Exploring Scrum Artifacts: A Comprehensive Overview

In this dedicated article, I aim to provide an in-depth exploration of all the Scrum artifacts. Having previously covered these artifacts in my previous articles, consolidating the information in one article will help you have a comprehensive understanding of them.

Understanding Scrum Artifacts

To start off, let’s clarify the term “artifact.”

According to Wikipedia:

An artifact is one of many kinds of tangible by-products produced during the development of software. Some artifacts help describe the function, architecture, and design of software. Other artifacts are concerned with the process of development itself—such as project plans, business cases, and risk assessments.

wikipedia

In the context of Scrum, we define three core artifacts and one transparency artifact:

• Product Backlog
• Sprint Backlog
• Increment
• Definition of Done (Transparency Artifact)

These four elements align with the Wikipedia definition. In Scrum, artifacts play a crucial role as fundamental components of the Scrum framework.

Interesting Anecdote

It’s worth noting that the term “artifact” has another, less-known definition associated with undesirable effects, such as parasites in electronics. While this definition may be used to criticize Scrum artifacts, it’s important to clarify that Scrum employs the former definition of the term.

Exploring Our Scrum Artifacts

Having previously provided detailed descriptions of these four Scrum artifacts, I will now summarize each artifact in a single sentence and provide the corresponding article link for further exploration.

Product Backlog

The Product Backlog is a collection of needs gathered to create the desired product, encompassing features, functions, requirements, improvements, and corrections.

Article: Backlog – Definition

Sprint Backlog

The Sprint Backlog includes elements selected at the start of the sprint during sprint planning, with the goal of meeting the sprint goal, incrementing the product with new features, functions, correctives, improvements, and outlining the plan for delivering these elements.

Article: Sprint Backlog

Increment

The Increment represents all “done” elements of the current sprint, in addition to those finalized in previous sprints.

Definition of Done

The Definition of Done is collaboratively defined by the development team to establish criteria for considering an item (e.g., user story) as “done.” The acronym DOD is commonly used to reference this practice.

Article: Definition of Done (DOD)

Concluding Thoughts on Scrum Artifacts

With this comprehensive guide, the concept of Scrum artifacts should now be crystal clear. Many teams encounter challenges in grasping this term; however, I trust that it’s now well understood by you.

Are the Scrum artifacts clearer to you now? Do you have any ideas for creating additional Scrum artifacts?

Useful link: Kanban Board