Scrum is an Agile framework for developing new products and extending existing ones. Scrum is one of the most common frameworks implemented in Agile. It has been around since the end of the 1990s, and provides a repeatable, consistent, and effective set of events to help development teams build products. To learn more about Scrum, see the related article on Scrum.
This set of worksheets presents the Scrum workflow in a simple yet effective diagram. You can use it as a reference for the activities of your team, to explain Scrum to someone else, or also as an exercise to get everyone aligned on its components.
The Scrum workflow
This worksheet presents the Scrum workflow as defined by the official Scrum Guide. It is composed of 5 events (Sprint, Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint Review, and Retrospective). It also shows the Scrum Team’s roles (Product Owner, Scrum Master, and Developers) that participate to each event, and the artifacts (Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog, and Increment) produced by the Scrum Team throughout the process.
Print this page and place it on the wall as a reference for your team or share it with others so everyone understands the core components of Scrum.
Exercise: learn the Scrum workflow
The second part of this worksheet is an exercise that helps teams learn the core elements of the Scrum workflow in a simple and fun way. This is a useful exercise to conduct in a classroom or together with your Scrum team. It creates alignment around the purpose of each event in Scrum and the roles that participate in each event. It’s great to spark a conversation and make sure everyone understands the foundations of Scrum.
The exercise is composed of two pages:
- The Scrum workflow without labels. The diagram shows all events, roles, and artifacts, but no one has a label indicating its name. It’s the job of students to identify the right name for each component.
- The list of keywords to use to fill in the previous page. This is a reference page that shows all keywords to identify the events, roles, and artifacts of the Scrum workflow, and give them a name.
How to run the exercise
Give each participant a copy of the exercise, with both pages (the Scrum workflow without labels, and the list of keyword).
Participants can do this exercise “solo”, in pairs, or together with their team.
Explain the visual difference between “Events” (gray boxes on the diagram), “Roles” (two lines), and “Artifacts” (white boxes). And share the list of keywords (on the other page).
Then ask the participants to fill in the Scrum workflow with the names of the events, roles, and artifacts using the list of keywords provided. Give them 10 minutes to do so.
At the end of the exercise, review the Scrum workflow to provide the correct answers. You can share the printed copy with all the labels, or you can have a copy affixed on the wall and you could go through each component answering any questions the participants may have.
Hint: the solutions are provided in the first page, the Scrum workflow with the labels. When in doubt, refer to that page, or consult the Scrum Guide.
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