Is Agile and Scrum the Same?
Agile, Scrum, DevOps, Kanban, Lean.
These terms are often used interchangeably by teams, new and old. So it’s time to re-examine your terminology and define the differences. (Because we all need a little help understanding what the shift to Agile entails.)
Before diving into the Agile Methodology, you should understand what you’re getting yourself into. You don’t have to understand every detail, but you do need to learn enough to make an informed decision about how your company will adapt
Agile is a framework that defines how teams can achieve better results by working flexibly.
Agile is a framework that defines how teams can achieve better results by working flexibly. It’s not a methodology, process, or framework—it’s a set of principles and practices that help teams deliver higher quality software faster with less cost and risk than traditional approaches.
Agile teams use iterative and incremental processes to create “living systems,” which means they’re constantly evolving based on feedback from customers, users, and internal stakeholders. This allows them to respond quickly when business needs change without going through the rigmarole of building something new from scratch (also known as waterfall).
Scrum is an agile framework for managing work with an emphasis on software development.
Scrum is an agile framework for managing work with an emphasis on software development. It was created by Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber and inspired by lean manufacturing principles.
Scrum is designed to be flexible and adaptable to different teams, contexts, and needs while still providing a standard structure:
- An “idea” or “product backlog” containing all upcoming user stories (or other lists of requirements) for each sprint
- A “tasks board” where team members track their progress toward completing these user stories (or different lists of requirements) over time
Both frameworks are a defined set of best practices that help teams deliver in a predictable, sustainable way.
Both agile and Scrum are frameworks, which are a defined set of best practices that help teams deliver in a predictable, sustainable way.
Agile and Scrum are not the same thing. Agile is an approach to software development that encourages quick feedback cycles between users, developers, and testers; it also places more emphasis on customer input than traditional methods such as waterfall or traditional waterfall-like models (e.g., RUP). Scrum is one particular implementation of agile principles, including short meetings with frequent meetings every two weeks; this helps break down large tasks into smaller pieces so multiple people can work on them at any given time
Agile and Scrum help you deliver more of what customers want.
Agile and Scrum are frameworks for delivering more of what customers want. They’re not just about focusing on the features your customers want to see but also helping you think through how they might be able to use them. As a result, agile enables you to deliver more of what customers want.
Agile is a mindset, whereas Scrum is a framework.
Agile is a set of principles and values that drives the development of products. It’s about individuals and interactions over processes and tools, working software over comprehensive documentation, customer collaboration over contract negotiation, and responding to change following a plan. However, these values can be implemented differently, including Scrum, Kanban, XP, etc. The framework that best implements these values is known as your process framework, which then becomes your process for developing software, becoming your project methodology.
So, during an Agile Sprint, the team will brainstorm on what they want to achieve each week, these are called “user stories”, and then identify one important piece of work to achieve that week. Once the user story is complete, it is placed into a “backlog” of finished work. The reason for short development cycles is to keep your team focused on the task at hand and create an environment of continuous agile and Scrum online learning and improvement.
Sprints can vary in length from 2 to 4 weeks
In Scrum, each team member has a specific role based on experience level, which is not flexible throughout the project. This is often referred to as “role assignment”
Final Words
In a nutshell, Agile is a philosophy that promotes adaptive planning, evolutionary development and delivery, a time-boxed iterative approach, and a culture of collaboration, flexibility, and responding to change to achieve fast delivery of business value and customer satisfaction.
The central theme of an Agile approach is a regular cycle of closely-scoped incremental deliveries that are frequently released for adoption by customers or users.
So, if you have to choose one approach from these two, then go with Agile since it offers greater flexibility and adaptability than Scrum.