The 2020 Scrum Guide defines an increment as ”a concrete stepping stone toward the product goal. Each Increment is additive to all prior Increments and thoroughly verified, ensuring that all Increments work together. To provide value, the Increment must be usable…The entire scrum team is accountable for creating a valuable, useful Increment for every Sprint”.

In scrum, a product increment is whatever you previously built, plus anything new you just finished in the latest sprint, all integrated, tested, and ready to be delivered or deployed. Without a usable product increment, development teams are delaying the delivery of value and are missing opportunities to get real user feedback and adapt the product to ensure customer satisfaction. On the other hand, incremental releases allow for fast feedback, quicker innovation, continuous improvement, rapid adaptation to change, and more delighted customers.

According to the 2017 Scrum Guide:

Scrum Teams are self-organizing and cross-functional. Self-organizing teams choose how best to accomplish their work, rather than being directed by others outside the team. Cross-functional teams have all competencies needed to accomplish the work without depending on others not part of the team.

In 2020 it has been changed to:

Scrum Teams are cross-functional, meaning the members have all the skills necessary to create value for each Sprint. They are also self-managing, meaning they internally decide who does what, when, and how.

The Scrum Guide does not prohibit this. Wearing "two hats" can be challenging to fully attend to all expectations of the Scrum Master role and be a focused Developer. Although it is helpful to understand more about Development work, it can also be a pitfall.

Sprint is a short period in which a team works to produce an end deliverable. Within each sprint, there are Scrum inspect and adapt events. Also known as ceremonies, these meetings are held by the Scrum team to clarify the purpose, progress, and results of a particular sprint. There are four Scrum inspect and adapt events in total: sprint planning, daily Scrum, sprint review, and sprint retrospective.

True leadership is a representation of the way you work with your team to achieve goals. A true leader makes an effort to help develop their team's skills so they can reach their full potential. They lead by example and establish strong, trusting relationships to ensure success within the team and for the organization as a whole.

Velocity is a key Scrum metric that measures the amount of work a team can deliver during a sprint.

During Sprint Planning, the team’s velocity is used to determine the number of product backlog items to tackle. Based on this, the amount of work and the delivery date can be estimated. At the end of the Sprint, the actual velocity will be used in the calculation for the next one.

In the Scrum agile framework, a Sprint Planning meeting is an event that establishes the product development goal and plans for the upcoming sprint, based on the team’s review of its product backlog.

Although sprint planning sessions can at times benefit from input from various members of an organization, the key participants in any sprint planning session will be:

• The Scrum Master (who typically runs and coordinates the meeting).
• The Product Owner (who will explain the product backlog items, answer backlog questions, and help define the sprint goal).
• The Development Team (who will make commitments to the work, estimate timeframes, and explain any capacity or skill-set issues that could prevent work from getting done).

In the Scrum framework, it is important for Scrum Teams to deliver a valuable Increment as frequently as they can — at least once per Sprint. Each Increment brings the team and its stakeholders one step closer to a valuable Product Goal. Without this, it is difficult to learn about what else is needed and to reduce the risk of complex work. The Product Owner is responsible for maximizing the value of the work done by the developers.

Transparency: We all know what is going on.
Inspection: Check your work as you do it.
Adaptation: OK to change tactical direction.

The Scrum framework consists of Scrum Teams and their associated roles, events, artifacts, and rules. Each component within the framework serves a specific purpose and is essential to Scrum's success and usage. The rules of Scrum bind together the events, roles, and artifacts, governing the relationships and interactions between them.

Attendance is not limited to the Scrum Team. When it’s needed, for example, for refinement, the Scrum Team can invite SMEs to provide additional information. This could also include users, the client, or any other stakeholder. This makes the event more engaging, as well as shows you value the opinion of others.

A Product Owner must be an expert in the business domain and industry. To understand customer requirements better and translate them into product requirements, a Product Owner must be well-versed in business logic as well as the technical capabilities of the product. It is a diverse role that requires a mix of several skills and experience for high performance.

If the Product Owner has this authority, he can respond to the changing needs of the customer and the marketplace. If not, he is blocked from being effective and may need approval on all Product Backlog Item decisions which causes a waste of time, by the Product Owner, and waste in the effort, by the Scrum Team.

The product owner is a technical role. You can’t become a great PO if you don’t know the ins and outs of development, design, agile framework, software development, scrum approach, and IT infrastructure. Technical skill is defined as a specialized skill that is used to perform a specific task such as programming and software development. The agile product owner must be technically sound because backlog management and prioritization are technical tasks. It can’t be done effectively if the PO doesn’t understand the development and design processes and has no knowledge of how software development works.

Product Owner’s need is almost there on all the events except Daily Scrum because Daily Scrum is a time-boxed event for the Development Team to inspect and adapt daily. When a Product Owner is not available during the Sprint, it is one of the great impediments. It will certainly affect the ability of the Development Team to come up with a “done” product increment. If there is no Product Increment at the end of the Sprint, then the Sprint Goal cannot be reached.

In scrum, a product increment is whatever you previously built, plus anything new you just finished in the latest sprint, all integrated, tested, and ready to be delivered or deployed. Without a usable product increment, development teams are delaying the delivery of value and are missing opportunities to get real user feedback and adapt the product to ensure customer satisfaction. On the other hand, incremental releases allow for fast feedback, quicker innovation, continuous improvement, rapid adaptation to change, and more delighted customers.

The Scrum Master serves the Product Owner in several ways, including:

• Ensuring that everyone on the Scrum Team understands well the goal, scope, and product domain;
• Finding techniques for effective Product Backlog management;
• Helping the Scrum Team understand the need for clear and concise Product Backlog items;
• Understanding product planning in an empirical environment;
• Ensuring the Product Owner knows how to arrange the Product Backlog to maximize value;
• Understanding and practicing agility;
• Facilitating Scrum events as requested or needed.

With frequent inspection, the team can spot when their work deviates outside of acceptable limits and adapt their process or the product under development.