What Is Scrum? A Deep Dive Into The Framework And Its Successful Adoption (Part I)

In an uncertain world, the most critical factor for business success is how soon they bring optimal value to the market. Uncertainty results in frequent changes in the business environment and customer mindset. What is valuable for the customers today may not be even relevant tomorrow. That’s why business agility has become a vital consideration for businesses across the world. Scrum is a leading framework that helps business achieve agility. This article will discuss what is scrum and give you an overview of the framework, before we dive deep into more details in upcming articles.

Keeping in mind the uncertainty we mentioned above, a team of software professionals defined the Agile Manifesto. What started with software development has now spread to cover every aspect of the business, be it marketing or workforce management. The Agile principles and values are driving the organizations towards greater value realization. And Scrum is the framework that powers more than 70% of the agile teams.

Read More About Agile Values and Principles In This Article

There are a ton of articles, books, videos, and podcasts available that talk about Scrum. In fact, Scrum.org has a great resource in the Scrum Guide that explains the Scrum framework. Repeating the same information in this article to explain what is Scrum is a futile exercise. Instead, we will take the Scrum Guide’s references and discuss each aspect of Scrum in great detail.

While this article is not material to prepare for any certifications, one advantage of taking the Scrum Guide from scrum.org is that many discussions can prove useful for PSM certifications, especially PSM-I. However, the primary focus still is understanding Scrum from a practical perspective.

Why Scrum?

There are two words in the Guide that are critical to understanding the Scrum framework. The guide says,

Scrum is a lightweight framework that helps people, teams and organizations generate value through adaptive solutions for complex problems.

The “complex problems” and “adaptive solutions” are the foundation of Scrum and business agility.

What Are Complex Problems?

Complex problems are problems that have no clear or single solution. In other words, there can be multiple right solutions to the same problem. Also, you can obtain these solutions through a variety of routes. There are no right or wrong methods, and the approaches can be varied and sometimes contrasting or paradoxical.

What Are Adaptive Solutions?

The best way to respond to complex problems is through adaptive solutions. Adaptive solutions are the solutions obtained through experiments and discoveries. Technical problems have a well-defined answer, but not complex problems. Since you can find the answers to such problems through multiple approaches and paths, experiments are the best ways to evaluate if your approach brings the optimal solution. Through such discoveries, you guide your further actions.

A Lightweight Framework

To enable finding adaptive solutions to such complex problems, Scrum provides a cadence. Cadence are actions that you repeat at regular intervals, like beats in music or running at a regular pace. These actions or events are essential to ensure Scrum provides intended results. Other than that, it doesn’t mandate any rigid processes.

However, the lack of rigidity doesn’t mean you can skip any of the Scrum elements. The Guide says;

Each element of the framework serves a specific purpose that is essential to the overall value and results realized with Scrum. Changing the core design or ideas of Scrum, leaving out elements, or not following the rules of Scrum, covers up problems and limits the benefits of Scrum, potentially even rendering it useless.

You can use context-specific processes, patterns, and techniques that serve your unique needs, along with these explicit framework elements. In that sense, the guide describes Scrum as a lightweight framework. It only has elements that are must to implement the theory on which the framework is based. Other than that, you can approach your complex problems in any manner you see fit.

Empiricism And Lean Thinking

Adaptive solutions need you to experiment, observe, and adapt. These three elements make empiricism possible. Empiricism requires you to experience the outcomes. It focuses on doing and experiencing the results. Based on the learnings from experience, you decide the next course of action. One of the Agile principles is the delivery of early and continuous value to clients, and empiricism makes it possible to determine what is valuable and what is not.

But when you determine the value through practical experiments, you can’t waste your efforts on things that are not critical for delivering value. That is where Lean thinking comes into the picture. It guides you to stay focused on doing essential things.

For empiricism and lean thinking to work, Scrum identifies three characteristics of the environment that the organization and teams should create; transparency, inspection, and adaption.

What Is Scrum: An Introduction to the Framework

We are yet to discuss the three pillars and values of Scrum theory, but before doing that, let us understand the framework’s elements.

Scrum is organized into five events, three artifacts, and a Scrum team that consists of one Scrum Master, one Product Owner, and Developers. The “developers” terminology is a representation of people doing the work. The events consist of the Sprint, Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint Review, and Sprint Retrospective. The three artifacts are the Product Backlog, the Sprint Backlog, and the increment.

A sprint denotes a specific timeframe within which the team must deliver a product increment. The product backlog has all the work to be done listed. The sprint backlog defines the work to be done during the ongoing sprint. The increment is the next set of business values delivered at the end of the sprint.

