakeholders, and to the scrum master. Scrum teams know that their strength lies in how well they collaborate and that everyone has a distinct contribution to make toward completing the work of the sprint. They respect each other's ideas, give each other permission to have a bad day once in a while, and recognize each other's accomplishments.

Scrum operates on core elements that make it exceptionally suited for handling complex, evolving projects. This framework facilitates a balance between structure and adaptability, enabling teams to efficiently tackle changing demands and deliver quality outcomes. Through its elements, scrum provides a lightweight set of enabling constraints for teams to follow as they work through uncertainties and aim for continuous improvement in their work.

The three pillars of empirical process control

Scrum is based on the theory of empirical process control, which relies on transparency, inspection, and adaptation.

Transparency

Effective decision-making requires transparency of the process and of the product's progress and a shared language among participants to ensure everyone understands what they're seeing. 

The five scrum events provide appropriate opportunities for transparency, inspection, and adaptation.

Regular inspections of ongoing work are essential for maintaining the intended process and achieving the desired outcome. Integrating these inspections seamlessly into the workflow prevents any disruption. 

Sprint review and sprint planning offer an opportunity to inspect progress toward the product goal, and retrospectives offer opportunities for the team to inspect their teamwork, collaborations, and processes. This process promotes continuous improvement while ensuring progress continues unhindered.

Adaptation involves making timely adjustments to the process or product whenever deviations arise. Scrum teams have the flexibility to adapt the product backlog, product, and their future plans every sprint. This ensures that any necessary changes can be implemented as rapidly as the balance of demands and capacity allows.

Iterative and incremental product management

Scrum combines iterative and incremental approaches.

Iterative 

In an iterative process, teams repeatedly cycle through rounds of delivery to arrive at a desired outcome. Each iteration brings the team closer to its goal, allowing for adjustments based on learning and feedback. This cycle of iterative improvement is a key characteristic of scrum, allowing teams to systematically make progress with each iteration.

Incremental

Incremental refers to a series of small improvements to an existing product or product line that usually helps maintain or improve its competitive position over time. Incremental innovation is regularly used within the high-technology business by companies that need to continue to improve their products to include new features increasingly desired by consumers. The way scrum teams deliver pieces of functionality into small batches is incremental.

Explore scrum certifications

Scrum Alliance certification courses offer in-depth training by leaders in agile and scrum. Choose from courses that focus on a specific scrum team accountability or an agile skill. Foundational role-based courses like the Certified ScrumMaster and all of the skill-based courses have widely applicable training that you can implement right away, no matter your role.

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What is scrum and how to get started

Scrum Guide - What it is, how it works, and how to start

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What is scrum?

Scrum is an agile project management  framework that helps teams structure and manage their work through a set of values, principles, and practices. Much like a rugby team (where it gets its name) training for the big game, scrum encourages teams to learn through experiences, self-organize while working on a problem, and reflect on their wins and losses to continuously improve.

While the scrum I’m talking about is most frequently used by software development teams, its principles and lessons can be applied to all kinds of teamwork. This is one of the reasons scrum is so popular. Often thought of as an agile project management framework, scrum describes a set of meetings, tools, and roles that work in concert to help teams structure and manage their work.

In this article, we’ll discuss how a traditional scrum framework is comprised with the help of the  Scrum Guide and David West, CEO of Scrum.org. We’ll also include examples of how we see our customers stray from these fundamentals to fit their specific needs. For that, our own Megan Cook, Head of Product for Jira and former agile coach, will give tips and tricks in our Agile Coach video series:

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Scrum of scrums is a scaled agile technique that offers a way to connect multiple teams who need to work together to deliver complex solutions. Learn how to scale scrum with examples from Atlassian and others.

Learn scrum with Jira

A step-by-step guide on how to drive a scrum project, prioritize and organize your backlog into sprints, run the scrum ceremonies and more, all in Jira.

From silo to cohesion with Jira Scrum Boards

Product feature.

The Jira Scrum Board is the visual display of progress during the development cycle.

Agile vs. scrum

People often think scrum and agile are the same thing because scrum is centered around continuous improvement , which is a core principle of agile. However, scrum is a framework for getting work done, whereas  agile is a philosophy. The agile philosophy centers around continuous incremental improvement through small and frequent releases. You can’t really “go agile”, as it takes dedication from the whole team to change the way they think about delivering value to your customers. But you can use a framework like scrum to help you start thinking that way and to practice building agile principles into your everyday communication and work.

