Under the Umbrella of Agile

September 12, 2008

More and more, the term “agile” is being used by organizations to describe “the way they work.” But what does that actually mean? Agile is an umbrella term for various frameworks and methods that use adaptive planning and iterative, incremental development to manage projects. In that sense, agile methods all originate from a reaction to waterfall (i.e. traditional, sequential development), which assumed that all of a project’s requirements can be staked out immediately and will require no scope or tactical revision once development begins. Some of the most popular agile methods include Extreme Programming, DSDM, and Scrum, which I’ll discuss in this post.

Because the waterfall process is rigid to the point of inflexibility, it is termed a “heavyweight” process. Scrum, conversely, attempts to be, as the term suggests, agile. That is, Scrum removes unnecessary processes, opting instead for a “lightweight” framework that empowers teams with the flexibility to react nimbly to emerging business conditions. In fact, Scrum actually has very few rules. It whittles development down to a few roles, meetings, and artifacts and an abbreviated, repeatable work cycle, called a Sprint. Whereas a waterfall project management is linear, stretching infinitely forward until release, Scrum is more like a continuous feedback loop. The entirety of the development cycle is condensed into a single increment with Scrum, which is then repeated until the release is ready to ship.

Scrum challenges team to create a potentially shippable increment of work each Sprint. Early on in development, that might amount to some very, very basic coding, but the important thing is that the team produces some functionality. This mandate is especially helpful in ensuring that teams are continually making demonstrable progress. Even if a team heads in the wrong direction, the brevity of the Sprint cadence means that when teams fail, they fail fast. This is a good thing. Since the team meets with the Product Owner to assess the project’s direction at the end of each Sprint, the team can never get too far off-track. In a waterfall project, where requirements are fixed, there is no process for this kind of ongoing inspection of goals. Thus Scrum’s iterative nature not only helps organizations save time and money, but it also helps them create products that their customers truly want.

posted by: agile project management

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Written by admin · Filed Under Agile Project Management, Scrum 

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