What is SCRUM?
Scrum is one of the agile frameworks for organizing and managing development process. The product developed is usually a software, but Scrum can be successfully applied in other areas. Name of the framework relates to the common way of restarting the game of rugby.
On the basis of earlier article "The New New Product Development Game" (Takeuchi and Nonaka, 1986), Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber published their first works on Scrum in nineties, and two of them still maintain official Scrum guide, which is also available in the western Balkans languages.
Scrum is not a standardized process where you methodically follow a sequence of steps which should increase likelihood of project success. Scrum is a framework which tells you what is needed to organize and manage the development process on the basis of some values, principles and common practices. Those values, principles and common practices are foundation on which will the organization following Scrum add their own unique approach to Scrum and engineering practices.
Scrum values and principles are in line with values of agile software development. Scrum practices relates to Scrum roles, activities, artifacts and associated rules. In short, Scrum roles are Product Owner, person in Scrum team responsible for defining what features of envisioned product will be developed and in which order (product leader); Scrum Master mainly responsible for coaching Scrum team in creating and adhering to its own Scrum process and Scrum development team, responsible for development of the product as described and prioritized by the Product Owner. Scrum artifacts are Product Backlog, a prioritized list of product features, Sprint Backlog a subset of refined Product Backlog items to be developed in time-boxed development iteration which is called Sprint. The result presented by the development team is potentially shippable product increment. At last, mandatory in Scrum process are activities of sprint planning and execution, daily Scrum meetings, product and process inspect and adapt activities called Sprint review and retrospective and finally development or so-called refinement of Product Backlog.
A number of tutorials on Scrum are available online; for this time I recommend watching this short, 10-minutes video.
