Exploring the tenets of Scrum

Organizations looking to get started with agile software development often turn to Scrum as a place to start because of its simplicity. It is a framework for creating a development process but does not prescribe engineering practices. And, as Certified ScrumMaster Joseph Little put it, “That’s not a bug, it’s a feature.”

Before putting Scrum into place in an organization, Little said it’s critical to understand the values and principles behind the steps, or you won’t get the desired result. It’s like dancing, he added: “If you’re not feeling the music, you can do the steps, but it won’t be pretty.”

The Scrum Alliance lists four core principles based on 2001’s Agile Manifesto:

1)    Individuals and interactions over processes and tools2)    Completed functionality over comprehensive documentation3)    Customer collaboration over contract negotiation4)    Responding to change over following a plan

Scrum itself is made up three roles, four ceremonies and three artifacts, according to the alliance.

The roles are product owner, ScrumMaster and team. The product owner is responsible for the business value of the project. The ScrumMaster ensures the team is functional and productive. The team self-organizes to get the work done.

The ceremonies are:

1)    Sprint planning: The team meets with the product owner to prioritize the work to be delivered during a sprint2)    Daily scrum: The team meets each day to share struggles and progress3)    Sprint reviews: The team demonstrates to the product owner what it has completed during the sprint4)    Sprint retrospectives: The team looks for ways to Strengthen the product and process

The artifacts are the product backlog, the sprint backlog and the burndown chart.

The product backlog is a list of items that can be added or deleted from the project at any time. The backlog is prioritized, with highest-priority items worked on first. The lower-priority items are loosely defined but are revisited and refined as they work their way up the priority list.

The sprint backlog is the set of items from the product backlog that the team commits to completing during the timeframe of the sprint.

The burndown chart is an at-a-glance look at the work remaining in the overall project. Some organizations maintain two burndown charts: one for each sprint, and one for the overall project.

“The key is getting results: making customers’ lives better, making workers’ lives better and having more fun,” Little said. “It’s not a religious, dogmatic thing.”

Coding, Agile & Scrum Go Mainstream

Why would BloombergBusiness (BB) devote a whole issue—38,000 words—to the subject of writing computer code and managing computer coders? Because that’s the future.

“Software,” they learned from Marc Andreessen in 2011, “is eating the world.” In the process, software is eating up organizations and executives who don’t understand it or know how to manage it. As the BB article says, “Now that software lives in their pockets, runs their cars and homes, and dominates their waking lives, ignorance is no longer acceptable. The world belongs to people who code. Those who don’t understand will be left behind.” So BB is offering a tour of the strange, magical, mysterious world of software for frightened executives—and everyone else.

This cleverly-written, and often-funny, article by Paul Ford begins with the quandary of an apparently successful executive whose experience and skills are useless in coping with languages he doesn’t understand, management practices with strange names he cannot grasp, people he doesn’t feel comfortable with and threats to his survival as a manager that are all too real. Software development is consuming an ever-larger part of his budget while it is becoming ever central to his, and his organization’s, future.

President Obama participates in an 'Hour of Code' event. (Photo by Andrew Harrer-Pool/Getty Images)

The article follows the executive through an extended lesson in what software is all about. It describes the different languages—Java, Python, C, C++, C#, Perl and so on—along with their strengths, weaknesses and personalities, and even more important the management practices that are used to direct it.

It is safe to say that in the 21st century, it will be as common in high school to learn a couple of languages like Java and Python as it was to study French and Spanish in the 20th century.

Managing Coders

With a light touch, it gives a simplified and amusing account of the executive’s encounter with the terminology and management practices of Scrum, with its daily standups, its Scrum Masters and its sprints.

This is real. A Scrum Master in ninja socks has come into your office and said, ‘We’ve got to budget for apps.’ Should it all go pear-shaped, his career will be just fine. You keep your work in perspective by thinking about barrels of cash.

It gives a fair account of the main management practices of managing software: Agile and Scrum.

There are as many variations of Agile. I’ve had terrible meetings in my life when I sat between two teams and one of them explained, at length, why Agile with Kanban was better than Agile with Scrum. You could smell the money burning

Here is Agile, as I’ve seen it done: You break down your product into a set of simple-to-understand user stories about who needs what. You file those stories into an issue-tracking system, often a commercial product such as JIRA.

You divide work into sprints of a week, two weeks, or whatever suits your management style, and you supply each sprint a name and a goal (implement search, user registration), then the programmers take stories to go off and make them happen.

Every day your team checks in and tries to unblock one another—if you are working on the tool that sends e-mail and the e-mail server isn’t working, you tell everyone. Then someone else steps up to help, or you stick with that story and do the best you can, but everyone needs to be working toward the sprint goal, trying to release some software. And once the sprint is done, you deliver something that actually, really works and move on to the next thing, slowly bringing a large, complex system into operation.

