Scrum in 5 mins - A Mindmap
The latest Scrum guide was released in November 2020. I will skip delving into the differences between this version and the previous 2017 Scrum guide, as such a comparison is unlikely to yield any value.
Scrum is a lightweight agile framework and is rightly quoted in the guide as “ simple to understand, but difficult to master “. This is true as validated in my projects too. However, if the scrum team is left unaltered for 6–8 sprints , considerable improvement in velocity(volume of work completed in an iteration) and quality can be gained.
With experience I find that these 3 key factors help in maturing Scrum teams/process and gaining maximum benefit.
- Keep the scrum team stable. Do not add/remove team members often. If possible keep the team unaltered across multiple releases.
- Cross train team members. Enable each member towards becoming T- shaped or “specialised generalists”.
- Constantly mentor and encourage the team towards imbibing the “Agile mindset” and practice Scrum in its entirety. This will payback more benefits than just getting them Scrum certified !!
Scrum works great at a small sized team(5–9) level, but its biggest limitation is that it is not designed for larger teams or scaling. Individual teams can continue to follow Scrum and frameworks like LeSS or SAFe® can be employed to scale at an enterprise level.
While reviewing the Scrum 2020 guide, I drafted this mind map which should take less than 5 minutes to understand all about Scrum. It can also be used as a quick reference to prepare for interviews :-)
Note : The mind map image is HD and takes a few seconds(or a page refresh)to fully load.
The Scrum 2020 guide can be downloaded for free here https://scrumguides.org/docs/scrumguide/v2020/2020-Scrum-Guide-US.pdf
I believe that the above mind map is self-sufficient and paragraphs of text explaining Scrum is not required. And if one sees the need to give the Scrum guide a thorough reading, the document is just 14 pages and takes only a couple of hours to run through!
Contrary to popular belief , Scrum is still largely in use and many organisations continue to adopt Scrum as their preferred framework for Agile projects.
Please do let me know your comments.