The difference between agile and the definition of scrum can be found in the Scrum guide and the Agile manifesto . The Agile manifesto outlines four values:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

Working software over comprehensive documentation

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

Responding to change over following a plan

The definition of scrum is based on empiricism and lean thinking. Empiricism says that knowledge comes from experience and that decisions are made based on what is observed. Lean thinking reduces waste and focuses on essentials. The scrum framework is heuristic; it’s based on continuous learning and adjustment to fluctuating factors. It acknowledges that the team doesn’t know everything at the start of a project and will evolve through experience. Scrum is structured to help teams naturally adapt to changing conditions and user requirements, with re-prioritization built into the process and short release cycles so your team can constantly learn and improve.

While scrum is structured, it is not entirely rigid. Its execution can be tailored to the needs of any organization. There are many theories about how exactly scrum teams must work in order to be successful. However, after more than a decade of helping agile teams get work done at Atlassian, we’ve learned that clear communication, transparency, and a dedication to continuous improvement should always remain at the center of whatever framework you choose. And the rest is up to you.

The scrum framework

The scrum framework outlines a set of values, principles, and practices that scrum teams follow to deliver a product or service. It details the members of a scrum team and their accountabilities, “artifacts” that define the product and work to create the product, and scrum ceremonies that guide the scrum team through work.

Members of a scrum team

A scrum team is a small and nimble team dedicated to delivering committed product increments. A scrum team’s size is typically small, at around 10 people, but it’s large enough to complete a substantial amount of work within a sprint. A scrum team needs three specific roles: product owner, scrum master , and the development team. And because scrum teams are cross-functional, the development team includes testers, designers, UX specialists, and ops engineers in addition to developers.

The scrum product owner

Product owners are the champions for their product. They are focused on understanding business, customer, and market requirements, then prioritizing the work to be done by the engineering team accordingly. Effective product owners:

Build and manage the product backlog.

Closely partner with the business and the team to ensure everyone understands the work items in the product backlog.

Give the team clear guidance on which features to deliver next.

Decide when to ship the product with a predisposition towards more frequent delivery.

The product owner is not always the product manager . Product owners focus on ensuring the development team delivers the most value to the business. Also, it's important that the product owner be an individual. No development team wants mixed guidance from multiple product owners.

The scrum master

Scrum masters are the champions of scrum within their teams. They coach teams, product owners, and the business on the scrum process, and look for ways to fine-tune their practice of it.

An effective scrum master deeply understands the work being done by the team and can help the team optimize their transparency and delivery flow. As the facilitator-in-chief, he/she schedules the needed resources (both human and logistical) for sprint planning, stand-up, sprint review, and the sprint retrospective.

The scrum development team

Scrum teams get s*%& done. They are the champions for sustainable development practices. The most effective scrum teams are tight-knit, co-located, and usually five to seven members. One way to work out the team size is to use the famous ‘two pizza rule’ coined by Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon (the team should be small enough to share two pizzas).

Team members have differing skill sets, and cross-train each other so no one person becomes a bottleneck in the delivery of work. Strong scrum teams are self-organizing and approach their projects with a clear ‘we’ attitude. All members of the team help one another to ensure a successful sprint completion.

The scrum team drives the plan for each sprint. They forecast how much work they believe they can complete over the iteration using their historical velocity as a guide. Keeping the iteration length fixed gives the development team important feedback on their estimation and delivery process, which in turn makes their forecasts increasingly accurate over time.

Scrum artifacts

Scrum artifacts are important information used by the scrum team that helps define the product and what work to be done to create the product. There are three artifacts in scrum: product backlog, a sprint backlog, and an increment with your definition of “done”. They are the three constants a scrum team should reflect on during sprints and over time.

Product Backlog is the primary list of work that needs to get done and maintained by the product owner or product manager. This is a dynamic list of features, requirements, enhancements, and fixes that acts as the input for the sprint backlog. It is, essentially, the team’s “To Do” list. The product backlog is constantly revisited, re-prioritized and maintained by the Product Owner because, as we learn more or as the market changes, items may no longer be relevant or problems may get solved in other ways.

