If you are interested in engineering design and project management, chances are good that you’ve heard a lot of people talking about scrum. In today’s blog post, we tell you everything you need to know about scrum, including a basic definition and other useful details.
What Is Scrum?
Scrum is defined as a framework to foster teamwork. This makes sense if you consider that the term “Scrum” is taken from rugby, where it refers to the way players huddle close together to restart play.
While many people confuse Scrum with Agile, there are important differences between them (to learn more about Agile, check out our previous post, What Is Agile Project Management?).
Agile aspires to be an all-encompassing approach. Scrum, on the other hand, is a framework to facilitate teamwork when implementing Agile.
Scrum and Agile are closely intertwined. So much so that the gentlemen who created Scrum in 1995, Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber, would go on to be among the authors of the Agile manifesto in 2001.
Scrum: Basic Terms and Events
In order to understand Scrum, you have to keep some basic terms in mind:
- Scrum team. Includes a Product Owner, the Development Team, and a Scrum Master.
- Product owner. A team member who knows what the customer wants and is responsible for maximizing the value of the product.
- Scrum master. This is the person responsible for ensuring that the development team adheres to the principles of Scrum.
- Sprint. A time-box of one month or less during which a usable product increment is released.
Scrum contemplates four types of activities called “Scrum events”.
- Sprint Planning. Here the Scrum team plans the work to be performed during the sprint.
- Daily Scrum. A 15-minute session where the development team lays out a plan for the next 24 hours.
- Sprint Review. Occurs at the end of the sprint to inspect the results and adapt any backlog. Every one-month sprint requires a four-hour review. Shorter sprints call for shorter reviews.
- Sprint Retrospective. The team meets and creates a plan to implement improvements during the next sprint.
Learn More About Project Management and Engineering Design
Engineering design is a discipline full of interesting stories and bits of information. Below are some previous posts you can read to learn more about this fascinating topic.
- Is project management a good career?
- What is a kaizen event?
- What is the engineering design process?
- Do good design engineers make good project managers?
Darnell Technical Services is an engineering design firm with extensive experience in a vast array of projects. Our headquarters are located in Santa Ana, California, and we have an office in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Contact us today by telephone (714-285-0082 (CA), 702-945-2899 (NV)) or through our social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to learn more about all the technical instruments and materials we put at your disposal.
