Scrum has established itself as one of the leading agile methodologies, helping teams work more flexibly and productively. It aids in breaking down large projects into smaller tasks and handling them within time-boxed iterations. With clearly defined roles, structured meetings, and transparent processes, Scrum offers a systematic approach to planning, executing, and delivering projects.
The term Scrum originally comes from rugby, referring to the "scrum," where five to eight players tightly pack together to gain possession of the ball and move it in a specific direction. Teamwork and quick responses are crucial. This idea of close collaboration and collective effort is embodied in Scrum project management, translating into a simple yet effective framework.
In this article, we will take a closer look at the principles and practices of Scrum and demonstrate how Atlassian's products can assist in its implementation.
What is Scrum?
Scrum is an agile project management method that aims to break down complex projects into manageable tasks and work on them in short, iterative cycles of about two to four weeks—known as sprints. Initially used in software development, it is increasingly applied in other departments and helps diverse teams achieve their goals.
Three core elements are central to Scrum:
Roles: The team defines clear roles for all members, including the Scrum Master, the Product Owner, and the development team. Each role has specific responsibilities and contributes to the project's success.
Artifacts: Scrum uses various artifacts such as the product backlog, the sprint backlog, and the increment to track and manage the project's requirements, tasks, and progress.
Events: The team organizes structured meetings like sprint planning, daily scrum, sprint review, and sprint retrospectives to promote communication, collaboration, and continuous improvement within the team.
Scrum is characterized by its flexibility, adaptability, and focus on continuous improvement. Short sprints and regular reviews allow teams to quickly respond to changes, integrate customer feedback, and deliver high-quality products or services.
Roles
The central component of Scrum is the Scrum team. This small, cross-functional team typically consists of no more than ten people who work as a cohesive unit focused on the product goal. Within this self-organized group, there are no sub-teams or hierarchies. The team consists of:
Scrum Master: the Scrum Master is responsible for ensuring the implementation of Scrum practices and rules and is part of the team responsible for creating a usable increment and removing bottlenecks.
Product Owner: the Product Owner is accountable for the results, prioritizing the Product Backlog, and communicating with stakeholders.
Developers: the development team is responsible for delivering incremental and potentially shippable product features at the end of each Sprint.
Artifacts
Scrum projects usually forgo traditional documents like flow or cost plans. Instead, they use Scrum artifacts, which provide the Scrum team with an overview of all tasks, requirements, and completed products. These artifacts aim to create transparency and foster a common understanding. As a result, all team members have a unified basis for making product adjustments.
Unlike other project management systems, Scrum explicitly defines three performance-oriented artifacts:
Product backlog: an evolving, ordered list of tasks needed to improve the product. It is the only source of work for the Scrum team.
Sprint backlog: contains the sprint goal (why), the selected product backlog items for the sprint (what), and a concrete plan for creating the increment (how).
Increment: a tangible progress towards the product goal. Each increment builds on the previous ones and is carefully inspected to ensure compatibility.
Although the Definition of “done” is not an official Scrum artifact, it is crucial for evaluating an increment. It serves as a working agreement that defines the Scrum team's shared understanding of what is considered "done."
Events
Each Scrum event within a sprint offers an opportunity to inspect and adapt artifacts. They aim to ensure transparency and create regularity to minimize the need for traditional meetings. To ensure smooth operations, it is advisable to hold events at the same time and place. Scrum defines five key events:
Sprint: a short work cycle of a maximum of 30 days with a fixed duration to ensure consistency. All other Scrum events occur within this period.
Sprint planning: a four-to eight-hour session (depending on sprint length) that kicks off the sprint and defines the work scope. The plan is created collaboratively by the entire Scrum team.
Daily scrum: a daily meeting of up to 15 minutes where the Scrum team's developers review their progress towards the sprint goal and adjust the sprint backlog if necessary to plan the day's work.
Sprint review: a maximum four-hour meeting at the end of the sprint where the Scrum team presents its results to key stakeholders. Progress towards the product goal is reviewed, and future adjustments are discussed.
Sprint retrospective: a three-hour meeting at the end of the sprint where the Scrum team reflects on its working methods and identifies improvements for more efficient work.
Benefits of Scrum
As an agile framework, Scrum offers several advantages:
- Flexibility: Teams are enabled to quickly adapt to changing requirements and priorities. Through short iterations and continuous adaptation, they can flexibly respond to new insights and customer feedback.
- Transparency: Scrum promotes transparency within the team and among stakeholders. Thanks to regular meetings like daily scrum and sprint review, all team members are kept informed about the current project status.
- Continuous improvement: Scrum emphasizes continuous improvement and learning. Through regular retrospectives, teams can analyze their working methods, identify problems, and develop opportunities for improvement.
- Customer orientation: The focus is on the continuous delivery of value to the customer. With short work cycles and a focus on the highest-priority tasks, Scrum ensures that customer requirements are met at all times.
- Efficiency: Scrum promotes efficient working methods by eliminating unnecessary processes and workflows. Through clear roles and responsibilities and regular alignment, effort is reduced, and productivity is maximized.