Sprint Backlog is the list of items, user stories , or bug fixes, selected by the development team for implementation in the current sprint cycle. Before each sprint, in the sprint planning meeting (which we’ll discuss later in the article) the team chooses which items it will work on for the sprint from the product backlog. A sprint backlog may be flexible and can evolve during a sprint. However, the fundamental sprint goal – what the team wants to achieve from the current sprint – cannot be compromised.

Increment (or Sprint Goal) is the usable end-product from a sprint. At Atlassian, we usually demonstrate the “increment” during the end-of-sprint demo, where the team shows what was completed in the sprint. You may not hear the word “increment” out in the world, as it’s often referred to as the team’s definition of “Done”, a milestone, the sprint goal, or even a full version or a shipped epic . It just depends on how your teams defines “Done” and how you define your sprint goals. For example, some teams choose to release something to their customers at the end of every sprint. So their definition of ‘done’ would be ‘shipped’. However, this may not be realistic of other types of teams. Say you work on a server-based product that can only ship to your customers every quarter. You may still choose to work in 2-week sprints, but your definition of ‘done’ may be finishing part of a larger version that you plan to ship together. But of course, the longer it takes to release software, the higher the risk that software will miss the mark.

As you can tell, there are lots of variations, even within artifacts, that your team can choose to define. That’s why it’s important to be remain open to evolving how you maintain even your artifacts. Perhaps your definition of ‘done’ provides undo stress on your team, and you need to go back and pick a new definition.

You should be just as agile with your framework as you are with your product. Take the necessary time to check in on how things are going, make adjustments if needed, and don’t force something just for the sake of consistency.

Scrum ceremonies or events

The scrum framework includes scrum practices, ceremonies, and meetings that scrum teams perform on a regular basis. The agile ceremonies are where we see the most variations for teams. For example, some teams find doing all of these ceremonies cumbersome and repetitive, while others use them as a necessary check-in. Our advice is to start out using all of the ceremonies for two sprints and see how it feels. You can then perform a quick retro and see where you might need to adjust.

Below is a list of all the key ceremonies a scrum team might partake in:

Organize the backlog : Sometimes known as backlog grooming, this event is the responsibility of the product owner. The product owner’s main jobs are to drive the product towards its product vision and have a constant pulse on the market and the customer. Therefore, he/she maintains this list using feedback from users and the development team to help prioritize and keep the list clean and ready to be worked on at any given time. You can read more about maintaining a healthy backlog here .

Sprint planning : The work to be performed (scope) during the current sprint is planned during this meeting by the entire development team. This meeting is led by the scrum master and is where the team decides on the sprint goal. Specific user stories are then added to the sprint from the product backlog.  These stories always align with the goal and are also agreed upon by the scrum team to be feasible to implement during the sprint.

At the end of the planning meeting, every scrum member needs to be clear on what can be delivered in the sprint and how the increment can be delivered.

Sprint : A sprint is the actual time period when the scrum team works together to finish an increment. Two weeks is a pretty typical length for a sprint, though some teams find a week to be easier to scope or a month to be easier to deliver a valuable increment. Dave West, from Scrum.org advises that the more complex the work and the more unknowns, the shorter the sprint should be. But it’s really up to your team, and you shouldn’t be afraid to change it if it’s not working! During this period, the scope can be re-negotiated between the product owner and the development team if necessary. This forms the crux of the empirical nature of scrum.

All the events — from planning to retrospective — happen during the sprint. Once a certain time interval for a sprint is established, it has to remain consistent throughout the development period. This helps the team learn from past experiences and apply that insight to future sprints.

Daily scrum or stand up: This is a daily super-short meeting that happens at the same time (usually mornings) and a place to keep it simple. Many teams try to complete the meeting in 15 minutes, but that’s just a guideline. This meeting is also called a ‘daily stand-up’ emphasizing that it needs to be a quick one. The goal of the daily scrum is for everyone on the team to be on the same page, aligned with the sprint goal, and to get a plan out for the next 24 hours.

The stand up is the time to voice any concerns you have with meeting the sprint goal or any blockers.

