Agile and Scrum: Love 'em or Loathe 'em?

Michael R. Wood is a Business Process Improvement & IT Strategist Independent Consultant. He is creator of the business process-improvement methodology called HELIX and founder of The Natural Intelligence Group, a strategy, process improvement and technology consulting company. He is also a CPA, has served as an Adjunct Professor in Pepperdine's Management MBA program, an Associate Professor at California Lutheran University, and on the boards of numerous professional organizations. Mr. Wood is a sought after presenter of HELIX workshops and seminars in both the U.S. and Europe.

  Agile   Scrum  

Depending how you interpret the title of this article might set your frame of mind in one of two directions. “Agile and Scrum: Why Not?” might conjure up images of an article focused on reasons not to use these frameworks, or it might beg the thought, “Why would anyone not want to use these proven frameworks?” In actuality, this article will focus on both.

Just to make sure we are on the same page, let’s set forth a definition of Agile and Scrum frameworks:

“Agile software development is a group of software development methodologies based on iterative and incremental development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams. It promotes adaptive planning, evolutionary development and delivery, a time-boxed iterative approach, and encourages rapid and flexible response to change. It is a conceptual framework that promotes foreseen interactions throughout the development cycle.” (from Wikipedia)

“Scrum is an innovative approach to getting work done. Scrum is an agile framework for completing complex projects. Scrum originally was formalized for software development projects, but works well for any complex, innovative scope of work. The possibilities are endless.”(from Scrum Alliance)

For me, Scrum is like Agile--only structured and more focused…

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