What is “SCRUM”?
Scrum is an agile project management methodology that is often used in software development, but can be applied in other areas as well. The basic idea of Scrum is to enable teams to work flexibly and efficiently on rapidly changing projects.
Scrum is like a set of rules and a way of working that helps when working on complicated jobs.
Since I am also a civil engineer 🙂 I will try to explain this concept using the example of building a house with friends.
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Product Owner: The person who wants the finished product, e.g. the boss’s wife 🙂 She knows how the house should look in the end and gives a list of things to be done (“backLog”) and is responsible for prioritizing tasks.
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Backlog: List of all the cool things the product owner wants in the house, such as foundations, walls, roof, windows, secret doors…
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Sprint: To avoid the chaos of building everything at once, you need to reduce the number of tasks and work on only a few things at a time. Let’s say three things are selected from the list (eg digging trenches for the foundation, tying the reinforcement and inserting it into the trench, concreting the foundation). This is called a “sprint”. The amount of work in a sprint is chosen so that the sprint usually lasts about two weeks.
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Team: A group of people working together on a project. These teams are usually small, around 5-10 members.
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Scrum Master: A person who helps the team apply the Scrum principle and solves any problems that may arise during the work. He needs to organize everything and whose job it is to make sure all friends know what to do. He helps the Product Owner in creating the BackLog and choosing what will be done in the next period (sprint).
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Daily Standup: Every day, the Scrum Master and friends talk about what they did yesterday, what they are doing today, and if there is anything that prevents them from doing the job (for example, if you are missing nails or wood).
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Review: After the selected sprint tasks are completed, the Scrum Master and friends show what they have done. If something is not quite right, they fix it before moving on.
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Retrospective: This is a fancy word for looking back and talking about what went well and what could be better. A retrospective is done at the end of each “Sprint” phase, the Scrum Master talks to his peers and helps make decisions about how to improve things for another task or sprint, e.g. take ready-mixed concrete from the concrete factory instead of mixing it manually with a mixer on site. After that, a new “Sprint” starts and the next items on the list are worked on.
The goal of Scrum is to enable quick adaptation to changes, continuous communication within the team and achieving better results through an iterative process.