OVERVIEW OF THE

SCRUM FRAMEWORK
This document provides a visual overview of the SCRUM ROLES
Scrum framework, with a primary focus on its Scrum development efforts consist of one or
practices, including roles, activities, and artifacts. more Scrum teams, each made up of three Scrum
The content and pictures in this overview are from
roles: product owner, ScrumMaster, and the
Ken Rubin’s book Essential Scrum: A Practical Guide
development team.
to the Most Popular Agile Process.

There can be other roles when using Scrum, but the

OVERVIEW Scrum framework requires only the three listed here.
Scrum is a refreshingly simple, people-centric
framework for organizing and managing work. It is
built on a specific set of foundational values, principles,
and practices.

The product owner is the empowered central point

of product leadership. He decides which features
and functionality to build and the order in which to
build them. The ScrumMaster acts as coach,
facilitator, and impediment remover. She helps
everyone involved understand and embrace the
Scrum values, principles, and practices to help
Organizations typically add their own unique the organization obtain exceptional results from
approaches to the Scrum framework, creating applying Scrum. The development team is
a version of Scrum that is uniquely theirs. a diverse, cross-functional collection of all of the

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types of people needed to design, build, and test a desired product. The development team self-organizes to
determine the best way to accomplish the goal set out by the product owner. Development teams can be as
small as three people but are typically five to nine people in size.

SCRUM ACTIVITIES AND ARTIFACTS

The figure below illustrates most of the Scrum activities and artifacts and how they fit together. Elements of the
diagram are discussed in the sections that follow.

SCRUM SUMMARY
In this picture, the blue items represent scope, green items represent tasks, and orange items represent process.
Starting on the left side of the figure and working clockwise around the main looping arrow (the sprint), here is
a summary of the Scrum framework.

The product owner has a vision of what he wants to create (the blue cube). Because the cube can be large, through
an activity called grooming (also called refinement), it is broken down into a set of features (the blue bricks) that are
collected into a prioritized list called the product backlog.

A sprint starts with sprint planning, encompasses the development work during the sprint (called sprint execution),
and ends with the sprint review and sprint retrospective. The sprint is represented by the large, looping arrow that
dominates the foundation of the figure.

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The number of items in the product backlog is likely to Let’s look at each element in a bit more detail.
be more than a development team can complete in
a short-duration sprint (of a few weeks). For that reason, PRODUCT BACKLOG
at the beginning of each sprint, the development team Scrum teams try to always do the most valuable work
must determine a subset of the product backlog items it first. The prioritized list of this work is called a product
believes it can complete — an activity called sprint backlog. For new products, this backlog initially contains
planning, shown just to the right of the product backlog. those features required to meet the product owner’s
vision. For ongoing product development, the product
To acquire confidence that the development team has backlog might also contain new features, change
made a reasonable commitment, the team members requests, defects, and more.
often create a second backlog during sprint planning,
called the sprint backlog. The sprint backlog describes,
through a set of detailed tasks, how the team plans to
design, build, integrate, and test the selected subset
of features from the product backlog during that
particular sprint.

Next is sprint execution, when the development team

performs the tasks necessary to realize the selected
features. Each day during sprint execution, the team
members help manage the flow of work by conducting
a synchronization, inspection, and adaptive planning
activity known as the Daily Scrum. At the end of sprint
execution, the team has produced a potentially
shippable product increment that represents some,
but not all, of the product owner’s vision. In the product backlog, some of the product backlog
items (blue bricks) are larger and others are smaller.
The Scrum team completes the sprint by performing two And some are lighter blue and others are darker blue.
inspect-and-adapt activities. In the first, called the sprint Larger bricks are meant to represent larger pieces of
review, the stakeholders and Scrum team inspect the functionality and the smaller bricks to mean small
product being built. In the second, called the sprint pieces. Lighter blue means lightly detailed and darker
retrospective, the Scrum team inspects the Scrum blue means more detailed. The product backlog items
process being used to create the product. The outcome near the top of the product backlog — the high-priority
of these activities might be adaptations that will make items — are smaller and darker blue, representing
their way into the product backlog or be included as part product backlog items that are in a “ready” state. They
of the team’s development process. are ready in the sense that they are sufficiently defined
and well understood so that if the development team

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were to move them into a sprint during sprint planning, something of tangible value to the customer or user.
the team members are reasonably confident they can Sprints are timeboxed so they always have a fixed
complete them by the end of the same sprint. Some start and end date, and generally they should all be
Scrum teams formalize this idea by establishing of the same duration.
a “definition of ready” — a set of criteria for determining
when a product backlog item is in the ready state.

