What Is Scrum? Roles, Benefits, and Framework

What is Scrum?

Scrum is a simple framework that helps you and your team build complex products. In other words, it provides a structured approach to development, which improves teamwork and efficiency.

Scrum focuses on learning through experience. You don’t need all the answers at the start. Furthermore, it recognises that the team doesn’t have all the answers. As a result, you adapt as the project progresses. Therefore, Scrum allows teams to adjust based on real-time feedback.

Scrum is designed to respond quickly to changing conditions. It uses short-release cycles. Which means you can continuously improve the product. Thus, teams can adapt to needs as they arise.

Scrum is based on four key principles:

Creating cross-functional teams
Establishing a regular rhythm (i.e. sprints)
Delivering working software at the end of each sprint
Having team members work together to inspect and adapt their process

The Scrum Guide^TM helps people, teams, and organisations create value with adaptive solutions for complex problems.

The Origins of Scrum

The origin of Scrum can be traced back to 1986. It began with a Harvard Business Review article titled “The New New Product Development Game” Which was written by Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka. They used examples from companies like Honda, Canon, and Fuji-Xerox to show how they developed products with different principles than their competitors. They saw their new processes as ways to develop products quickly and flexibly without the limits of outdated organisations.

Takeuchi and Nonaka used sports as metaphors to describe how these companies worked together. They focused on a new rugby-like approach, where the team moves as one working toward a single goal and overcoming obstacles along the way.

Scrum, a software development process, emerged in 1993. Jeff Sutherland, John Scumniotales, and Jeff McKenna were the first to implement it at the Easel Corporation.

In 1995, Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber jointly presented a paper, ”The SCRUM Development Process”, at Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages & Applications (OOPSLA) Conference ‘95 in Austin, Texas.

In 2001, seventeen software developers, including Sutherland and Schwaber, met in Snowbird, Utah, to discuss the future of software development. This led to The Agile Manifesto., urging developers worldwide to adopt a new approach to software development.

Since then, Scrum has been adopted by a growing community, creating high-performing teams worldwide.

Scrum Teams

A Scrum Team is a problem-solving unit. It consists of three roles:

A few people – often fewer than 10 in total. They come to solve complex problems and produce products and services that delight customers.

What makes the unit unique? They often don’t have all the answers at first. But each member brings passion, expertise, and creativity. By working together, they find new ways to help customers. Whether creating something new or solving tough problems, they work hard to deliver valuable solutions. This is why the Scrum Team is key to driving continuous improvement.