What Makes the Scrum Framework Succeed?

The Scrum Framework changes the classic triangle of project management.

Organizations do no longer need to sacrifice one of the time, budget, or quality. The new triangle is now emerging between the budget, time, and functionality. And none of these project success elements have to be endangered.

Triangle of Project Management According to the Scrum framework, quality is

no longer optional. To deliver what clients are paying for to flourish their businesses, the Scrum Teams strive to provide the best possible software they're jointly able to build.

In the Scrum framework, the factors which define when a feature is complete and when it meets the required quality standards are

set by Definition of Done (DoD). DoDs specify the expected outcome in terms of functional and non-functional requirements, design, coding, unit testing, end-user validations, documentation, and so on. DoDs are defined in the levels of both user stories and tasks. DoDs of user stories focus on functional and non-functional client requirements, whereas DoDs of tasks focus on the desired working activities from the Scrum Team members.

The Scrum Team is not allowed to close the user stories, and obviously, the tasks that do not fulfill their DoDs. Scrum Product Owner and the Scrum Team define user stories and their tasks through-

out the course of the Scrum software engineering process incrementally.

This incremental development allows the team to remain adaptive and adjust their next best actions in a controlled manner without the additional costs and risks of jeopardizing large chunks of previous work.

The Scrum Team builds a potentially shippable software product increment until the end of each Sprint. The team demonstrates and discusses these increments with the Scrum Product Owner and client stakeholders to get and incorporate

their feedback towards the next steps of their project.

This flexibility applies to not only software delivery but also the operational processes. So, the Scrum Framework allows the optimization

of the use of resources (human, time, budget, material) and the minimization of wastes.

Studies have shown that Scrum has the following positive effects in practice: • More frequent code deployments, • Faster lead time from committing to deploying code, • Faster mean time to recover from downtime, • Lower change failure rate, • Better product quality, • Reduced or identical costs compared to pre-

Scrum deployment, • Improved productivity and throughput, • Improved code and operational reliability, • Enhanced organizational performance and client satisfaction, • Improved market penetration, market share, and profitability of organizations, • Improved market capitalization growth, • Improved motivation of employees.

Introducing and adopting the Scrum Framework is non-trivial. And yet, the adaptive and iterative approach of the Scrum Framework handles this initial burden, and it copes with ever-changing client and business requirements better.

Thus, the Scrum Framework is, in most cases, a better alternative to the classical software engineering methodologies.