How Scrum works: key concepts, practices, and benefits
As a customer, you want your web development project to be delivered the best ways possible. Some of these best ways include the use of Scrum!
Scrum is widely used today by respected web development agencies. This is one of the reasons to choose a company for your web development project.
Here at WishDesk, we adopted Scrum long ago to provide the maximum value to our customers, so we can share with you more information about Scrum. Our today’s article will be dedicated to what Scrum is, the benefits of Scrum, and how Scrum works in practice.
What is Scrum?
Scrum is a framework to manage software development projects in accordance with the Agile methodology. Scrum borrows its name from the rugby game to emphasize the importance of teamwork. Just like a rugby team needs to keep the ball moving between the teammates, a development team needs cooperation to succeed.
The term was first used by Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka in their 1986 paper “The New New Product Development Game“ and was initially about the development of all complex products, not just software. But the term was adopted by the Agile methodology because it shared the same principles for building software products.
The key philosophy of Scrum, just like Agile, is continuous improvement and flexibility to respond to fluctuating factors. Time-framed project iterations called sprints, daily stand-up meetings for fruitful communication, retrospectives to analyze the successes and failures, Scrum Masters, and more Scrum concepts are among its best practices. Later in this post, we will tell you more about how Scrum works in detail.
Why is Scrum important?
The importance of Scrum follows from its key philosophy — it helps software development teams work together effectively. They are able to deliver early and high-quality results while adapting to evolving circumstances, feedback, or user requirements.
Scrum encourages development teams to learn through their experiences, self-organize when resolving a problem, reflect on their wins and losses, and, as a result, reach continuous improvement. That’s what Atlassian, the famous company known for creating the Scrum-oriented Jira project management tool, wrote about Scrum.
What are the benefits of the Scrum approach?
Let’s systemize all the main advantages of Scrum, both those already mentioned and some new ones, and see how exactly the use of Scrum will benefit your web development project:
Better product quality
The best product is one that best meets the customer requirements. Scrum allows the development teams to accomplish this thanks to continuous customer feedback, regular reviews, testing performed in parallel with development, sprint retrospective meetings that allow the members to improve their processes and tools, etc.
Faster ROI
With Scrum, you get your product delivered faster, which means a better return on investment. Every project iteration is able to bring you a potentially releasable feature that you can introduce to your users sooner. You don’t have to wait for the whole project to be complete. Parallel testing in Scrum leads to faster deployment.
Money and time savings
Thanks to your early feedback during the development process, the team makes early corrections before they get time-consuming and expensive. Regular reviews and communication make sure all tasks stay relevant and no work hours are wasted. You don’t have to pay for the development of features that are no longer necessary just because they were agreed on at the start.
Flexibility
For many flexibility, or agility, is one of the main advantages of Scrum and Agile. Change is accepted and expected, as opposed to traditional development approaches. You can alter your development priorities and the scopes of tasks at any time when you think they add greater value.
Minimum risks
Scrum meetings are built in a way that helps uncover potential problems, inconsistencies, or stumbling blocks in work. So issues will not be able to pop up, out of the blue.
Better control and transparency
Scrum encourages maximum involvement of the Product Owner. Regular communication and demonstration of the progress help you be sure the right things are being done.
How does Scrum work?
Let’s review how Scrum works in our everyday web development practices. We manage projects in accordance with Scrum that is built on the key concepts:
Sprints
Suppose you reach out to us with the new website creation. This huge task will be divided into smaller periods of time called sprints. According to the best Scrum practices, we usually set an optimal time of two weeks for a sprint. Each sprint is focused on achieving a particular, realistic goal. The sprint goal is set by the Product Owner or their representative.
A sprint is also made up of individual tasks, the most complex of which can further be divided into smaller tasks. A small task is one that can be performed by one team member in a few hours — for example, creating a registration form on your website.
Sprint planning
There is a sprint planning event that take place in advance of each sprint. During the sprint planning, we discuss what should be achieved within the sprint and the best ways to achieve it.
The Product Owner, the Scrum Master, and the development team should all participate in the sprint planting events.
Product backlogs
The list of tasks for your entire project is called the backlog. We create it together with the Product Owner. The tasks in the backlog have varied priorities. According to them, the tasks are pulled from the backlog and added to a particular sprint during the sprint planning. New tasks can be added to the product backlog throughout the whole development process.
Daily Scrum meetings
The essential Scrum practice are daily morning meetings for the team. They are also called stand-up meetings because the best recommendation is to hold them while standing up — this way they don’t last longer than 15 minutes.
At Scrum meetings, tasks are assigned to particular performers. The super important goal of these meetings is to have all team members answer these questions:
- What have they done since the last meeting?
- What do they plan to accomplish before the next meeting?
- Are there any obstacles?
- Do they need any support from other team members?
Scrum meetings are an amazing way to improve team communication and collaboration, help all members stay updated, share their vision, give their input, discover what needs improvement, see better solutions, and more.
Sprint reviews
At the end of each sprint, we use the great practice of sprint reviews. The whole team gathers to describe their work and show the demos in an informal atmosphere. Questions, new ideas, feedback, and more great things happen at sprint reviews.
Retrospectives
Sprint meetings are not to be confused with retrospectives. We hold retrospectives to look back at the completed sprint’s successes and failures. This helps us discover what should be refined during the next sprints.
Product Owner
In the Scrum philosophy, the role of the Product Owner is vital. This is the person who owns the product on behalf of the customer and is part of the Scrum team. The product owner directly interacts with the customer, the development team, and other main stakeholders. This role has huge responsibilities in communication and decision making.
Scrum Master
Who should communicate all best Scrum practices to the team, ensure they are followed, and facilitate the Scrum activities (daily meetings, sprint reviews, retrospectives)? We call this person the Scrum Master.
Order web development that meets the best practices
All the above benefits, practices, and ways of Scrum works sound great — and they really are. Many experts discuss the topic “Why does Scrum work?”. The short answer is: because it is modern, flexible, and productive.
This is proved by our multiple successful web development projects. Your project is missing on this list for complete perfection. Contact our web development team and enjoy your high-quality product, delivered quickly!