SCRUM is a collection of events that are oriented towards agile principles. Each of the following paragraphs describes one of these events and explains its benefits in terms of the Agile Manifesto.

Daily SCRUM

The Daily SCRUM meeting is a solution-oriented meeting and not a simple status meeting. The goal is to pave the way for fulfilling the respective sprint goal. To achieve this, each team member should briefly and precisely address the following points: their progress, their next steps, their obstacles to achieving the goal.
To support this process, each participant orients themselves using the taskboard. The Daily SCRUM thus serves several points of the Agile Manifesto. The meeting ensures that developers don’t get too caught up in one thing, but stick to a simple solution. This happens, for example, when everyone can notice that a team member has been working on a task for the third day in a row that should actually be completed quite quickly. For this, it is especially important to actively listen to the other participants! This is precisely why face-to-face attendance is mandatory, to prevent some participants from happily clicking away or nodding off in their office chair again after speaking their piece. And as we remember, face-to-face communication is an agile principle anyway. The exact time limit of 15 minutes and not a minute longer (timeboxing) is also important. If topics come up that require further discussion, these are discussed by those involved after the Daily.
The Daily SCRUM promotes transparency among the development team, removes hurdles, and secures the sprint goal. Accordingly, it is important as a developer to address problems and not try to conceal them in the sense of “it could cast a bad light on me”.

Sprint Planning

The goal of Sprint Planning is to plan the work for the next 2-4 weeks (depending on the length of the sprint). The result of Sprint Planning is a Sprint Backlog that contains all tasks to be completed. This list of tasks was estimated by the team either during Sprint Planning or usually before in a so-called grooming session.
Already during the estimation, it is important to adhere to an important agile principle that was only mentioned in the last part of the article series: the constant pace. If a team evaluates progress, for example, based on the number of story points achieved per sprint, team members might tend to estimate tasks higher in order to subsequently handle more points per sprint.
The same applies to the actual planning, which please again takes place face-to-face, so that everyone is present and doesn’t suddenly get lost in their emails or on their phone. Each planning should (for an experienced team) plan the same number of story points for the next sprint. Through this constant, also called velocity, agile development becomes plannable. If a team manages X story points per week, it will manage 4 * X story points in 4 weeks.
Another principle that was also addressed in this article series is the concern to deliver value to the customer. This means that each sprint must deliver concrete value to the customer. For this reason, each sprint is assigned a name that describes the sprint goal, e.g., “Shopping Cart Functionality”. The name should be meaningful enough to directly grasp the delivered value.

SCRUM Events at a Glance

Sprint Review

The Sprint Review is the highlight of the Sprint for the customer. Now they are shown what has been achieved in the last 2 to 4 weeks. In addition to the usual rules, especially face-to-face, another important agile principle comes into play here: The most important measure of progress is working software. The software product must function on the day of the review; no ‘yes, but it can’t be used right now’ versions are delivered. If a task contains an error, it is thus not completed – no progress.
Also important when planning the reviews, just like with planning, is to continuously deliver value. Reviews take place at regular intervals, namely always at the end of the Sprint.
If wishes are expressed or criticism is voiced by the customer during the review, it’s important to remember to be open to changes. However, this doesn’t mean blindly programming what the customer dictates, but rather finding a suitable solution together.

Sprint Retrospective

Last but not least, the crème de la crème, the Retrospective. The goal of the Retrospective is clearly Inspect and Adapt. The team reflects on the past Sprint and considers how it can improve in the future. How exactly such a Retrospective is conducted in detail would go beyond the scope of this article. However, everyone must be clear that this continuous improvement is essential if you want to work according to agile principles and SCRUM.

Conclusion

So there it is, my bridge between agile principles and SCRUM. Of course, all other principles that have not yet been addressed in this article also find their application in SCRUM. But then especially in the daily project routine, and this requires an agile mindset.
This conclusion is also the conclusion of the entire series of articles that has emerged over the past few months. How long it takes to internalize agile principles varies from case to case. Some people inherently have an agile mindset, or the corresponding sense of values, others less so. However, anyone can learn to work according to these principles. Self-control and honest reflection are the key. Regular improvement is the keyword.