A common way to conduct a stand up is for every team member to answer three questions in the context of achieving the sprint goal: • What did I do yesterday? • What do I plan to do today? • Are there any obstacles? However, we’ve seen the meeting quickly turn into people reading from their calendars from yesterday and for the next day. The theory behind the stand up is that it keeps distracting chatter to a daily meeting, so the team can focus on the work for the rest of the day.  So if it turns into a daily calendar read-out, don’t be afraid to change it up and get creative.

Sprint review : At the end of the sprint, the team gets together for an informal session to view a demo of, or inspect, the increment. The development team showcases the backlog items that are now ‘Done’ to stakeholders and teammates for feedback. The product owner can decide whether or not to release the increment, although in most cases the increment is released.

This review meeting is also when the product owner reworks the product backlog based on the current sprint, which can feed into the next sprint planning session. For a one-month sprint, consider time-boxing your sprint review to a maximum of four hours.

Sprint retrospective : The retrospective is where the team comes together to document and discuss what worked and what didn’t work in a sprint, a project, people or relationships, tools, or even for certain ceremonies. The idea is to create a place where the team can focus on what went well and what needs to be improved for the next time, and less about what went wrong.

Scrum values

In 2016, five scrum values were added to the Scrum Guide. These values provide direction toward work, actions, and the behavior of the scrum team. They are considered essential to a scrum team’s success.

Because scrum teams are small and agile, each team member plays a significant role in the team’s success. Therefore, each team member should agree to commit to performing tasks they can complete and not overcommit. There should be frequent communication regarding work progress, often in stand-ups.

Courage for a scrum team is simply the bravery to question the status quo or anything that hampers its ability to succeed. Scrum team members should have the courage, and feel safe enough, to try new things. A scrum team should have the courage and feel safe to be transparent about roadblocks, project progress, delays, and so on.

At the heart of the workflow for scrum teams is the sprint, a focused and specified period of time where the team completes a set amount of work. The sprint provides structure but also focus to complete the planned amount of work.

The daily stand-up fosters an openness that allows teams to talk openly about work in progress and blockers. At Atlassian we often have our scrum teams address these questions:

What did I work on yesterday?

What am I working on today?

What issues are blocking me?

This helps to highlight progress and identify blockers. It also helps to strengthen the team when everyone shares progress.

The strength of an agile team lies in its collaboration and recognizing that each team member contributes to work in a sprint. They celebrate each other’s accomplishments and are respectful to one another, the product owner, stakeholders, and the scrum master.

Scrum, kanban, and agile

Scrum is such a popular agile framework that scrum and agile are often misunderstood to be the same thing. But there are other frameworks, like kanban , which is a popular alternative. Some companies even choose to follow a hybrid model of scrum and kanban, which has acquired the name of "Scrumban" or " Kanplan ," which is Kanban with a backlog.  

Both scrum and kanban use visual methods such as the scrum board or kanban board to track the progress of work. Both emphasize efficiency and splitting complex tasks into smaller chunks of manageable work, but their approaches towards that goal are different.

Scrum focuses on smaller, fixed-length iterations. Once the time period for a sprint is finalized, the stories or product backlog entries that can be implemented during this sprint cycle are then determined. In kanban, however, the number of tasks or the work in progress (WIP limit) to be implemented in the current cycle is fixed at first. The time taken to implement these features is then calculated backward.

Kanban is not as structured as scrum. Other than the WIP limit, it is fairly open to interpretation. Scrum, however, has several categorical concepts enforced as part of its implementation such as sprint review, retrospective, daily scrum, etc. It also insists on cross-functionality, which is the ability of a scrum team to not depend on external members to achieve their goals. Putting together a cross-functional team is not straightforward. In that sense, kanban is easier to adapt whereas scrum can be considered as a fundamental shift in the thought process and functioning of a development team.

Getting started with scrum

The scrum framework itself is simple. The rules, artifacts, events, and roles are easy to understand. Its semi-prescriptive approach actually helps remove the ambiguities in the development process, while giving sufficient space for companies to introduce their individual flavor to it.

The organization of complex tasks into manageable user stories makes it ideal for difficult projects. Also, the clear demarcation of roles and planned events ensure that there is transparency and collective ownership throughout the development cycle. Quick releases keep the team motivated and the users happy as they can see progress in a short amount of time.

