Scrum guide: artifacts and ceremonies | ONE BCG

Scrum is a framework that encourages teams to work together, learn from their mistakes, self-organize while working on a problem, and reflect on their successes and failures to improve continually. Scrum enables people, teams, and organizations to create value by solving complex challenges in an adaptive manner.

Scrum Artifacts

Scrum artifacts are used by a scrum team and stakeholders to capture key information, describe the product being developed, the steps and actions taken to build it during the project. Scrum artifacts keep everyone in the team on the same page as they work toward the sprint goal.

The three main scrum artifacts as defined in the Scrum guide:

• Product backlog: Product backlog contains the list of items needed in a product and is constantly evolving. The product backlog divides the product into a dynamic list of required components, such as features, enhancements, and fixes.
  
  
• Sprint backlog: The sprint backlog is a collection of items from the product backlog that have been prioritized for development in the following product increment. These are well refined and have all the necessary details that help developers track down their daily progress on the project. Associating with the sprint backlog, the development team defines a sprint goal and works together to achieve it. 
  
  
• Increment: The collection of product backlog tasks performed during a sprint is called an increment. It also incorporates all prior sprint increments. Every increment should meet the criteria of completion, as well as be thoroughly tested and authorized.

Scrum Ceremonies 

Scrum ceremonies are an essential element of Agile development; they provide the teams a structure to get work done systematically, assist teams in anchoring expectations, collaborate successfully, and ultimately generate results.

1. Sprint planning: Sprint planning aims to determine what can be accomplished in a given sprint and how the team will do it. The scrum master facilitates the meeting, and the product owner describes the sprint's objectives, task priorities, and what backlog items contribute to it.

• Who all attend sprint planning? Development team, product owner, and scrum master
  
• Duration of sprint planning: Sprint planning is generally organized for 4 hours for a two weeks sprint. Sprint Planning is limited to 8 hours for a four weeks sprint.
  
  

2. Daily stand-up: Daily stand-ups are one of the fundamental parts of Agile development. The purpose of daily stand-up is to swiftly update everyone on what's going on in the team. In the usual sense, this isn't a status meeting. The daily stand-ups are a fast catch-up to update the rest of the team on each member's progress and requirements.

• Who all attends the stand-up? The development team is required to attend every daily scrum. The Scrum Master usually is present, but it is not mandatory.
  
• Duration of stand-up: Daily stand-ups are limited to 15 mins per day.
  
  

3. Sprint review: Sprint review is one of the crucial ceremonies where the team gathers to review the completed tasks, demonstrate progress, and get immediate feedback from the project stakeholders. The team adapts the product backlog based on the inputs from the stakeholders and will work on it in the next sprints.

• Who all attend sprint review? The development team, scrum master, product owner, stakeholders, any associated departments can be invited for feedbacks.
  
• Duration of sprint review: It can be 2 hours for a two weeks Sprint. 
  
  

4. Sprint retrospective: The sprint retrospective is a recurrent meeting held at the end of a sprint cycle to assess successful upshots and discuss revisions for the next sprint cycle. The sprint retrospectives are not about complaining and holding each other responsible for the pitfalls but finding creative solutions and developing an action plan for future processes.

• Who all attend sprint retrospective? Development team, scrum master, and the product owner. Product owners can join but aren't mandatory attendees.
  
• Duration of sprint retrospective: A sprint retrospective can be for 90 minutes for two weeks long sprints. 

In summary, Scrum ceremonies and artifacts are crucial to the agile methodology and software development process. These practices are intended to assist teams and organizations, helps teams stay agile, and improve through practicing these ceremonies and artifacts.