Chapter 2: Scrum Beyond Basics

Scrum is, by far, the software industry leader as the preferred lightweight and agile framework to use. As a result, it is the Agile reference model of choice in this book. Due to its roots in software development, many industries and functional business areas employ Scrum to improve both their operational and development efficiencies.

The emphasis on Scrum is the instantiation of small Agile teams to develop products iteratively over short cycles. It also allows us to deliver increments of new customer-centric value much more efficiently than in the traditional plan-driven, linear-sequential development model.

Though Scrum describes the activities of small teams, many organizations use Scrum across their enterprises, which involve hundreds or even thousands of individuals, all working in small teams. Still, the Original Scrum Guide does not prescribe practices to coordinate the activities of multiple teams. Later, in module two of this book, you will learn about multiple Scrum variants that address how to scale Scrum across multiple teams.

Before we get to the subject of scaling Scrum, we need to understand how it works and why it is so successful. We'll break this topic into two parts, spanning two chapters. The primary objective of this initial chapter is to understand the nature of Scrum as a framework and the importance of its empirical process control theory foundations. In the next chapter, you'll learn how to apply Scrum.

In this chapter, we're going to cover the following main topics:

In this chapter, you will learn why Scrum is based on a sports metaphor and why it's considered a framework and not a prescriptive methodology. Though Scrum is a team effort, you will learn why long-term adoption and success still depends on executives to provide leadership, as well as necessary resources and structural realignments. In this chapter, you will learn how Scrum's foundations, which were built on empirical process control theory (empiricism), help organizations resolve complex adaptive problems. Finally, you will learn about the basic elements of Scrum, including its rules, events, roles, responsibilities, and artifacts. We'll start with a discussion on what it takes to "master" Scrum.