- Teamwork and Collaboration: Scrum focuses on close collaboration among team members and stakeholders. This strengthens communication and trust, leading to improved team performance.
Principles of the Scrum Manifesto
Scrum is based on the "Agile Manifesto," created in 2001 by 17 experienced software developers, including Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber. It focuses on individuals and interactions, working software, customer collaboration, and responding to change. The following core principles are central:
Empirical process control: empiricism is the fundamental concept behind Scrum, relying on three main pillars: transparency, inspection, and adaptation. This means that Scrum is based on experimenting and observing to make progress. Instead of following a rigid plan, Scrum allows for adjustments through short cycles that enable early feedback on a minimal viable product.
Self-organization: The Scrum team is self-organizing, making it more productive. Unlike traditional management, which relies on micromanagement, Scrum gives the team the freedom to decide how and when to work as long as the sprint goal is achieved. This self-organization fosters a creative environment, strengthens the sense of responsibility, and increases engagement in the project.
Collaboration: Collaboration is a key principle in Scrum and encompasses three aspects: awareness, communication, and adaptability. Scrum views project management as a collaborative process where teams interact to achieve better results. This close collaboration ensures clarity and prevents misunderstandings.
Value-based prioritization: Scrum emphasizes prioritizing tasks based on their importance and benefits to the end user. This prioritization is a continuous process that starts with the product backlog and continues with the sprint backlog. This ensures that the team works on the most relevant tasks and avoids unnecessary work.
Timeboxing: Scrum allocates specific time blocks for various activities to use time efficiently. Since time is a valuable resource, timeboxing helps plan and execute projects better. It creates clear structures and prevents tasks from getting out of control. The five timeboxes (sprint, sprint planning, daily scrum, sprint review, and sprint retrospective), advocated by Scrum, are described above under Events.
Iterative development: Iterative development means breaking a large project or product into smaller, manageable sections. This approach enables continuous evaluation and adjustment, increasing productivity and efficiency. Iterative development ensures that the final product is better tailored to the needs of customers or end users.
Why Scrum with Atlassian products?
Many of Atlassian's products are specifically designed to support the adoption and implementation of Scrum. Agile teams will find everything they need for successful projects, from Kanban boards and sprint planning tools to comprehensive reporting functions.
Atlassian products are seamlessly connected, enabling smooth integration and synchronization of projects and workflows. They are also flexible and can be tailored to the individual needs and working methods of the teams. With custom workflows, customizable dashboards, and a variety of integration options, teams can configure the tools exactly to their needs.
Scrum with Jira
Jira is a project management platform that brings all project-related information together in one central location. With a wide range of features, it supports agile working methods like Scrum and enables teams to plan, track, and collaborate effectively:
Kanban and Scrum boards: Jira offers both Kanban and Scrum boards that allow teams to visually organize and track workflows. With customizable columns, swimlanes, and filters, teams can tailor their boards to their specific requirements and manage tasks effectively.
Sprint planning: Jira helps teams with sprint planning by allowing easy creation of sprints, assignment of tasks, and setting of sprint goals. Teams can monitor the progress of their sprints in real time and respond flexibly to changes to ensure sprint goals are achieved.
Backlog management: the product backlog allows teams to prioritize, track, and organize their requirements and tasks. With the easy drag-and-drop functionality, new items can be quickly added, updated, or rearranged—keeping the backlog up to date at all times.
Reporting and analysis: Teams have access to comprehensive reporting and analysis functions, enabling them to track project progress and identify performance trends. With dashboards, burn-down charts, and velocity reports, key metrics can be monitored, and informed decisions can be made to continuously improve work processes.
Integrations and extensions: Jira offers numerous integrations and extensions that expand functionality and facilitate collaboration with other tools and systems. Whether integrating with Slack or CI/CD tools like Bitbucket and Bamboo, Jira seamlessly integrates into the entire development and project management environment.
Scrum and Confluence
Confluence, Atlassian's knowledge management platform, provides the ideal environment for collaboration and documentation of Scrum projects:
Documentation and knowledge management: With Confluence, all important project information is documented in one central location. From sprint reports and retrospectives to meeting minutes and decision-making processes, work is transparent and accessible to everyone.
Team collaboration: Confluence fosters collaboration within the team by providing an intuitive platform for co-editing documents and content. With features like comments, task assignments, and notifications, team members can collaborate intuitively and exchange feedback.
Project and task tracking: Teams have various options to track and organize projects and tasks. From simple checklists and task lists to complex project dashboards and roadmaps, they can plan and manage their work efficiently without leaving the platform.
Integration with Jira: Confluence is seamlessly integrated with Jira, allowing information and content to be easily synchronized between the two platforms. Jira issue information can be displayed, linked, and commented on in Confluence documents, providing additional context and transparency.
Knowledge building and learning: Through the comprehensive knowledge base, teams can quickly and easily find best practices, guidelines, and resources for Scrum projects. From training materials and guides to case studies and success stories, they can expand their knowledge and benefit from the experiences of others.
Sprints in calendar view: The sprint cadence can be viewed and tracked in team calendars, providing transparency to the entire project and team. The team calendars are automatically synchronized with the current backlog and can be easily shared with project participants.