PRODUCT BACKLOG GROOMING

(REFINEMENT)
The product owner, with input from the stakeholders
and development team(s), is ultimately responsible for
maintaining the product backlog, which evolves and
changes throughout the project. The activity of creating A new sprint immediately follows the completion of
and refining the product backlog items, estimating them, the previous sprint. As a rule we do not permit any
refining them, and prioritizing them is often known as goal-altering changes in scope or personnel during
grooming (also referred to as refinement). The product a sprint; however, business needs sometimes make
owner ultimately owns the grooming process; however, adherence to this rule impractical.
members of the development team typically budget 5%
to 10% of their total capacity each sprint to assist the SPRINT PLANNING
product owner with product backlog grooming. Every sprint begins with sprint planning. During sprint
planning, the team and product owner agree on a sprint
goal. The team then selects a subset of high-priority
ready items from the product backlog that can be
completed during one sprint, assuming the team works
at a sustainable pace.

SPRINTS
In Scrum, work is performed in iterations or cycles To acquire confidence in what it can get done, many
called sprints, each lasting up to a calendar month development teams break down each targeted feature
(with the most common duration being two weeks). into a set of tasks (although they are not required to do
The work completed in each sprint should create so). The collection of these tasks (or any other artifacts),

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along with their associated product backlog items, forms
a second backlog called the sprint backlog.

SPRINT EXECUTION
Sprint execution is the period of time during which
the development team, guided by the ScrumMaster’s
coaching, performs all of the task-level work
necessary to get done the features agreed to during
sprint planning. In this context, “done” means there
is a high degree of confidence that all of the work
necessary for producing good-quality features has
been completed. During sprint execution, nobody tells
the development team in what order or how to do the
task-level work in the sprint backlog. Instead, team
members define their own task-level work and then
self-organize in any manner they feel is best for
achieving the sprint goal.

DAILY SCRUM
Every day of the sprint, the development team meets
for a 15-minute inspect-and-adapt activity known as the
Daily Scrum. An important goal of the Daily Scrum is to
help a self-organizing team better manage the flow of
its work during sprint execution. A common approach for
conducting a Daily Scrum meeting is for development
team members to share with each other what they did
yesterday, what they are planning to do today, and any
obstacles they are facing. This meeting is frequently
referred to as a daily stand-up, because team members
are encouraged to stand to keep the meeting brief.

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DONE
In Scrum, we refer to the completed work at the end
of the sprint as a potentially shippable product
increment. Done, or potentially shippable, means
completed to a high degree of confidence and being of
such quality that the work could be shipped to end
customers at the end of a sprint. Being potentially
shippable, however, does not mean the results will
actually be delivered to customers. Shipping is
a business decision based on factors such as whether
there is enough functionality, or whether our customers
can consume change at this rate; potentially shippable
refers to a state of confidence.

SPRINT REVIEW
The sprint review occurs at the end of every sprint
and is a time to inspect and adapt the product. The
sprint review is intended to foster conversation about
the just-completed functionality. Participants include
the product owner, ScrumMaster, development team,
stakeholders, customers, and anyone else interested in
the outcome of the sprint. A successful review results
in bidirectional information flow. The people who aren’t
on the Scrum team get to sync up on the development
effort and help guide its direction. At the same time,
the Scrum team members gain a deeper appreciation
for the business and marketing side of their product by
getting frequent feedback on the product’s success at
delighting customers or users.

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SPRINT RETROSPECTIVE ESSENTIAL SCRUM AND KEN RUBIN
The sprint retrospective occurs at the end of every sprint The content of this document is based on the book
and is a time to inspect and adapt the process. In the Essential Scrum: A Practical Guide to the Most Popular
spirit of continuous improvement, the ScrumMaster, Agile Process, by Kenneth S. Rubin. The images in
product owner, and development team come together this document are part of the Visual AGILExicon®
to discuss what is and is not working with Scrum and (pronounced Visual Agile Lexicon), a freely available
associated technical practices. The goal is to help set of vibrant, four-color icons for composing
a good Scrum team become great. At the end of graphically rich and visually appealing three-
a sprint retrospective, the Scrum team should have dimensional representations of Agile and Scrum
identified and committed to a practical number of concepts. You can learn more about the Essential
process improvement actions that will be undertaken Scrum book at www.essentialscrum.com and more
by the Scrum team in the next sprint. about the Visual AGILExicon® at
www.innolution.com/resources/val-home-page.

Ken Rubin is managing principal of Innolution, LLC

(www.innolution.com), a company that provides Scrum
and Agile training and coaching to help companies
develop products in an effective and economically
sensible way. A Certified Scrum Trainer®, Ken has
trained over 24,000 people on Agile and Scrum,
Smalltalk development, managing object-oriented
projects, and transition management. He has
CLOSING coached over 200 companies, ranging from start-ups
After the sprint retrospective, the entire sprint cycle to Fortune 10 businesses. You can contact Ken at
begins again, starting with the next sprint krubin@innolution.com or follow him on
planning session. twitter @krubinagile, on Facebook at:
www.facebook.com/InnolutionLLC, and LinkedIn
at: www.linkedin.com/in/kennethrubin.

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