Top 10 Benefits of Scrum and Frequent Challenges

Scrum uses effective team collaboration to develop and deliver complex products, employing an iterative and incremental approach. Although Scrum provides a streamlined and effective agile product delivery approach, it should not be confused with agile project management.

The blog titled 'What is Scrum,' explores in depth the intricacies and the components of Scrum and the Scrum framework.

Below we explore the top 10 advantages of using Scrum in your projects. From its inherent flexibility to its focus on continuous improvement, Scrum offers a plethora of benefits that can transform the way your team works and delivers products.

Scrum's iterative and incremental approach allows teams to adapt to changing requirements and priorities throughout development.

Every 1-4 weeks, depending on the duration of your Sprint, the Scrum Team decide what will be worked on in the next Sprint. At any time prior to planning the work of a Sprint, the Product Owner collaborates with a number of Developers to refine the Product Backlog, ensuring that the most valuable work is available for selection, whether that is pre-existing in the backlog or newly added.   

By delivering ‘Done’ Increments of the Product in short sprints, Scrum allows value to be realised sooner, reducing time-to-market and allowing for quicker feedback from customers. An Increment is born as soon as it meets its Definition of Done – this can be at any time during the Sprint or at the end. If the Definition of Done describes a releasable Increment of the Product, then it can start realising value as soon as it is released.

Scrum promotes a collaborative environment through the application of the Scrum Values.

The Scrum events, the artefacts with their commitments, and clear accountabilities associated with the Scrum roles help bring this to life. Developers in a Scrum Team are multifunctional, meaning that most of the work can be done by most people in the team. For more complicated aspects of the work, e.g. designing solutions and solving problems, a collaboration between two or three Developers will lead to better outcomes, often achieved quicker than one person working alone.     

Continuous feedback through regular inspection leads to early identification and resolution of issues associated with meeting customer needs and results in higher-quality products with reduced defects.

Transparency of all work can lead to Inspection of that work at any time. Appropriate Adaptation, where quality is perceived as weak, leads to improved quality. The Daily Scrum is a formal opportunity for inspection day-to-day by Scrum Team members and the Sprint Review provides a formal opportunity for inspection by Stakeholders.

Scrum’s customer-centric approach, with a dedicated Product Owner representing customer interests, ensures that the delivered product aligns with customer expectations, thereby enhancing satisfaction.

Customer satisfaction is achieved through good collaboration between customers, or their representatives, and the Product Owner. A Product Owner should ensure that the Product Backlog is ordered in a way that delivers customer value early and often. Customers can also provide feedback on the Product Increment at the Sprint Review, with that feedback helping the Product Owner refine the Product Backlog to deliver even more value.  What more could a customer want?    

Self-organising, collaborative teams – those where developers decide collaboratively who is best placed to perform what work and to support each other in doing it – typically outperform teams managed on a task-by-task basis by a manager.

The uplift in productivity arises from collective focus on the most important work, openness about the challenges involved, courage to make the right decisions, respect amongst those working on the problem and commitment to do the best to deliver on promises made. These five Scrum values are not typical of teams who are task-managed by a manager.   

Incremental delivery with regular inspection by stakeholders (defined as anybody impacted by the work of the team) builds the consideration of risk into the development process and integrates opportunity to mitigate such risks with ongoing development.

Developers encouraged to think about the risks associated with the work they are doing will often address such risks as part of the development process – in which case Risk Management is built into the agile way of working, not bolted on as a separate process.

Regular retrospectives allow teams to reflect on their processes and performance and identify areas for improvement.

One or two potential improvements in ways of working are introduced into the next Sprint as experiments. If, at the following review, the experiments lead to improvement, they become part of the team's normal way of working, and failures are dropped, potentially in favour of a new experiment. This commitment to continuous improvement helps teams optimise their workflows and enhance overall outcomes.  

