Scrum For Dummies

Chapter 1

The Basics of Scrum

In This Chapter

Seeing essential scrum principles

Identifying useful scrum values and structure

At its barest, scrum is an empirical exposure model, which means knowledge is gained from real-life experience, and decisions are made based on that experience. It’s a way of organizing your project — whether it be releasing a new smartphone or coordinating your daughter’s fifth-grade birthday party — to expose whether your approach is generating intended results in reality. If you need to get it done, scrum provides a structure for increased efficiency and faster results.

Within scrum, common sense reigns. You focus on what can be done today, with an eye toward breaking future work into manageable pieces. You can immediately see how well your development methodology is working, and when you find inefficiencies in your approach, scrum allows you to act on them by making adjustments with clarity and speed.

While empirical exposure modeling goes back to the beginning of time in the arts — in sculpting, for example, you chisel away, check the results, make any adaptations necessary, and chisel away some more — its modern-day usage stems from computer modeling. ...