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What is Scrum?

What is Scrum?

Many people misunderstand that Agile and Scrum are the same. However, Scrum is one of the frameworks of Agile. Scrum is an agile framework that helps teams work together and tackle complicated issues, whilst they can ensure delivery schedule and productivity of product development with the highest possible value.

Basically, Scrum is popular because it is a simple framework that generates effective collaboration between team members when working on complicated projects. In general, the product of the project is usually divided into different parts or stages. It is called Sprint and similar to Agile. The sprint takes place regularly and its benefit is to facilitate the teams to change and adjust the most suitable solutions and results.

A Scrum development team will have slightly different components from the traditional Waterfall model, with the following three roles:

- Product owner

- Scrum Master

- Development Team

As the Scrum team is required to have a multi-functional team, the development team will include Testers, Designers, and Ops Engineers.

Scrum Events

The events that are organized under Scrum process help the development team complete their tasks with high regularity. At the same time, Scrum minimizes unnecessary meetings and shortens the time for argument or irrelevant discussion. When one sprint starts, the period of time for each sprint is regularly fixed. The other events can finish if the goal of the event is completed. This factor helps the development team manage their work well with a suitable amount of timeframe. There are 5 events in Scrum process:
 
Sprint: is the duration in which the Scrum Team can conduct all necessary tasks to produce a transferable part of the product. The time-box of the sprint is usually around 1 month or less. Sprints are contiguous without interruption.
 
During the Sprint:

- Sprint Goal is unchangeable;

- The Development Team is consistent;

- Quality objectives are not reduced;

- Product Owner and the Development Team can renegotiate the scope

Sprint Planning: is the planning session for the next Sprint. This is the time the whole teamwork and discusses goals, potential risks, solutions, and detailed planning for the next step. 

Sprint Planning answers the following:

- What is the purpose of this Sprint?

- What will we deliver?

- How to achieve the expected result?

Sprint Planning
In this event, the Scrum Master has responsibility for guaranteeing to take place the event. In addition, Scrum Master has to clarify the purpose and goals of the Sprint so that the development team can clearly understand them.

Moreover, the timebox is another essential element of meetings. Every meeting for Sprint Planning should be scheduled and last in a reasonable amount of time.  This helps the team shorten meeting time, but ensure the value and quality of the meeting for Sprints.
 
Daily Scrum: or Daily standup meeting (in some business) is a short discussion or meeting with 15 minutes timeboxed event that the Development Team can report and synchronize work among members. This event is also considered to be the re-planning meeting of the Development Team. Moreover, the team can together discuss the issues, define solutions, and suggest new plans for Sprints. Daily Scrum is generally held for the Development team but the other teams can participate to maximize the collaboration in some case and business rules.Timebox Sprint Planning

Source: Usefyi

Sprint Review: Is the meeting that takes place at the end of each Sprint to inspect the Increment and adapt the Product Backlog. For a 1 month Sprint, there are 4 hours for a Sprint review

The main attendees include the Development Team, the Scrum Master, the Product Owner, and the stakeholders. In this review meeting, the team can share demos or let users experience the product to accumulate feedback. After that, Scrum team and stakeholders will decide together what has been done and what is not done. Then, all team collaborates about what to do next to maximize the value of the product based on changes and issues during the Sprint. In some businesses, the review meeting also includes many aspects that can impact the value of the product. In particular, they will review the marketplace and its potential to define what they should change or enhance features.

Sprint Retrospective: Is the event that happens after the Sprint review. Sprint Retrospective is an event for teams to look back to the past and evaluate their work. Its duration is about 3 hours for a 1 - month Sprint. In this Sprint, all participants need to answer the following questions:

- What went well?

- What needs to be enhanced?

- What we commit to enhance the next process?

At the end of the Sprint Retrospective, the Scrum Master has to ensure to evaluate and identify what they should enhance and implement in the next Sprint.

Why Scrum is popular?

Scrum is well known for its flexibility in the process. All processes give the development team a chance to make innovation and changes based on client requirements and marketplace consecutively. Also, the duration of the project can be shortened. Particularly, Scrum allows the team to be creative and innovative to deploy their product but keep them in line. Scrum is easy for a team to learn and implement it in real cases as fast as possible. In addition to minimizing risks and issues, the development team can work with high efficiency and productivity for consecutive enhancement.

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