Scrum is an iterative, incremental framework for project management often seen in agile software development, a type of software engineering.
Although the Scrum approach was originally suggested for managing product development projects, its use has focused on the management of software development projects, and it can be used to run software maintenance teams or as a general project/program management approach.
Scrum is a process skeleton that contains sets of practices and predefined roles. The main roles in Scrum are:
ScrumMaster”, who maintains the processes (typically in lieu of a project manager)
Product Owner”, who represents the stakeholders and the business
Team”, a cross-functional group who do the analysis, design, implementation, testing, etc.
During each “sprint”, typically a two to four week period (with the length being decided by the team), the team creates a potentially shippable product increment (for example, working and tested software). The set of features that go into a sprint come from the product “backlog”, which is a prioritized set of high level requirements of work to be done. Which backlog items go into the sprint is determined during the sprint planning meeting. During this meeting, the Product Owner informs the team of the items in the product backlog that he or she wants completed. The team then determines how much of this they can commit to complete during the next sprint, and records this in the sprint backlog. During a sprint, no one is allowed to change the sprint backlog, which means that the requirements are frozen for that sprint. Development is timeboxed such that the sprint must end on time; if requirements are not completed for any reason they are left out and returned to the product backlog. After a sprint is completed, the team demonstrates how to use the software.
Scrum enables the creation of self-organizing teams by encouraging co-location of all team members, and verbal communication between all team members and disciplines in the project.
A key principle of Scrum is its recognition that during a project the customers can change their minds about what they want and need (often called requirements churn), and that unpredicted challenges cannot be easily addressed in a traditional predictive or planned manner. As such, Scrum adopts an empirical approach—accepting that the problem cannot be fully understood or defined, focusing instead on maximizing the team’s ability to deliver quickly and respond to emerging requirements.
Like other agile development methodologies, Scrum can be implemented through a wide range of tools. Many companies use universal software tools, such as spreadsheets to build and maintain artifacts such as the sprint backlog. There are also open-source and proprietary software packages dedicated to management of products under the Scrum process. Other organizations implement Scrum without the use of any software tools, and maintain their artifacts in hard-copy forms such as paper, whiteboards, and sticky notes.
Here are a couple videos that explain the process.
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