What is Scrum?

Scrum is a pro­cess mo­del of pro­ject and pro­duct ma­nage­ment, which is used in par­ti­cu­lar for agi­le soft­ware de­ve­lo­p­ment. Scrum ori­gi­na­ted in soft­ware en­gi­nee­ring, but is no­wa­days in­de­pen­dent of it. In the me­an­ti­me Scrum is used in many other areas.

Which ro­les are represented?

Scrum Mas­ter – Rough­ly spea­king, a Scrum Mas­ter is re­spon­si­ble for the im­ple­men­ta­ti­on of Scrum, he acts as a mo­de­ra­tor, me­dia­tor, pro­cess fa­ci­li­ta­tor, sup­port­er and coach. He helps the de­ve­lo­p­ment team as well as the pro­duct ow­ner, both ro­les that will be dis­cus­sed la­ter, to achie­ve the goals tog­e­ther by fa­ci­li­ta­ting the work of the col­le­agues and pro­mo­ting cooperation.

Pro­duct Ow­ner – A Pro­duct Ow­ner, PO for short, is re­spon­si­ble for the eco­no­mic suc­cess of a product/project wi­thin a Scrum team. He re­pres­ents the in­te­rests of the cus­to­mer and de­ri­ves the­se in the form of pro­duct back­log items, PBIs for short, and makes them available to the de­ve­lo­p­ment team so that they can then im­ple­ment the customer’s ideas/interests ba­sed on the PBIs. The PO also ma­na­ges the pro­duct back­log and sorts it, de­ter­mi­ning the or­der of the PBIs ac­cor­ding to the ur­gen­cy of the to­pics to be work­ed on. It is also im­portant to know that the PO can de­le­ga­te the tasks that have been men­tio­ned, but is re­spon­si­ble for them in the end.

De­ve­lo­p­ment team – The de­ve­lo­p­ment team ul­ti­m­ate­ly ser­ves to esti­ma­te the PBIs de­fi­ned by the PO in terms of fe­a­si­bi­li­ty and ef­fort. This is done in Sprint Plan­ning, a Sprint is usual­ly a pe­ri­od of 2 weeks du­ring which the de­ve­lo­p­ment team has the task of working th­rough the esti­ma­ted PBIs, so the next Sprint is plan­ned with the PBIs de­fi­ned by the PO. In the cour­se of such a sprint, not only PBIs have to be dealt with, but also bugs, i.e. er­rors that can oc­cur at any time, which then have to be dealt with wi­thin the sprint just like the PBIs. If PBIs or bugs can­not be com­ple­ted in one sprint, they are car­ri­ed over to the next sprint, which can of cour­se li­mit the ef­fi­ci­en­cy and ef­fec­ti­ve­ness of the de­ve­lo­p­ment team, sin­ce new PBIs are al­re­a­dy pen­ding even though PBIs/bugs from the pre­vious sprint still need to be dealt with.

PBIs – PBIs or Pro­duct Back­log Items are in­di­vi­du­al ele­ments wi­thin a Pro­duct Back­log. They de­fi­ne new re­qui­re­ments for the pro­duct which then have to be im­ple­men­ted by the developer.