If you have a project with many unknown elements that must be developed in an unknown or highly unpredictable environment, the Scrum development framework will be a way for you to get control of all the many unknown and moving parts in your project.
Popularly speaking, Scrum is a way of handling projects that are otherwise considered impossible to manage.
Because the purpose is to get control of unmanageable things, you do it in Scrum, that you constantly evaluate and adapt the project, tasks, method etc. Both in relation to the solutions you create, i.e. The product, and in relation to the process used to manage the project's participants.
That is why Scrum uses, among other things, a series of meetings (Daily Scrum and various planning and evaluation methods), roles (Scrum Team, Product Owner, Scrum Master) and artifacts (e.g. various backlogs, tasks and burndown charts) to help the development team spend its time on the most important and most value-creating tasks.
Central to Scrum is that there is no project manager. So when I wrote above that you "lead the project's participants", it is not actually a project manager who decides. The Scrum Team, on the other hand, is self-leading and self-organizing. The team thus allocates tasks themselves, assesses how much they can achieve and how they can best make the product that is the goal of the project. Ideally, the Team should possess all the skills necessary to develop the product. In software development, where Scrum has its origins, it means, for example, that a team consists of both designers, developers, testers, etc.
While the Team is responsible for itself, the Product Owner is solely responsible for the product. It is the Product Owner who has a vision for how the final product should look, and the Product Owner chooses which features or product parts are the most important that the Scrum Team develops.
To help the Scrum Team we have a Scrum Master. The most important tasks of the Scrum Master are to help the Team to make Scrum work and to remove any organizational obstacles, so that the Scrum Team can focus undisturbed on the development of the product.
Another important thing in Scrum is that the Team must continuously develop "finished" products or product parts. This means that during a project they deliver a number of features that are potentially ready for delivery at the end of each Sprint.
This rapid delivery is part of Scrum because the team can quickly adjust if they move in a different direction than the desired one, but also because you can start delivering to the customer more quickly. Not the final product, but a potentially usable/early version.
This rapid development of "finished" product parts is supported by the fact that every Scrum project is divided into what are called "Sprints".
A Sprint lasts either 2 or 4 weeks (once the Team has chosen a length, this cannot be changed) and during that period the Scrum Team must manage to develop a finished product or product part. That is a product or feature that has been thoroughly tested. In this way, you avoid wasting time on having to return later and correct any defects.
At the start of each Sprint, the Scrum Team, the Product Owner (i.e. the customer, can be both internal and external) and the Scrum Master (person who helps with the process itself and makes it easier for the Team to be self-directed) meet for a meeting where they planning the upcoming Sprint.
Here the Product Owner shares his vision for the product. That is what he/she wants the product to be able to do and presents a prioritized list. From this list, the Team extracts tasks, so to speak, and assesses how much they can achieve during the upcoming Sprint (2 or 4 weeks).
During the Sprint, a form of status meeting called "Daily Scrum" is held every day at the same time. Here you evaluate yesterday's progress, possibly obstacles and what you want to work on next.
Via these and other regular meetings, the Team, Product Owner and other stakeholders keep up to date with each other and the product's development.
Scrum is often called an iterative process. Iterative means repetitive and reflects the basic pattern behind Scrum: Following a fixed plan, a number of elements are repeated again and again until the project is finished. See the figure below.
Examples of recurring meetings:
Daily:
1 time per Sprint
Depending on the complexity and duration of the project, this cycle is repeated several times.
Although Scrum's structure is relatively simple to understand, it is not a way of working that you "just" introduce into a team or an entire organization. It is a difficult exercise for everyone involved to change their working methods as radically as Scrum requires. And in many cases it won't be worth the trouble. Here it will be much wiser to use traditional methods project management tools.
But if you are faced with a project that is impossible to manage and you have the support of the entire organization, this way of working can, among other things, provide major productivity benefits.
Read more about Scrum:
Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland: “The Scrum Guide(TM). The Ultimate Guide to Scrum: The Rules of the Game”
Jeff Sutherland: “Jeff Sutherland's Scrum Handbook”
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