Did you know that 59% of project managers work on two to five projects at a time? Working on a single project is stressful enough, especially if it’s complicated. Imagine the level of expertise and dedication you must have to manage five of these projects.
Project management methodologies make such workload manageable most of the time. You’ve probably heard of agile and scrum if you’ve been in the industry for some time.
These two approaches have many similarities. This explains why people confuse them sometimes. In reality, agile and scrum are distinct concepts.
So, are you interested in knowing the differences between them? Dive in for more information.
Agile Methodology
Agile is a project management philosophy that adopts the iterative approach for the completion of projects. The goal of this approach is to design an early and measurable ROI using a defined iterative delivery of the project’s features.
The adoption of the iterative process necessitates that you continuously involve a client at all stages of the project. This ensures the expectations of the client and the project manager are aligned throughout. It also makes it possible for the project manager to adapt to changes during the process.
In essence, agile is centered on specific principles and values that you can apply to other specific methodologies. Think of it as a guiding orientation for how project managers approach their work.
Many project management methodologies are used to implement agile’s philosophy. The common ones are extreme programming, Kanban, and agile scrum framework.
Scrum Project Management
This is one of the popular agile methodologies for project managers. So, it’s easy to see where the confusion that fuels the agile and scrum debate comes from. If one is a subset of the other, how can they be different?
Understand that scrum is a specific methodology for managing projects. It consists of a project team made up of a leader, the project owner, scrum master, and cross-functional team members.
The owner makes sure that the team maximizes the product’s value while the scrum master ensures the project team sticks to the scrum methodology.
Agile and Scrum: What Are the Differences?
Agile scrum appears the same on the surface because both methodologies use iterative processes, and they rely on frequent client involvement in the process. However, agile is a management philosophy with a key set of principles, while scrum is a particular agile methodology for facilitating a project.
That’s the main difference between the two. Other differences include:
- Agile delivers everything at the end of a project while scrum breaks down processes to brief sprints with small deliverables
- Leadership plays an integral role in the agile process, while scrum favors working with teams that self-organize
- Agile keeps the design and execution of a project simple, while scrum encourages innovation during the design and execution of a project
Level Up With an Agile Scrum Certification
You should start thinking of how to apply agile and scrum approaches now that you have a clear understanding of what they are and how they work together. It shouldn’t be a question of whether to go for the agile or scrum approach considering the differences between the two.
Instead, go for both since scrum methodology is a subset of agile. The skills you’ll acquire will help you manage more projects in a fast and efficient way.
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