However, scrum could take time to fully understand, especially if the development team is acclimatized to a typical waterfall model. The concepts of smaller iterations, daily scrum meetings, sprint reviews, and identifying a scrum master could be a challenging cultural shift for a new team.

But, the long-term benefits far outweigh the initial learning curve. Scrum’s success in developing complex hardware and software products across diverse industries and verticals makes it a compelling framework to adopt for your organization .

To learn scrum with Jira, check out this tutorial .

Claire Drumond is a marketing strategist, speaker, and writer for Atlassian. She is the author of numerous articles published on the Trello and Atlassian blogs and is a regular contributor to various publications on Medium including HackerNoon, Art+Marketing, and PoetsUnlimited. She speaks at tech conferences around the world about agile, breaking down silos, and building empathy.

An introduction to kanban methodology for agile software development and its benefits for your agile team.

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What is Scrum?

If you are just getting started, think of Scrum as a way to get work done as a team in small pieces at a time, with continuous experimentation and feedback loops along the way to learn and improve as you go. Scrum helps people and teams deliver value incrementally in a collaborative way. As an agile framework , Scrum provides just enough structure for people and teams to integrate into how they work, while adding the right practices to optimize for their specific needs.   You may be thinking, that sounds great! But, how do I get started?

It starts with understanding the Scrum framework which is defined in The Scrum Guide and was first introduced to the world in 1995 as a better way of team collaboration for solving complex problems .  The Scrum framework is fairly simple being made up of a Scrum Team consisting of a Product Owner , a Scrum Master and Developers , each of which have specific accountabilities . The Scrum Team takes part in five events and produces three artifacts . Scrum co-creators Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland wrote and maintain The Scrum Guide, which explains Scrum clearly and succinctly.  The guide contains the definition of Scrum,  describing the Scrum accountabilities, events, artifacts and the guidance that binds them together. 

So, why is it called Scrum? People often ask, “Is Scrum an acronym for something?” and the answer is no. It is actually inspired by a scrum in the sport of rugby. In rugby, the team comes together in what they call a scrum to work together to move the ball forward. In this context, Scrum is where the team comes together to move the product forward.

Scrum is an empirical process, where decisions are based on observation, experience and experimentation. Scrum has three pillars: transparency , inspection and adaptation . This supports the concept of working iteratively. Think of Empiricism as working through small experiments, learning from that work and adapting both what you are doing and how you are doing it as needed.

One critical Scrum Team characteristic that binds all of the elements together is Trust . If Trust is not present on a Scrum Team, there will likely be tension and bottlenecks in the way of getting work done. The Scrum Values are also critical for Scrum Teams to adhere to as they help to guide how you work and drive trust. The Scrum Values of Courage , Focus , Commitment , Respect , and Openness , are all important elements that Scrum Team members must consider when working together. The Scrum Values are particularly important in environments where experimentation is core to making progress.

In a nutshell, Scrum requires an environment where:

• Increments of valuable work are delivered in short cycles of one month or less, which are called Sprints . Ongoing feedback occurs during the Sprint, allowing for inspection and adaptation of the process and what will be delivered. 
• The Scrum Team has a Scrum Master , a Product Owner and Developers , who are accountable for turning the selection of the work into an Increment of value during a Sprint.
• The Scrum Team and other members of their organization, business, users or customer-base known as stakeholders , inspect the results of the Sprint and adjust for the next one.

If this is Scrum, what is meant by Professional Scrum?

To be effective with Scrum requires something more than just following the mechanics and fundamentals of the framework. Sometimes Scrum Teams fall into the habit of simply going through the motions. Professional Scrum requires mindset changes for ways of working and thinking, and an environment that supports it including trust. It also requires you to embrace the Scrum Values in your work. We call this Professional Scrum . 

Learn more from the Scrum Community

There are many books, presentations, videos and other resources to help you learn Scrum, but it all starts with The Scrum Guide , which is considered the definition of Scrum.

We recommend that you read insights from the experiences of Professional Scrum Trainers (PSTs) who are experts in their field as well as expertise from Scrum.org staff on the Scrum.org Blog .  Articles, white papers, videos, webinars and other materials are published regularly by the community and are available in the Resources section of our website as well. Lastly, if you have questions or want to learn from what questions others have had, check out the Scrum Forum as an additional way to connect with and learn from the community.

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