Scrum Artifacts

Scrum is a popular agile project management framework, specifically designed for software development teams to deliver high-quality products in small, manageable increments. It is widely adopted due to its values, principles, events, and scrum artifacts that promote flexibility, adaptability, and continuous improvement. These elements work together to help the team plan, create, and deliver products aligning with customers’ ever-changing needs and requirements. 

In this article, we will look at scrum artifacts, their importance for scrum teams, and how you can efficiently manage them. 

So, let’s get started!

What are scrum artifacts?

In agile methodology, Scrum artifacts are tools that act as shared sources of product information for stakeholders and scrum team members. Their primary purpose is to promote transparency and accountability. These artifacts document and share key information such as the product goals, list of work items, activities plans, team performance reports, and completed work details. 

According to scrum guide, there are three main scrum artifacts:

1. Product Backlog
2. Sprint Backlog 
3. Increments

However, there are some extended scrum artifacts used in practice that provide deeper insights into team progress, forecast, and planning. 

We will explore these Scrum artifacts in more detail shortly, but before that, let’s discuss why these artifacts are important for the Scrum team’s success.

Why are Scrum artifacts important in agile project management?

Just like scrum principles and values, that provide instructions on the behavior and culture of the scrum team, scrum artifacts give information related to the product goals, requirements, and delivered product. 

Scrum artifacts ensure that everyone has a shared understanding of the work, progress, and expectations. Consequently, they promote transparency and accountability among the scrum team by providing insight into team roles and responsibilities. 

Here are some of the important benefits of the scrum artifacts:

Quality Control: The increments ensure that completed work in each sprint meets the “definition of done” and “acceptance criteria”, leading to high-quality product development. 

Visibility: When everything is documented in an organized and proficient way in the product and sprint backlog, the team has a better understanding of the work requirements, expectations, and acceptance criteria.  

Improved Risk Management: Scrum Artifact helps the team forecast issues, identify defects, and resolve them at an early stage before they become bigger problems. 

Continuous Improvement: Scrum artifact product backlog, continuously evolves based on stakeholders’ feedback and retrospective outcomes, leading the team to improve product and development processes. 

Efficient Scope Management: Product backlog provides a comprehensive, well-prioritized list of work items, bug fixes, and improvements, helping the team manage scope and avoid scope creep. 

Better Collaboration & Communication: regular refinement of scrum artifacts (during backlog refinement and sprint review) provides opportunities for the team to collaborate and engage with team members and stakeholders. 

3 Main Scrum Artifacts 

The main artifacts of the scrum framework are product backlog, increment, and sprint backlog. 

1. Product Backlog 

The product backlog is a comprehensive list of tasks, user stories, features, enhancements, and bug fixes required to develop the product. It is created during the project planning phase and serves as the “single truth” for the scrum team. 

Here are some of the key characteristics of the product backlog:

• It is dynamic. Unlike traditional feature requirement documents, product backlogs don’t remain static. New features, requirements, and bug fixes may be added and existing ones may be removed throughout the project life cycle.
• The product owner is responsible for creating and managing the product backlog. However, the development team also helps the product owner refine the backlog during backlog grooming sessions. 
•  It is regularly updated based on market trends, stakeholder feedback, and customer needs. 
• The most valuable and prioritized items are kept at the top of the product backlog. 

The product backlog provides a clear view of the work required to achieve the product goal. However, not all the work items in the backlog get the chance to be delivered. Instead, the team selects only specific work items from the product backlog during the sprint review event. They break the large user stories into smaller manageable tasks, making the sprint backlog. 

2. Sprint Backlog 

The sprint backlog is a subcategory of the product backlog. It contains a real-time to-do list of work items that the team will complete during a specific sprint. The team creates the sprint backlog during the sprint planning meeting. Product owners present a list of prioritized work items from the backlog to achieve the sprint goal. 

Here are the key characteristics of the sprint backlog:

• Unlike product backlog, which highlights long-term product backlog, the sprint backlog focuses on the sprint goal. 
• Although the product owner selects the work items from the product backlog, the development team decides how to achieve them. 
• The team can change the sprint backlog at any point during the sprint, however, changes should not affect the sprint goal. 
• Each work item in the sprint backlog should have enough details and clear DOD.
• Each task in the sprint backlog has a clear owner.

Once the development team has completed all the tasks in the sprint backlog, they develop the product increments that will be presented to the stakeholders during the sprint review. 

3. Increment 

The increment is the product of all the work items completed from the sprint backlog that meets the definition of done (DOD) during a sprint. The team creates increments at the end of each sprint that can be delivered to the stakeholders. Although all the increments are not released to the end user immediately after the sprint, these increments should be potentially deliverable. 

Here are the key characteristics of this scrum artifact:

• Work can only be considered increments if it meets the acceptance criteria and DOD.
• Each increment should be ready to release. 
• Increment should contain documentation such as a user guide.
• They should align with the long-term product goals. 

Product increments are incredibly useful in CI/CD and version tracking as each increment is built on top of the previous increment. 

Extended Scrum Artifacts

In addition to the three main scrum artifacts there are some extended artifacts that scrum teams use to enhance transparency, planning, and progress tracking. While these artifacts are not officially mandated in the scrum guide, they are widely adopted by the scrum team due to their value and effectiveness.  

1. Definition of Done 

The definition of done (DOD) is a set of acceptance criteria that a work item must meet to be considered “Done”. It can be any document with a list of characteristics or a checklist to ensure that the increment is ready to use by the end user. 

For example, you’re building a new feature for Scrum Slate. The definition of done can be like this. 

• Code is Written.
• Code is Tested
• UI is Polished
• Documentation is Ready
• Review is Done 
• No Bugs
• Deployed 

The definition of done can vary from one scrum team to another based on product and sprint goal. The main purpose of the DOD is to remove any ambiguity and provide information regarding what is expected from them. It also prevents the release of incompleted increments and reduces technical debt. 

2. Burndown Chart

The Burndown chart is another extended scrum artifact, widely used by the scrum team to track the team’s velocity and progress during a sprint. It provides a comprehensive overview of the work completed during the sprint duration. The x-axis represents the time, while the y-axis represents the work remaining. By tracking the remaining work, the team can track their velocity and determine whether they are ahead of schedule, behind, or on track. 

In addition to tracking progress during a sprint, the team can use burndown charts reports from the previous sprints for better sprint planning. They can identify the velocity trends, and bottlenecks, and improve the forecasting in the next sprints. 

3. Sprint Goal

While not an artifact, it is a commitment to the scrum artifact sprint backlog. A sprint goal is a concise, single objective for the scrum team that they need to achieve by the end of the sprint. It provides direction and guides the development team’s work during a sprint. 

The scrum team created the sprint goal during the sprint planning meeting. The scrum team works on the work items selected from the backlog to achieve the sprint goal. They assess the team’s progress toward the sprint goal during daily standups and resolve impediments to achieve it. However, the team can’t change the sprint goal once the sprint kicks off. They can only make changes in the scope of work if necessary. 

Conclusion 

Wrapping up, scrum artifacts are a highly valuable set of tools in the scrum framework that guides the team to planning, tracking, and delivery. They provide a clear structure and set of instructions regarding the work the team needs to complete to develop the product. Mastering these artifacts is crucial for team success and continuous delivery. 

The best way to get started with these artifacts is to use an agile project management tool like Scrum Slate. It comes with built-in scrum artifact features such as product backlog, sprint backlog, and increments. Start the free trial on Scrum Slate today and enjoy unlimited access to premium features.