The Summary of Scrum: Advance - Linkedin Learning Course (Part 1)
Scrum is a framework that’s based on value. Understanding the value your customer wants, understanding how to organize around that value, and finally, understanding how to deliver that value quickly and iteratively.
1. The Basics of Scrum
It’s composed of short timeframes, known as sprints, and it’s usually two weeks in length.
To help your team stay focused on their sprint deliverables, they meet every day for 15 minutes in the standup meeting. This standup meeting helps your team coordinate and organize their daily tasks while calling attention to areas where they need help.
The work comes to your team through the product owner or PO.
The PO is responsible for understanding and prioritizing the work your stakeholders are asking for.
The PO shares these with your team as user stories, and your team develops and tests according to the acceptance criteria for the stories.
If the PO and stakeholders agree that it’s done, it can be considered complete.
After your team completes the demo, they’ll spend time assessing how they performed as a team.
This retrospective review isn’t a critique of their development. It’s a conversation about how your team can perform better as a unit.
Rather than doing a lessons learned assessment at the end of the whole project, the team pauses after every sprint. You’re continuously adapting and growing as a team so they can deliver more quickly, with improved quality, every single sprint.
2. Product Owner and Scrum Master roles
While the team is the heart of scrum, the product owner and the scrum master roles are essential to keeping the team moving in the right direction, in the right way.
2.1 Product Owner
Product owners set the vision for the final product, so everyone knows what needs to be built.
They also need to define which work is the most important to creating the minimum viable product.
2.1.1 MVP
That MVP is the early goal for the team because it’s the smallest product that we can start to get feedback on.
That feedback becomes new requirements, new user stories.
2.1.2 Feedback => New User Stories
Each story is a single, fully functional segment of the overall product you’re working on. All the user stories are the product backlog.
The best POs are continuously reviewing and grooming that backlog of stories. They’re ensuring that there’s the right amount of detail so that when a story is at the top of the list or highest priority, it’s ready for the team to take on and build.
2.2 Scrum Master
While the product owner is completely focused on the stakeholders and the product, the scrum master is solely focused on the team. They’re the process owner for the scrum team.
Scrum masters facilitate the scrum meetings, also known as ceremonies. They ensure the ceremonies are taking place at the right time with the correct attendees.
They also ensure the team's health is protected by limiting distractions and keeping the team from over-committing.
2.3 Relationship of the product owner and scrum master
While the PO wants a product developed and released quickly, the scrum master wants the team to work at a sustainable pace.
Sustainable pace means the team is working a normal workweek, not weekends and overtime.
Think of the Scrum Master and PO as being the two opposing forces that keep the team in balance.
This is why Scrum produces such high-quality products while maintaining team wellbeing.
