Quality
7 min
Agile and Scrum have become two of the most popular project development methodologies among software engineers. Do you know which option will help your team meet its project and sprint goals? We've put together the following comparison to help you choose between agile and Scrum.
Agile is a management framework that takes a continuously iterative approach to software development. Agile software development breaks large projects into smaller tasks that managers can track from beginning to end.
The development cycle rarely moves linearly, though, because cross-functional teams build and test features simultaneously.
When agile teams find any barriers to functionality, they can quickly switch tracks to solve the issue and complete deliverables as promptly as possible.
According to the Agile Manifesto, some critical principles of agile project management include:
Does any of this sound familiar? Agile contributed a lot of concepts to DevOps, so you might already incorporate some of its processes into your development process.
Read our earlier blog post to learn more about the similarities and differences between agile and DevOps.
An agile approach to software development projects can benefit teams in several ways. Some of the reasons software developers choose agile methods include:
These benefits only work when managers know how to follow agile principles properly. Before adopting the agile framework, teams should address common reasons agile fails, including:
Knowing these common reasons for failure should make it easier for you to anticipate challenges and make the necessary changes for successful sprints.
Successful use cases for agile usually involve projects that:
Some people get confused when comparing agile and Scrum because Scrum is a type of agile methodology. Scrum projects tend to expect more unknown factors and accept innovations from self-organizing, cross-functional teams.
It might help to think of scrum processes as even more flexible versions of the agile philosophy.
It still uses iterative development, frequent sprint reviews, and short programming increments, but it gives teams more freedom to experiment and adapt to the challenges they encounter.
Scrum is special because it creates a reliable structure within which teams can experiment to find effective processes. Scrum framework's essential stages include:
After the spring review, the product gets sent to a sprint retrospective, where it undergoes additional testing and, when necessary, gets recommitted to the sprint backlog. The product can also get recommitted to the product backlog created by the client.
Within the Scrum team, you have a product owner (the client), a scrum master, and developers.
Scrum masters serve as mentors, cheerleaders, and planners. They aren't "project managers" in the typical sense because they work as a part of the team instead of standing outside of the group.
They do, however, have important managerial roles to play. The Scrum Master's roles include:
You might want to choose Scrum when you:
Agile and Scrum and their unique pros and cons to consider before applying them to project development.
Some common benefits of using Agile include:
Some disadvantages of using agile include:
Common benefits of choosing Scrum include:
Disadvantages of using Scrum include:
Implementing the best project management methodology often requires a deep understanding of what your team members, stakeholders, and end-users expect.
We have worked with companies around the world, so we can compare the key differences of project management methodologies like agile, Scrum, waterfall, and kanban to find the option that suits your development process best.
Reach out to our team to gain insights into how you can overcome the drawbacks of traditional project management to improve workflows, meet your product development goals on time, and resolve customer needs.