Scrum Principles

What is scrum?

Scrum is a framework that provides teams with different approaches to solving problems when working on a project. It includes using various methods like meetings, roles, and tools to help manage the projects. The scrum documentation has a guide and glossary that helps people understand and know how it works and use it as a reference when stuck.

It involves using sprints that can take from one to four weeks and later merging the sprints when delivering the project. Scrum's roles include product owner and scrum master, who is in charge of the whole process.

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What are Scrum Principles?

These are guidelines that team members follow and implement when using the Scrum framework in their projects. You have to apply them using the Scrum Body of Knowledge (SBOK® Guide). It makes it easier for the members to meet the objectives of their project and help promote the framework.

They help ensure that the tasks that the Scrum master indicates in the sprint have value to the project, especially the business value. It helps in improving several aspects of project management, i.e., time.

Six Types of Scrum Principles

There are several types of scrum principles that teams use. These principles are:

1.Controlling the empirical process :

It uses the transparency, inspection, and adaptation value to ensure a smooth process.

Transparency : It involves the use of methods that everyone can see. It makes the information flow easily, creating a fantastic work culture at any company. It includes the use of the following:

• Use artifacts like project vision statements, product backlogs, and release dates.
• Use of meetings that occur either weekly or daily.
• Use of information indicators like charts and scrum boards.
• Artifacts usually have the lowest transparency making it risky to make decisions that affect the product's value. Product backlogs provide them with more information about goals, making the job more vibrant

Inspection : It involves the use of the following methods:

• Use of information radiators like scrum boards.
• Feedback from customers and the rest of the team during different product development and release stages.
• Ensuring the project meets all the requirements set by the customer or project owner.
• Most scrum events change after a short period, making it hard to meet the goals. You use the inspection to adjust different processes that help in meeting the set goals and enable adaptation.

Adaptation : This stage uses transparency and inspection to check if there are any issues and how to improve them. The team can achieve this using the following methods:

• Use of sprint and project meetings.
• Use of risk identification.
• Use of change requests.
• Use of standups meetings.
  After learning several things during the inspection period, you now change everything through adjustments that you carry out.

2.Self-organization

This principle works on each team individual where one has to organize themselves and deliver their value to the team. When each member gets organized, it's easy to assess them according to their value and the contributions they make.

It promotes creativity and innovativeness, making the whole team more productive and promoting growth. It also increases motivation among workers.

3. Collaboration 

It involves the team working with different stakeholders to ensure the project's goals get met. It helps reduce change requests, increases efficiency, reduces risks, and provides continuous improvement. The scrum framework involves different processes. Its main focus is on the following dimensions:

• Awareness-It ensures that every team member knows what each member's work contains.
• Articulation-every member should be able to divide the given project into different units and share amongst themselves. When finalizing the project, they integrate it as a whole project.
• Appropriation-It involves using the framework and technology according to your field. You can not apply the framework in software development the same way you use it in marketing.

4. Value-based prioritization

Most of these principles rely on value and order. The team determines which activities to do first and which ones to do last, depending on their importance to the users. It is all about structure, and it helps the project development and adaptability better. The process ensures the customer gets the best business value according to the dependencies and risks set.

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5. Time-boxing 

It manages how the team or individual spends time per activity when working on a project. It works by proposing a certain amount of time per activity in the whole project. It helps in time management by reducing time spent on each activity. It makes the teamwork better and more vibrant leading to fewer overheads and making the whole development process efficient and fast.

For example, if you have a project, the team uses the Scrum framework. It gets split into sprints that take around four weeks. The tasks per sprint normally take about two hours, the team has its daily meetings for twenty minutes, and the evaluation process takes around another two hours.

6. Iterative development

Most of the project requirements change during the development processes. The changes mostly are for improving customer satisfaction by making the required changes at any time. The whole process is repetitive, and you have to work around it to have the best product.It works well in projects where clients don't give all the information about the project once. If you have bigger teams, you will have to use User Stories, where you highlight the changes requested. User stories work for larger projects that need many changes and break down the stories into more units.

It ensures that all the team members get involved in the whole project by understanding the needs and working on them. It also saves time and effort in releasing the final product to the market and ensuring the development environment is good.

Scrum values

These are a set of standards that help organizations determine which one is better for them. The importance of following the values is to have a well organized and cooperative team willing to build high-quality products. They include courage, focus, openness, respect, and commitment. Let's look at each value:

Focus :

It involves sticking to the goals of the project. You achieve it by understanding the goals needed, setting them, and having more zeal to push. It saves time and makes the delivery of the project faster. The best way to focus is to use the product backlog as the project requirements while all the other requirements remain with the product owner.

Respect :

Everyone has to respect each other from the team members and stakeholders and give them a listening ear when explaining their experiences. Teams have to focus on the goals and build something that complies with Scrum rules and principles. Problem-solving should be equally done, and everyone respects the divergent views, skills, and knowledge of one another.

Openness : 

It is all about transparency, where you make required adjustments to the goals set after investigating the realities. All the members should talk to each other and discuss topics like progress, issues, etc. They should also work with all the stakeholders and colleagues and keep sharing feedback with each other to help improve the learning experience about the scrum framework and principles.

Commitment :

It involves sticking to the goals, and everyone on the team has to do the same thing by being more accountable. There are three types of commitment expression:

Individual commitment. You commit as a person to understand and practice the scrum framework using scrum values, principles, guides, learning etc.

Team commitment. It involves the whole team working on goals in small groups and later merging them into one.

Sprint-based commitment. It involves committing to the sprint goals and tasks to ensure you meet the set time.

Courage :

It allows you to change any project settings and accept the changes. You take risks by using different approaches to find the best solutions to your problems. When coming up with new things in the project, you should have the courage to apply the new stuff and see how it will behave.

frequently asked Scrum Interview Questions and Answers

Conclusion

It is one of the common frameworks used in different sectors to speed up the development of projects. It has a lot of benefits to the company and the customer by offering maximum value, reducing the time of development, and reducing wastage. 

Understanding scrum and even becoming more skilled requires hard work to be better. You can also do scrum certifications like Professional Scrum Master™ to give you more knowledge and enable you to get a pay rise or a new job due to the high demand. 

You have to understand all the six principles to enjoy the Scrum framework in your teams by improving coordination, communication, and efficiency, among other processes. The framework is used a lot in software development to help project management.

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