That’s an ideal case. Done well, it avoids magical thinking ('It will all work when they get everything done and wired together'). It has its critics and can seem to have as many branches (c.f. Scrum, Kanban, and 'Agile with Discipline') as Protestantism.

It gives an account of what happens when the troubled executive picks up his courage and attends a daily standup.

One day you go to the pen where they keep the programmers. Their standup starts at 10 a.m., and some hold cups of coffee. They actually stand. Mostly men, a few women. They go around the room, and each person says what he did yesterday, what he plans to do today, and if he has any blockers. Most of the people are in the office, so they’re doing the standup in person; when people are traveling, they do it over chat. Two people are dialed in, the new hires from Boston and Hungary, both with strong accents. They tell the same story as the rest.

The executive gradually becomes comfortable with the world of software.

They will do their standups. And after the standups, they will go off and work in the integrated development environments and write their server-side JavaScript and their client-side JavaScript. Then they will run some tests and check their code into the source code repository, and the continuous integration server will perform tests and checks, and if all goes well, it will deploy the code—perhaps even in August, in some cloud or another. They insist that they’ll do this every day, continuous releases.

Then will come reports. Revenue reports, analytics, lists of new markets to conquer, all manner of new customer data that will be yours to parcel out and distribute. That will be your role, as the owner of the global database of customer intent. Thousands, then millions, of new facts that can help the company plan its sales and product development cycles. A good thing. And, you hope, the new site will generate more revenue, being faster, better, API-driven, and deployed across platforms to Web, mobile Web, and multiple apps…

When the site is introduced, you’ll buy the coders a cake and send them to the JavaScript conference of their choice. You’ve learned that the only appropriate reward for people who write JavaScript is more JavaScript. TMitTB will get his bonus. The CTO is already considering him for new things. You like the CTO. She has become a friend of sorts.

You can feel it, the S, off in the distance, coming toward you. It will arrive in due time, and you will stick it to the front of the VP in your title and all will be well. The coders all smile at you in the hall now that you’ve sat in on code reviews and feature discussions and stood quietly in the middle of standups. You know some of their names, even if you could do a better job of pronouncing them.

Perhaps you have a future in software after all.

Hello World.

Change Or Die

Not all encounters between executives and software will end so happily. Many executives will not make the effort to understand the new world of software that is emerging or the management practices related to it. And the new world will gobble them up and spit them out.

Many will find that mastering software involves shedding some of their basic assumptions about how the world works and how it should be managed. Top-down directives don't work in this world: code responds to intelligence, not authority. Nor does maximizing shareholder value work in a world in which customers are in charge. So the learning involves more than mastering the technical aspects of coding. It involves a different way of understanding and interacting with the world. It is a Copernican revolution in management.

A bonus for executives: once they understand how Agile and Scrum can manage the extraordinary complexities of software development, they will realize they can use the same management expertise to manage the mounting complexity of the rest of their business. In effect, Scrum is a major management discovery.

BB has done executives a great service by providing us with a simplified Baedeker for this strange new world. Death is not inevitable. There is no longer any need to go on faking your way through meetings about software. It can be understood. It is the future.

So read the article. Then re-read it. And then re-read it again.

As the editor says, “It may take a few hours to read, but that’s a small price to pay for adding decades to your career.”

And read also:

Why software is eating the world

Scrum is a major management discovery

Why do managers hate Agile?

Inspect and adapt the Agile Manifesto

Agile: Best kept management secret

Follow Steve Denning on Twitter @stevedenning

Also on Forbes:

What Is A Scrum Master? Everything You Need To Know

Editorial Note: They earn a commission from partner links on Forbes Advisor. Commissions do not affect their editors' opinions or evaluations.

A Scrum Master is a team leader responsible for ensuring the team implements Scrum in theory and practice. Scrum is one of the most popular forms of Agile, a project management methodology created for software development. The Scrum Master is responsible for serving as a leader for the Scrum team and larger organization, according to the Scrum Guide.

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In a Scrum practice, the team is composed of the Scrum Master, the product owner and the development team. The project owner is responsible for maximizing the end goal’s value, while the Scrum Master’s job is to ensure the team stays on track.

Melissa Boggs, Certified Enterprise Coach and former Co-CEO of Scrum Alliance, spoke to Forbes Advisor and explained that the Scrum Master’s role is to “help the team understand the value of Scrum and how Scrum can best serve the team, for the team to serve the customer.” The Scrum Master focuses on the team’s continuous improvement by introducing and using Scrum principles and practices, Boggs added.

