Scrum methodology

Scrum is an agile way to manage a project, usually software development. Agile software development with Scrum is often perceived as a methodology; but rather than viewing Scrum as methodology, think of it as a framework for managing a process

Scrum emerged in the early 90s from the work of Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber. They formalised and turned their way of working into a cohesive set of rules and roles for complex product development, that was formally presented as “Scrum” to the public for the first time in 1995. As the co-creators of Scrum are signatories of the Manifesto for Agile Software Development, the Agile values and principles underpin the Scrum framework.

Scrum is an Agile framework for completing complex projects. Scrum originally was formalized for software development projects, but it works well for any complex, innovative scope of work. The possibilities are endless. The Scrum framework is deceptively simple.

Source: Burn down chart, by visualpun.ch, flickr, License: Creative Commons

Scrum is a framework that helps teams work together. Much like a rugby team (where it gets its name) training for the big game, Scrum encourages teams to learn through experiences, self-organize while working on a problem, and reflect on their wins and losses to continuously improve.

Scrum outperforms predictive methods in the complex domain because it implements the empirical process control. It does not need to start with a heavy upfront analysis of the problem but one light split a big problem in smaller ones, easier to tackle, and learning continuously about all the complexity drivers (requirements, technology and people) to optimize both the solution and the processes to try to achieve it.

The principles of transparency, inspection and adaptation are at the hearth of the empirical process control optimizing the value of the Scrum Team’s work. The five Scrum values:

• courage
• focus
• commitment
• respect and
• openness

enable the transparency, inspect and adapt principles. So that, Scrum help teams to discover sooner better ways of approaching the problem, increasing the odds of obtaining a better product with potentially less time or effort.

Agile software development - from around the web

• What is Scrum?
• Contextless Scrum: A principles or rules driven framework?
• Top 5 Scrum values & principles [How they guide our work]
• How to break the product backlog

< back to glossary