SCRUM? But why?

If you’ve ever worked in a collaborative or professional environment, chances are you’ve heard at least one buzzword floating around… velocity, efficiency, workflow, etc... Maybe you’ve even played with LEGO bricks during a Lean Six Sigma exercise or been advised, more than once, to read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

But it’s 2026 now, and the new word of the moment is Scrum.

Yes - scrummmmmm.

If you are of a curious mind like me, your first question might be - - What exactly is Scrum, and why do I suddenly need to know it? Is this another corporate keyword I’m expected to understand so I can seamlessly blend into professional spaces?

At its core, Scrum is a lightweight framework for solving complex problems and delivering value through adaptive solutions. (For a more detailed breakdown of Scrum and its formal structure, you can find an in-depth guide here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3y95I79D_Q].)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3y95I79D_Q

Scrum Meets Grad School

Week 1 of the semester, a time when most graduate students are still recalibrating schedules, expectations, and mental bandwidth. Many of us entered Animation Studio II expecting a natural continuation of Animation Studio I. A course that encourages students to focus more deeply on their individual specialties within animation.

Instead, the evolving academic landscape had something different in mind. This semester, my cohort and I were tasked with working on a client-based project. Collaboration itself isn’t new to us, we’ve worked together in various capacities over the past three semesters. What is new, however, was being introduced to Scrum as our primary method of daily collaboration and task management.

Learning an entirely new system in a single lecture was a lot to absorb. While I can clearly see the value Scrum offers and understand why it’s widely used in professional environments, I also found myself questioning how well certain aspects translate into an academic setting.

First-Week Impressions

After our first week using Scrum, here are my initial observations:

Pros

• Simulates a real-world production environment

• Encourages public accountability

• Establishes both team-level and individual goals

• Builds familiarity with Kanban-style workflows

• Makes project progress visible to the entire team

Cons

• Student schedules don’t always align with real-world production simulations

• The system relies heavily on consistent participation from every team member

• The Scrum Master role can unintentionally shift toward project management rather than creative leadership

• Adds administrative overhead to an already demanding student workload

• The point system feels redundant in an academic context

Finding the Balance

Ultimately, only time will tell whether Scrum is the best fit for the Animation Studio course. I can absolutely see how effective it is in a corporate environment, where your primary responsibility is your role within a single organization.

As students, however, we’re constantly compartmentalizing tasks across multiple courses, deadlines, and responsibilities. Within that context, some aspects of Scrum can feel more tedious than helpful.

One potential compromise might be to retain the Kanban board which offers clarity, visibility, and accountability while eliminating the point system and charts. Task tags alone could still clearly indicate responsibility, maintain transparency, and allow the team to track progress throughout the semester in a more streamlined way.

For now, Scrum feels like a learning process not just in understanding the framework itself, but in exploring how professional methodologies can be adapted to fit academic environments.

And honestly, that adjustment period might be the most valuable lesson of all.