You're interested in software development but don't know where to start, or maybe you’re considering creating a development team of your own. You've probably heard the term "scrum team" or "agile development." These terms refer both to a structured framework (Scrum) and a principled approach (agile) to software creation. Over the last decade, Scrum has become the gold standard of agile development for most software projects. And the ideas behind it stem from two cornerstone principles.
First, the right software solution is extremely hard to build. There are a million and one ways for a project to turn out. Only a handful, built with alignment between industry, business objectives, and user pain turn out to be the right solution.
“People don’t know what they want until they see what they don’t want.”
Second, in agile development, one of three laws we live by, called Humphrey's Law, simply put states,
Seems straightforward, right? However, this law begs the question: "How can we know we’re building the right software before it’s completed?" It seems like we should simply ask users what they want, write it down, and then give it to developers to build, right? The answer is straightforward: users are great at describing what causes pain ("what they don't want"). However, users are terrible at describing what solves their pain. During the process of building software, a user will change their mind many, many times about what could solve their pain. That’s where Scrum comes in handy.
Scrum is one of many agile software development methodologies. It's designed with a single goal: reduce the cost of users (or companies) changing their mind. Instead of asking a user or company what they want, going away for six months, building it, and coming back only to learn they needed something different, Scrum builds software in small segments of time called "Sprints" (often two weeks). After a Sprint of work is completed, it is brought before the user for feedback and correction. This keeps the user (the person feeling the pain) extremely close to the solution being built.
There are many other special rules, principles, and meetings within the Scrum methodology. However, if you understand Humphrey's Law and the subsequent idea of keeping the creation of software as close to the user as possible, then you understand the most important tenet of Scrum.
P.S. if you actually want to read the "rules" of scrum then prepare yourself for the dryest 17-page pdf doc you've ever read here.