JIRA, Scrum, Full Stack: Scrum: Getting Started

The 3 Scrum Artifacts
Scrum teams primarily work with information as the raw material of their efforts. Scrum refers to the places where teams store and manage information as “artifacts” and there are three of them – the backlog, Scrum board, and product increment.

1. Product and Sprint Backlogs
The Product Backlog lists all the work a team could possibly do on the product or service they’re responsible for. Product backlog items are usually a mix of features, requirements, enhancements, and fixes.

The Sprint Backlog lists items the team has selected from the Product Backlog and aims to complete in their next cycle of work – the Sprint.

You usually write items in the backlog as user stories – feature descriptions described from the end-user’s perspective. Stories in the Product Backlog are constantly revisited and re-prioritized. Teams will move product backlog items to the sprint backlog in a process called sprint planning.

2. Scrum Board
Most Scrum teams use a Scrum Board to track their work, even though it’s not mentioned in the official Scrum.org guide. The board holds cards that represent items in the sprint backlog.

These cards move across the board from left to right through a series of columns that reflect their status, usually “Backlog”, “Todo”, “Doing”, and “Done”.

Sometimes a Scrum Board is more commonly referred to as a Kanban board because this practice is inherited from the Kanban methodology.

The Scrum Board used to be a whiteboard filled with sticky notes standing in the middle of an office. These days, remote teams often use an app or online tool to visualise their progress.

Wherever your board is, it should be accessible by anyone in your Scrum team. This visibility reduces the need for status updates, as folks can just glance at the Scrum Board to understand what everyone is working on and what the status is.

3. Increment
The deliverable that results from completing all the items in the Sprint Backlog is called an increment in Scrum. Many teams also refer to this outcome as the “Sprint Goal.”

Usually, the increment is a small piece of working product a customer can use. The focus of Scrum is to create small increments of working software every single sprint. This is different to traditional project management approaches, where large product updates are often launched at once without customers seeing anything for months.

Unlike Scrum, this approach increases the psychological pressure on teams and increases the likelihood of something going wrong.

Roles and Responsibilities on Scrum Teams
Scrum teams organize their members into three different roles – developers, Product Owner, and Scrum Master. The group is cross-functional, so they have all the skills to accomplish their work. Typically, a Scrum team consists of three to nine people without any sub-teams or hierarchies.

Scrum teams are also self-managed. So for each task, the team – not an outside manager – decides what gets worked on next, who works on it, when, and how.

1. Developers
The Scrum Guide refers to the people executing items in the Sprint Backlog as “developers”. While the name implies they are software developers, they can include designers, marketers, and other disciplines, depending on the nature of your team’s work.

The developers are responsible for working through items in the Sprint Backlog and, if necessary, adapting their plan to stay on track to deliver the Sprint Goal.

2. Product Owner
A Product Owner decides what the team will work on because he or she owns and prioritizes the Product Backlog. The Product Owner carries overall responsibility for the Backlog, but most of them share the responsibility for backlog refinement with the team.

The Product Owner effectively represents the customer and, as such, should spend a lot of time with them to understand their needs. A technical background is not required for this role. In fact, Jeff Sutherland, one of the creators of Scrum, explains in his book “Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time” that the first product owner ever recruited came from Product Marketing.

3. Scrum Master
A Scrum Master helps the team understand and practise Scrum. He or she guides the developers and Product Owner toward continuous improvement and removes any impediments or blockers along the way.

Scrum Masters also lead, train, and coach the broader organization in its Scrum adoption to ensure teams become truly self-managed. The hallmark of a great Scrum Master is that they’ve taught a team so well they’re hardly needed anymore to facilitate meetings or monitor the overall Scrum process.