Agile Introduction

What is Scrum

The series you are reading currently is the Agile Introduction Series as part of the large set of Agile material.

I’ve discussed agile values and agile principles, taken from the agile manifest.

You and your team have decided to be more agile, to deliver value more quickly. Now you and your team need to select a framework. Perhaps SAFe? Perhaps Kanban? What about Scrum? We’ll get into the other two mentioned, but let’s talk briefly about Scrum.

Scrum

Scrum is a framework for developing, delivering and sustaining complex products (see the scrum guide)

Scrum provides within the framework some key components to deliver successful product / SDLC or other outcomes through this approach to agile:

• empirical process control
• pillars
• values
• roles
• artefacts
• events

For now, what do you need to know? Today I am interested in talking about the pillars and values, as I do in most other posts.

Quick introduction

Scrum provides a framework to deliver complex products. Based on empirical process control, where knowledge is based on experience and making decisions on what is known, Scrum provides an iterative approach to reduce risk and improve delivery, and even be able to predict delivery through empiricism.

Pillars

These pillars will support the framework.

Transparency

Significant aspects of the process must be transparent and visible to stakeholders and team members. Work in progress must be visible, work blocked easily seen and work done and ready for release easily identified. The quality of these items must also be transparent.

Inspection

Scrum team members will inspect artefacts and progress toward the iteration (called a sprint) goal. Daily inspection of the work being done and remaining is crucial to determine if the goal will be met. Inspection of the resulting software is crucial to determine if it meets the requirements or acceptance criteria, is acceptable for release and is of sufficient quality to be released at the end of the iteration or any time as demanded by the business.

Adaptation

The ability to inspect and adapt, to be able to understand what is underway and what needs to be done to complete and work is crucial to delivery. Adapting may also be a form of continuous improvement through retrospection where the teams acknowledges and issue and adapts process, tooling or other to improve.

Values

Following on from the pillars, Scrum then requires that the team is proficient in the values below.

Commitment

Team members commit to working on the goals of the team.

Courage

Team members have courage to work on tough problems and the courage to work on the right thing. Sometimes its easy to focus on low hanging fruit. Is that where the value is?

Focus

Team members focus on the goals of the sprint and the work on hand. This means team members have the capacity to work on the work. I’ll discuss this in another article.

Openness

Team members and stakeholders can be open about the work, the state of the work and any challenges. Safe environments are key.

Respect

Respect for people. Aligns to what I’ve spoken about in other posts on the Agile Introduction Series page about values and principles.

Summary

For more info, read the scrum guide. I’ll get into all these Scrum framework aspects and components in related pages in the series. Sign up to the mailing list to keep up to date with new articles, or visit the contact and about pages to learn more.