Sprint planning is the event to identify the work that the team will do during the sprint. Sprint Review is where the stakeholders get to see the sprint’s outcome and determine the future adaptations. A retrospective is an event where the Scrum Team deliberates on ways to improve how they work. A daily scrum is when the team gets together to inspect the progress during the sprint.

We will come back to discuss each of these items in detail later. Before that, let’s discuss the Scrum pillars and values.

Pillars of Scrum

As we have established already, you need to continuously evaluate whether each step of the solution brings the intended results for adaptive solutions to work. If any step or experience doesn’t bring value, then you need to adopt a different, potentially better approach.

The three pillars of scrum, transparency, inspection, and adaptation embody these principles. Let’s examine them in detail.

Transparency

For inspection to be effective, the process and approach the team takes to arrive at the solution should be visible to everyone on the team as well as stakeholders and customers. While the Scrum teams are empowered and self-managing, they are not closed to external feedback. Valuable feedback is the result of visibility into the work and progress.

The visibility applies to all three artifacts,  product backlog, sprint backlog, and increment. The product backlog has all the work required for the final product. Visibility into it provides customers and stakeholders with a futuristic view of what they can expect, the roadmap, and also ensures that what the team produces is in line with their business objectives and strategies. Inspective of this roadmap ensures that the team will work only on what’s valuable for the customers and business, thus realizing the lean principles.

While the product backlog provides a long-term view of the value, the sprint backlog provides a current view. It allows the stakeholders and customers to ensure that the team is always working towards the right goal. 

The visibility into the increment at the end of each sprint allows the team, stakeholders, and customers to ensure that what they have is valuable.

The Scrum team is responsible to ensure that each of these artifacts provides optimal visibility to everyone even beyond the team.

Inspection

The inspection allows determining what is going well and where are the chances of improvement. It covers all three areas; progress, process, and products. Different events in Scrum provide opportunities for different types of inspection by a different set of people.

At the core of the inspection process is the inspection by the developers, those who do the actual work. Agile believes in self-managing, empowered teams, and the teams achieve this by taking the ownership and accountability of executing sprints. Daily Scrum is the event where the team performs the inspection every day. The inspection involves bringing forward how well the team is moving forward towards the sprint goal and what are the impediments or challenges in achieving the goal. While no product is inspected, the progress becomes transparent.

Then there is Sprint Review when the stakeholders get to inspect the product increment and decide if it is in line with the product goal. The stakeholders including the customer get a chance to discuss if there are any changes to the external environment and how that can impact future work. 

The sprint retrospective, the last event of the Sprint, inspects the process. The team discusses the good and bad points of their sprint journey and where and how they can improve the way the team works. 

Together, these three events provide comprehensive inspection opportunities and set the stage for adaptation.

Who decides the Sprint is successful or failed? How?

Adaptation

Once the team knows where do they need to make the change through the inspection process, they must address those areas at the first opportunity. The team decides the priority of changes based on the extent of risk that may exist as a result of no adapting. The Scrum guide mentions;

A Scrum Team is expected to adapt the moment it learns anything new through inspection.

While implementing the required changes may not be possible instantaneously, the team must prepare for it as soon as they learn about the deviations. If the issue or deviations are allowed to fester for long, they will have a negative impact of further increments down the road. That’s why, the Scrum team must ensure quick adaptation, which is also the essence of Agile.

Scrum Values

Scrum values guide the team members in their behavior. The guide suggests that the success of Scrum depends on how well the team adopts these values. 

Commitment

The Scrum team is self-organizing and empower. They decide “who does what, when, and how.” Such empowerment is not without responsibility. It is this responsibility that the value of commitment alludes to.

The Scrum Team must be committed to achieving the product goal. Sprint goals are the milestones towards achieving the product goal. Hence, the team must be committed to and take responsibility for achieving each sprint goal. 

Focus

To achieve such commitment, the team focuses on the sprint work and attempts to make as much progress as possible towards the sprint goal. Such focus on the sprint goal is also a manifestation of lean principles. The team avoids any work that does not directly contribute to the sprint goal, especially if those activities have the potential to impact the sprint goal. 

Openness

Focus and commitment do not come unless you are able to discuss the challenges and impediments openly. The team, as well as stakeholders, must communicate openly about the work of the sprint, the progress, as well as any challenges. 

Respect

Openness without respect for each other can lead to conflicts. The team members have respect for every member of the team for their skills, commitments, and capabilities. 

Courage

No matter how hard the challenges are, whether related to work, product, or people, the team members have the courage to address the root cause of the problem. Often, difficult work and conversations are pushed under the carpet or pushed back. But Scrum teams face such challenges, with respect and openness, the two values we discussed earlier. 

It is easy to see how these values contribute to having an excellent team. A good team ensures the right outcomes. Through these values, Scrum enables organizations to build valuable products in a sustainable, consistent manner.

Featured Image: Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash