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Scrum is a framework that forms a subset of Agile Methodology that encourages teams to learn through experiences, self-organization during the working of a problem, and reflection of the wins and losses to continuously improve the product development and delivery process. As many companies have transformed into Agile organizations in recent years, Scrum is one of the most implemented frameworks in these organizations. The benefits of Scrum have outweighed many other frameworks of Agile and hence, many professionals strive towards learning more about the job opportunities in Scrum. Many Scrum job opportunities have emerged in the market in past years which have been acknowledged by various professionals. The principles, lessons, practices, and skills can be applied to all kinds of teamwork which make Scrum one of the popular Agile frameworks. 

Although Scrum is an Agile Project Management framework, it describes a set of roles, tools, and meetings that synchronize and work together to help the structure of the team and also help them to manage their work. It should be understood that Scrum and Agile are not the same, as Agile is a set of principles and beliefs of how a product should be manufactured, and Scrum is a framework used to execute these beliefs. The Scrum Framework is based on continuous learning and adjustment. It acknowledges that the team does not know completely at the start of the project and will evolve as they gain more experience during the development process. The structure of Scrum is such that they naturally adapt to the changing conditions and user requirements, with re-prioritization built into the process and short release cycles so that the team can learn and improve constantly. 

What are the roles involved in Scrum?

There are three main roles in Scrum that perform various tasks according to their roles assigned. 

• The Product Owner is a professional who envisions the product before the product is even developed. They communicate with the customers and the Developer to make sure that the customer gets the best product value as desired. The Product Owners are concerned with understanding the business, customer requirements, and then prioritizing the work to the developers accordingly. They are also responsible for building and managing the Product Backlog.
• The Scrum Master is a professional who acts as a servant leader and helps the team by facilitating the Scrum Events and helping the Developers during product development. They are the champions within their team as they coach teams, Product Owners, and the business on the Scrum process while looking for ways to make things work smoothly. 
• The Developer is the backbone of the entire Scrum process. The most effective Developer is tight-knit, co-located, and with 3 to 9 members. The team members have different skills sets, cross-train each other such that one person does not become the bottleneck in the delivery of work. All the members of the team help one another to ensure the sprint is completed successfully.

How does Scrum help to Experiment?

Scrum organizations have always supported experiments to understand the perfect method of performing any tasks. As the organization has transformed into Agile, the scope for experiments and making mistakes by which the team members learn from it has also increased. Scrum is based on the empirical pillars which believe that product development should take place by stating facts and learning from past experiences. And the only way the teams can learn from past experiences is when they conduct various experiments during the product development and understand what works and what does not work for the product and the customer. Scrum has always supported the teams to discuss openly the ways to handle the Product Increment. Brainstorming with different ideas among the team members leads to a higher variation of how the team can go about a User Story. The team needs to experiment with newer ways and ideas such that they do not end up using the same tactics for all of the products. By experimenting with newer ways and ideas, the team tackles various impediments on the way and also discovers what exactly works and what does not work for the product. Scrum gives all the liberty to the team members to experiment with various techniques and think outside the box such that modern innovations are always promoted and creativity and productivity of the team and the company maximizes effectively. 

Scrum Events: A Sprint which is a short cycle of time gives an opportunity to make assumptions, and validate the assumptions by the end of the Sprint. Scrum Events are great and useful opportunities that help us to validate assumptions. For example, a Product Owner invites relevant stakeholders to a Sprint Review and showcase the Product Increment developed so far and ask for feedback. This helps us to validate user's preferences and product assumptions made throughout the development journey.

ModernAgile.org has stated that experimentation and learning rapidly is one of their four guiding principles as they say that people cannot be made awesome if safety is a prerequisite. This also doesn't promote learning and learning can be made possible by experimenting frequently. The experiments are made "safe to fail" such that they are not afraid to conduct more experience. Whenever they get stuck or cannot move forward with a project, it becomes a sign that they are not learning enough and have to try doing some more experiments with the project. 

This statement from modernagile.org highlights how important experimenting and learning is for Agile methodology to function effectively. The organization also talks about how rapidly experimenting is also an essential part of the principle, which means shorter feedback loops for Sprints. This makes Agile organizations to question the team about what can be done to reduce the sprint length to allow for shorter loops. 

Here are a few examples of how Scrum help to experiment to reach specific goals for improvement

1. Experiments to introduce a joint goal for all the team members working on a specific scope item.

In this experiment, it is important to internalize the Developers that the Product Increment is not done till testing is done and for testers to understand that they have to point out the open defects to point out the places that need attention. 

Suggested Experiments 

Joint demo Responsibility- In this experiment, we ask a Developer to work with the Tester on the demo. The immediate response of the Developer would be "but what should I do" and the immediate response should be "not sure, maybe you could offer some help." The main objective is to get the Developers and the Testers to understand the perspective of each other's job and have them work together to see what happens. 

Breaking Down Stories- In many Sprints, nothing works at the end of the Sprint even if the Developers have tried everything they could. In such cases, breaking stories into smaller pieces led by the Product Owner and collaborated by the entire team could be one of the best options to go about this situation. The team should set a Sprint Goal before the last week of iteration or even before that.

2. Experiments to help team building where the team members not only review each other's work but collaborate so that they function as a single team and help each other.

Suggested Experiments

Tests Brainstorming: This experiment deals with the idea of having a brainstorming session for defining tests before the development begins. There may be an area of conflict between the Developers and the Testers on this experiment as both of them are used to questioning each other after the product development. The challenge here is to have the first session of brainstorming where both of them can think together of what is the scope of tests for the story. After the first session, many more sessions may follow as this experiment would yield great value.

Testers not opening defects in the ALM system- Testers usually open a defect in the ALM system and someone looks at it. This is the complete opposite of the Agile principle "people and interactions over processes and tools." Here, to follow the Agile principle, let the Testers be asked that instead of documenting a new defect they reach out to the relevant developer. ( And if they do not know, they ask) and discuss the defect directly. The face-to-face interaction has also played a great role to make sure that the Developer understands the problem and proper product is developed along with both Developers and the Testers interacting with one another. 

Making the Developers and Tester sitting next to each other

Whenever a Developer is made to sit next to a Tester, they understand each other and see what the other guy is doing. Even if they sit for one hour or even more, they have an eye-opening experience. The Developer will start to understand the viewpoint of the Tester, and also could provide first-hand support in accelerating things.

Similarly, when the code starts to stabilize and the Developers begin running their initial tests, having a tester around may be a blessing as they can help the Developers see what is going on in the system. 

3. Other experiments to improve the teamwork and product development process

Adding a skill- Finding opportunities for people to add new skills to their portfolio. For example by letting a front-end developer do some backend development: something simple at the beginning. Letting a Tester learn more about development so that they can do the initial debugging when a defect is found. Teaching people about UX principles and letting them come up with suggestions and hence, slowly increasing the skills of the entire Scrum Team. 

Conclusion

Experiments are crucial for any organization to integrate creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving abilities in their employees. It also gives them the scope to explore newer options for product development. Also, experimenting with various tactics to improve team-building plays a major role in the development and delivery of the product. It also keeps the employees happier and increases the revenue of the company as it develops products that are of great value in the market. Scrum is one of the famous and most adopted frameworks of Agile that helps organizations experiment on various aspects of product development and team building. It understands that both factors require various experiments to find out which method or which product suits well and works for the company. It is not afraid of failure and only makes the team members and the head of the organization see what are the possibilities that could be gained from the experiments. Hence, the Scrum Framework is one of the best choices for organizations that want to create unique products and also want an Agile environment with employees having an Agile mindset. 

References

1. https://www.atlassian.com/agile/Scrum
2. https://modernagile.org/
3. https://medium.com/serious-Scrum/modern-agile-and-Scrum-experiment-and-learn-rapidly-1141a0f5421f

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