Scrum vs. Agile

Scrum and Agile are interchangeable, but not the same.

Agile acts as a philosophy, mindset or value system as an approach to work. Scrum is one of Agile frameworks. It consists of three key roles in the team, Scrum-focused events, artifacts, and successful outcomes.?

The Team?

The three key roles in a Scrum team are the Product Owner, the Scrum Master and the Development Team.?

The Product Owner (PO) is the business representative; the emissary between the stakeholders/customers and the team. They define the priority of tasks.?

The Scrum Master ensures the team is following the Scrum framework, is working effectively and efficiently, also identifies impediments, or blockers.?

The Development Team usually includes five to nine people and they just get the work done.?They are not managed by anybody; they are rather a self-organizing body and determine together the best way to complete the work.?

The Five Scrum Events

• Sprint. It is a timebox lasting somewhere from one to four weeks, usually two weeks long, and is used as a development window.?
• Sprint Planning. In this event, the PO shares the highest priority tasks and the development team selects the items that it confidently believes they can complete within the sprint.?
• Daily scrum. Each team member shares what they did the day before, their plan for the ongoing day, and current issues on those daily sync-ups.?
• Sprint review meeting. In those meetings, the team demonstrates everything they completed in the sprint and gets feedback from the PO and stakeholders. The “Completed” status implies the work has been fully done, no need to get to it again, and is ready to be used by customers.?
• Sprint retrospective. Time to reflect on improvements and discuss what went well, what did not go so well, and how to perform better in the next sprint.?

Scrum Artifacts

Do you know what these are? I didn’t either. Well, because Scrum is a project framework based on transparency and feedback, it defines three artifacts that are open for anyone and everyone to review.

• Product backlog. It is an order of prioritized work to be done for a product. It is managed by the PO (of course) and as the work goes on, items can be added, removed, and reordered in the backlog.?
• Sprint backlog. This one is a subset of the product backlog. As the team completes sprint planning, they'll have a list of the work items to be done in the sprint.?
• The increment. A list created each sprint and consists of the work completed in the current sprint plus all the work completed in the previous sprints.?

Does The Scrum Method Lead To Success?

Just like Agile, Scrum isn't just for software development anymore. It is utilized in every type of industry and has acted as the leading Agile framework for many years now. One of the reasons for it is its simplicity. It only requires three roles, three artifacts, and five events. To stick to the structure, the whole team has to read the 20-page Scrum guide and you're ready to get started.?

The psychological side of the method is healthy and helps get work done. People with different skills create a shared vision which becomes a purpose that drives daily interactions. The shared purpose combined with short deadlines creates a sense of urgency which brings to? accomplishing something. It just works.?