Scrum provides a clear picture of the project timeline and potential delivery dates through a combination of transparency of the Product and Sprint Backlogs and Sprints set to a regular cadence. Agreeing on realistic Sprint Goals and, under most circumstances, achieving them each Sprint provides a continual opportunity for tracking progress. This predictability is beneficial for stakeholders planning product launches or marketing efforts. 

Scrum's focus on value-driven delivery helps ensure that resources are used efficiently.

The Product Owner prioritises work by ordering the Product Backlog based on value, ensuring that higher-value work is closer to the top and lower-value work is closer to the bottom of the order. Whether working to a fixed budget and timeframe or working until the product is ‘good enough’, it will always be the lower-value work that is left undone. By avoiding work on low-priority features, teams can make better use of the time and resources they have. 

Adopting Scrum naturally involves challenges.

• Resistance to change, often conveyed by a poor understanding of how Scrum works, is a common response. While the associated learning curve can be steep, true value will not be achieved without a full understanding of Scrum and support in its adoption.
• Teams might find the extensive collaboration and communication required for Scrum's success challenging. Developers are often used to working alone and see ‘constant meetings’ as a burden rather than a value and may wrongly perceive inspection, associated with the empirical Scrum process as intrusive ‘micro-management’.
• Individual accountabilities, especially those associated with the Scrum Master, often conflict with those typical within organisations and make it difficult for those within and around the Scrum Team to ‘live’ the Scrum values. This can result in confusion and hinder efficiency, especially in traditional environments where individual reward has a tighter focus than team performance.  

Even with a successful implementation of Scrum, where the challenges above have been overcome, other challenges may arise. These include:

• Teams may be tempted to overcommit as their confidence grows and because of a desire to continually stretch themselves to deliver more. This can come from within the team, based on a desire to please, or as a result of external pressure to ‘do more’. 
• The Scrum process has a tendency to overemphasise short-term Sprint-by-Sprint goals. The Product Owner needs to ensure Product Goals remain in clear focus. It is important not to sacrifice the big prize in favour of quick wins.  
• There are often challenges in integrating the work of multiple teams for larger, more complex endeavours. For very large-scale product developments a scaling framework such as SAFe may offer a solution. In a project environment – where the focus goes beyond the isolated delivery of a product – an Agile Project Management approach such as AgilePM for Scrum will prove invaluable.  

Scrum offers substantial benefits in product development. It emphasises its capacity for flexibility, swift value delivery, and enhanced collaboration, which collectively expedite time to market and elevate product quality. Scrum also offers the opportunity to boost customer satisfaction, productivity, and efficient resource use while fostering a culture of continuous improvement and risk management.

For many organisations, Scrum will be transformative, but it won’t be without its challenges. Poor understanding of empiricism and the power of collaboration and self-organisation by members of the Scrum Team and those around the team may not fit with the cultural norms of the organisation. This will lead to challenges in adoption and an over-emphasis on Scrum at the team level may leave the bigger picture of larger more complex endeavours at risk.

As with any endeavour, “if something – the adoption of Scrum, in this case – is worth doing, then it is worth doing well.”  

This training empowers you to thrive as a Scrum Master, elevating product and solution development through the application of Scrum. Fundamental takeaways include knowledge of the Scrum Framework, its underlying principles, and the pivotal responsibilities of a Scrum Master. 

In this course, you'll discover strategies for optimising the value of products delivered by Scrum Teams. Developing a comprehensive grasp of the Scrum Framework and the pivotal role of the Scrum Product Owner. Hone your mastery of Scrum principles and learn techniques for constructing and prioritising a value-centric product backlog, including the breakdown of epics and themes into actionable user stories.

The initial day of both the Scrum Master and Product Owner courses mirror each other. Feel free to consult your APMG training provider regarding the option to have this day delivered separately, which is perfect for team members and stakeholders. It encompasses all the content outlined in the Scrum Guide, ensuring participants are equipped with comprehensive knowledge.