Scrum is a lightweight framework for addressing complex problems through short delivery cycles, inspection and adaptation. It is one of the most widely used approaches for implementing Agile principles.
Scrum and Agile are not interchangeable terms. Agile describes broader values and principles. Scrum provides a specific framework teams can use to apply adaptive planning and incremental delivery.
The official Scrum framework
The definitive source is the Scrum Guide by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland.
The Scrum Team
A Scrum Team contains three accountabilities: Product Owner, Scrum Master and Developers.
The Product Owner is accountable for maximizing product value and effective Product Backlog management. The Scrum Master is accountable for establishing Scrum and improving team effectiveness. Developers create usable product Increments.
See Scrum Roles: Product Owner, Scrum Master and Developers.
The five Scrum events
The Sprint is the container for the other Scrum events. Within a Sprint, the team performs Sprint Planning, Daily Scrums, the Sprint Review and the Sprint Retrospective.
These events establish a regular planning and feedback cadence that allows the team to inspect actual results and adapt future execution.
The three Scrum artifacts
Scrum defines the Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog and Increment. Each artifact also has a commitment: Product Goal, Sprint Goal and Definition of Done.
Scrum from a scheduler’s perspective
A scheduler working at program level usually should not recreate every backlog item as an IMS activity.
Instead, the program schedule should identify events and dependencies that matter outside the Scrum Team: major releases, external interfaces, required environments, integration points, customer deliveries and test events.
This allows Scrum execution and the program-level schedule to operate at appropriate levels of detail.
Continue with What Is a Sprint?.