Additionally, their responsibilities include making sure the Scrum events take place and are positive and productive. They also help ensure Scrum is implemented by the team in a productive way and lead the team to adopt Scrum.

A Scrum Master can be either a dedicated position or a temporary role one of the team members takes on during a project. While some teams and organizations require a full-time Scrum Master, others who are further along and more mature in their Agile journey may elect someone on the team for the role, Boggs said. How the Scrum Master fits into the overall team “depends on the goals of the organization, the maturity of the teams and the capabilities of the Scrum Master,” she added.

An effective Scrum Master will understand Scrum, the value of all its elements, their team and how to marry all of them in an emergent way, Boggs said. They will be effective leaders who understand the team’s needs and keep the team on track with their goals.

This means a Scrum Master is continuously learning and creating opportunities for the team to develop their skills. “They are excellent communicators, coaches and creators,” Boggs said. A Scrum Master must be able to integrate both the long-term and short-term strategy while managing the team. “They are able to see the big picture, but they also help the team to decompose the big picture into smaller, incremental chunks of value,” she added. An effective Scrum Master also helps the team create feedback loops and connections with their customers.

According to Boggs, curiosity and openness are two essential qualities for an exceptional Scrum Master. Effective leadership requires patience, focus and understanding that developing a high-performing team is a long-term game. “They are able to see the big picture, but they also help the team to decompose the big picture into smaller, incremental chunks of value,” she added.

There are various certifying bodies in the Scrum space, but two of the most well-respected are Scrum Alliance and Scrum.org. Boggs recommends that certification seekers spend time evaluating the certification and business models of the organizations before choosing one to invest in. Some differentiators to look out for during research are the price, reputation and community.

There are a variety of backgrounds that could prepare someone for the role of a Scrum Master. “We see everyone from QA Managers to engineers to school teachers that make excellent Scrum Masters,” Boggs said. It is common to see former project managers working in a Scrum Master role, she added.

While a project manager keeps track of different aspects of the team, the Scrum Master is focused specifically on the team and ensuring they are effective and achieve the project goals.

“The Scrum Master is not focused on time, scope and budget, but rather building and supporting an environment where a team can iteratively and incrementally build products and Strengthen their system,” Boggs said. “The Scrum Master is accountable for ensuring that the team has everything they need to be effective and that any impediments are removed from their path. They do not control what, how or when the products or projects are completed; those responsibilities are differently distributed in the Scrum framework between the team and the product owner.”

Scrum is often confused with a project management methodology in general. Instead, it is a “framework for developing and sustaining complex products,” according to the Scrum Guide. Scrum relies heavily on the idea of empirical process control and recognizes the complexity and uncertainty that is involved in product development.

Related: What Is A Scrum Board?

The specific way the Scrum Master integrates into the overall team is unique to each company. It is not uncommon for the Scrum Master to report to either the engineering organization or an Agile organization, according to Melissa Boggs, Certified Enterprise Coach and former Co-CEO of Scrum Alliance.

A project manager is different from a Scrum Master. While a project manager keeps track of different aspects of the team, including budget, resources and timelines, the Scrum Master is specifically focused on the team and ensuring it is effective and achieves the project goals.

An effective Scrum Master is knowledgeable and trained in Scrum. One way to gain the necessary skills is through certification. While there are many certifying bodies, the two most well-known and respected are Scrum Alliance and Scrum.org. Scrum Masters have a range of backgrounds and experiences, including software development, QA management or team leadership.

An effective Scrum Master will understand Scrum, the value of all its elements, their team and how to marry all of them in an emergent way, said Melissa Boggs, Certified Enterprise Coach and former Co-CEO of Scrum Alliance. A Scrum Master will be able to see the project’s big picture but can break it down into practical and shorter-term goals for the team.

There are several scrum master certifications that you can obtain. Some of the most common includeCertified ScrumMaster (CSM), Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO), Certified Scrum Professional (CSP) and Certified Scrum Developer (CSD), which are offered by the Scrum Alliance; Professional Scrum Master I (PSM I) and Professional Scrum Product Owner I (PSPO I), which are administered by Scrum.org; and SAFe Scrum Master (SSM), which is offered by Scaled Agile. There are also more advanced certifications that you can obtain, including Advanced Certified ScrumMaster (ACSM), Certified Scrum Professional ScrumMaster (CSP-SM), Advanced Certified Scrum Product Owner (ACSPO), Certified Scrum Professional Product Owner (CSP-PO), Professional Scrum Master II (PSM II), Professional Scrum Master III (PSM III), Professional Scrum Product Owner II (PSPO II), Professional Scrum Product Owner III (PSPO III), Advanced Certified Scrum Developer (ACSD) and Certified Scrum Professional (CSP).