To summarize all of this, Scrum makes more sense if there are lots of unknowns. It is also more appropriate if projects are more complex, and difficult to define and estimate at the start. Applying Scrum is not always easy, and you need to be careful to ensure an organization is ready to implement this kind of workflow. An organization is not ready for Scrum if team members have not received training in the appropriate Scrum roles; this also holds true if people are not open to learning new practices. It is very common to see environments where the Scrum team is trained but the project owner is not. I recommend that you don’t start using Scrum until everyone has received proper training and is on the same page.
SCRUM THEORY Welcome to the Scrum theory section where I will go deeper into the details and you will learn more specifics about this framework. Scrum is based on empiricism: that is knowledge acquired from experience. Making decisions with empiricism is based on what is known, not assumed. Scrum uses an iterative and incremental approach to improve predictability and reduce risk. In this environment, we rely on transparency, inspection, and adaptation. Do you recall that I have been mentioning inspection and adaptation throughout the course? In Scrum, transparency is an important value because the team improves by experimenting and doing. Without transparency, a team would not be able to inspect and adapt. In order to practice this transparency, a Scrum team needs a common language, shared by all participants. Moreover, a common definition of what it means for a project to be done needs to be agreed upon and shared; this way, the entire team has a common goal. Definition of done is the criteria to be met before a product increment is actually considered done. If the criteria are not met by end of a sprint, the work cannot be classified as done. This product increment, by the way, is often called a user story. I will talk about user stories in a later chapter.
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