Agile is a term you’ve probably heard in the same sentence as project management. Agile, until recently, was seen as a set of management practices closely related to software development. This is because the initial advocates of the Agile narrative were software developers and also the foundational document was the Manifesto for Software Development of 2001. However, twenty years later, it has been successful in spreading to almost all corners and types of organizations.
Agile is widely popular because it enables the organization to master continuous change and improvement. With the help of the agile methodology, businesses are able to get that extra push to flourish in an increasingly volatile and uncertain market. The key to Agile success is the mindset that should drive your everyday decision-making processes. It is definitely something that you can work on and improve over time, but if you wanted to speed things up, you can enroll in one of the courses offered by SWS or other training providers.
Even though it is all the rage, it still seems to be a nebulous concept for those uninitiated to the agile narrative. This has led to even more confusion between the two concepts of Agile and Scrum, which essentially comes under the broader umbrella of Agile project management. Sometimes these terms are even used interchangeably by people.
While the two may sound similar, the two are completely different approaches to project management. For guidance, here are the main parameters that may be used to differentiate between Agile and Scrum.
Fundamentals
Agile is essentially a development strategy that is employed by organizations to react and adapt to changing needs of customers within a market. It is based on an incremental and iterative approach. It focuses on breaking down complex projects into smaller units that may be easier to achieve in a specified time frame.
On the other hand, Scrum is considered to be the most popular method or framework to implement the agile methodology for software development.
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Planning
The agile methodology generally works for constant product delivery and agile teams use three levels of planning which are release planning, iteration planning, and daily commitment planning. The level and amount of work that the team should deliver by the deadline are decided during release planning. During iteration planning, team members calculate the value of backlog items they can commit to delivering during the next iteration. For daily commitment planning, the focus is on accomplishing the top priority features.
Scrum teams also follow a similar three-level planning process having release planning, sprint planning, and daily planning. Release planning, in the case of Scrum, deals with a capacity that is measured in terms of abstract units that are assigned to each user. Sprint planning attempts to deconstruct each user story into a smaller segment of tasks and aims to estimate ideal hours for the completion of each task. For daily planning, the daily meeting is facilitated by the Scrum Master that asks team members questions relating to their duties for the day.
Flexibility
Agile is considered to be a more rigid approach as compared to Scrum. With the use and implementation of an agile methodology, there may not be enough space for frequent changes. Whereas, Scrum is more adaptable and open to changing requirements and quickly responds to changes.
Roles
An agile approach is more appropriate and suited for implementation at the corporate level where leaders monitor and ensure that the work is done by the team.
Scrum is best for self-supporting or cross-functional teams and roles are defined as product master, scrum master, and scrum team here.
Communication
In agile, face-to-face communication with the team members is encouraged. On the other hand, team members tend to focus on delivering maximum business value, hence, the communication may take place on a daily or even weekly basis as per the sprint schedule.
