1. What is Scrum?
You already understood that everything related to development is standardized. But what if I told you that literally everything is standardized? And I’m not even talking about variable and function names, even though those are standardized too.
There is a development methodology called Agile, and its popular implementation is Scrum. Scrum is also called a framework—it defines all processes within a team. When meetings should happen, who must attend them, what should be discussed, what the outcomes should be, and in what form they should be recorded.
“But why so much standardization?” you might ask. Well, first, you work in a high-tech sector—high tech and all that. Second, it’s simply easier to work with each other this way. And third, in your job title .NET Software Engineer, pay attention to the last word—engineer. Then you’ll understand where it all comes from.
2. What working with Scrum looks like
Scrum is a flexible project management methodology, often used in software development. It is based on iterative and incremental processes.
Scrum divides projects into development cycles/stages called sprints, which usually last from two to four weeks. Each sprint starts with planning the tasks that must be completed and ends with a review/demo where the team presents the results achieved.
Key elements of Scrum include roles, events, and artifacts.
- Core roles are the Product Owner, who defines product requirements, the Scrum Master, who supports the process according to Scrum rules, and the development team, which does the work.
- Core events include daily meetings (daily meetings or daily stand-ups), sprint planning, retrospectives, and demos of work results.
- Artifacts include the backlog (task list) of the product, the sprint backlog, and the product increment.
Don’t be scared! Even though regulating everything can look a bit intimidating, working “the Scrum way” is easy and pleasant. Scrum resolved the main conflict between developers and customers/product owners.
Developers always asked to be left alone so they could work calmly. But product owners urgently needed to add new features, change something, or run some experiment.
Scrum split development into stable periods—sprints (usually 2 weeks). During one period, developers work only on the tasks planned for the current sprint. If the customer needs something urgently, they add those features to the next sprint.
3. Sprint & Scrum Board
Sprint is the main development cycle in Scrum, lasting from one to four weeks. As we said, during this period the team works on completing a specific set of work items from the product backlog.
At the beginning of each sprint, there is planning, where the team selects tasks from the product backlog and commits to completing them. The sprint ends with a demo of the completed work and a retrospective, where the team analyzes how the sprint went and looks for ways to improve the next sprint. This approach allows the product to be updated regularly, responding quickly to changes in requirements and priorities.
During the current sprint, the developers and the product owner should get together for a meeting and discuss tasks for the next sprint.
Backlog, or the backlog, is a list of all tasks that need to be done. In Scrum, there is a product backlog, which includes all product requirements (features), and a sprint backlog, which consists of tasks selected for implementation in the current sprint. The backlog is a living document that is regularly updated and reviewed to ensure alignment with current business goals and market conditions.
The current sprint backlog is often displayed as a Scrum Board—a kind of board with tasks and statuses. The board is divided into columns that usually represent stages of task completion, such as “To Do”, “In Progress”, “In Review”, and “Done”. This allows the whole team to see progress and easily identify any bottlenecks in the workflow.