(light upbeat music)
- At its core, scrum is all about
continuous learning and adjusting to change.
It acknowledges that we don't know everything
at the start of a project,
and it's structured to help teams naturally adapt
to changing market conditions and user requirements.
Hi, I'm Megan Cook, group product manager
for Jira Software at Atlassian,
the makers of Jira and other collaboration tools.
In our last episode, we talked about what scrum is
and why so many teams think that it's an awesome framework
for getting work done, especially big, complex projects.
Now that you have a good baseline,
let's take a closer look at how it works.
Scrum revolves around short, iterative release cycles,
or sprints, that allow you to ship often,
reprioritize when needed, and constantly improve.
Here's how it works.
As a development team sets out
to build a new product or improve an existing one,
they have a long list of stories, features,
requirements, enhancers, and fixes to work on.
This is called the product backlog.
Think of it as a running to-do list.
Every few weeks the team plans
which of the tasks from that backlog they'll work on
during the next sprint, the short time period
when a potentially shippable increment of work is created.
Sprints are normally around two weeks,
but your team can decide on a length that works for you.
Throughout the sprint, the team participates
in a number of events on a regular basis,
often called ceremonies.
These ceremonies are the hallmarks of the scrum framework.
They create regularity and help teams
maintain transparent, clear communication;
adapt to change; and continuously learn.
The key ceremonies are sprint planning,
daily scrum or standup, sprint reviews,
and sprint retrospectives.
Let's start with sprint planning.
During this ceremony, your team decides
what you want to accomplish during the next sprint.
Then you work together to move tasks and stories
from the backlog to the sprint
in order to meet the sprint goal,
keeping in mind what's feasible to complete in two weeks.
During each day of the sprint,
you and your team have a daily scrum or standup.
This is a super short meeting that happens
at the same time and in the same place.
It's usually in the morning and lasts for about 15 minutes,
but you can make it shorter or longer if needed.
It should be quick though; don't let it turn into
an hour-long meeting that gets in the way of other work.
The goal of the daily scrum is
to get everyone on the same page.
It's also a time to voice any concerns you have
or things that may be blocking you
from making progress toward the sprint goal.
At the end of the sprint, the team gets together
for a sprint review, an informal session
to view a demo and see what was accomplished.
This review meeting is when the development team
shows off the backlog items they've finished
to the product owner, who approves them for the release.
The product owner also reworks the backlog
based on the current sprint,
and that serves as a starting point
for the next sprint planning session.
The last step of every sprint is the retrospective,
where the team comes together to talk about, and document,
what worked well and what didn't work.
The retrospective could be about the sprint,
the project, the people and the relationships,
tools, or even certain ceremonies.
The idea isn't to dwell on what went wrong,
but to create a safe space where
the team can talk about what went well,
and what needs to be improved the next time.
So, to recap, the four scrum ceremonies are
sprint planning, daily scrum or standup,
sprint reviews, and sprint retrospectives.
These are the practises that will
hold your process together.
But these practises don't run themselves;
that's where the people come in.
We'll talk more about that, and the roles each person plays,
in our next video.
Stay tuned, and follow our channel
for an even deeper dive into each of these ceremonies
along with other helpful tips
on how to get started with scrum.
(upbeat music)