What is Scrum and why you should use it

Scrum is a framework that encourages teams to learn through experiences to continuously improve. It is most frequently used by software development teams, scrum principles and lessons can be applied to all kinds of teamwork.

Agile vs Scrum

People often confuse scrum with agile because scrum is centred around continuous improvement, which is a core principle of agile. However, while scrum is a framework for getting things done, agile is a mindset. Scrum is actually used by companies to change the way they think about delivering value to their customers and building agile principles into their everyday communication and work. The scrum framework acknowledges that the team does not know everything at the start of a project and will evolve through experience. Scrum is structured to help teams naturally adapt to changing conditions and user requirements, with re-prioritisation built into the process and short release cycles meant to help the team constantly learn and improve. While scrum is structured, it is not entirely rigid. Its execution can be tailored to the needs of any organisation.

Benefits of scrum

There are various important benefits that scrum provides to organisations, teams, products, and individuals. To take advantage of these benefits, companies need to trust in empiricism, find out more about the scrum framework by using it, and continually inspect and adapt their implementation of scrum.

• Better Product Quality: You will have better product quality if you’re checking in with your customers and stakeholders for evolving requirements during sprint reviews because they will be able to determine more quickly whether the software matches their needs. When it is not meeting their needs, you have the chance to pivot and change directions much earlier and much faster than in a waterfall project.
• Faster ROI: Faster ROI comes from delivering quality products that the customers can use in a shorter time frame.
• More Control: Projects are more controlled because they are time-boxed and everyone knows what task they have to do. When used properly, Scrum allows everyone in the project from customer to stakeholder, from developer to Scrum Master to know what they are doing and when it should be done. Teams communicate and collaborate daily so there are fewer crises that pop up out of nowhere.
• Reduced Risk: If something is not going well, communication to stakeholders and customers occurs much more quickly even if only at the end of the sprint and this allows the team to pivot into corrective action far faster.

Using a scrum framework is crucial to improve an organisation’s product development process and increase customer satisfaction.

Make sure that your technical partner has a structured approach to product development, let’s work together.