“Scrum is a simple yet incredibly powerful set of principles and practices that help teams deliver products in short cycles, enabling fast feedback, continual improvement, and rapid adaptation to change. As the leading Agile development framework, Scrum has predominantly been used for software development, but it is also proving to be effective in efforts far beyond.” –ScrumAlliance
As you all may or may not know, Scrum is taking the “working world” by storm. Generally companies will use one of many different “Software Development Life Cycles”. Two of the biggest being Waterfall and Agile. Waterfall is a methodology follows the following steps:
In these steps, everything is done systematically and in order, and once you move onto the next step, there is not going back. In the end, everything falls into the completed shippable product like a “waterfall” through step by step documentation and a rigid process.
The Agile Scrum methodology differs in many ways from the Waterfall methodology, and because of this, newer companies are following the Certified Scrum Agile methodology while older companies are switching over to this new and improved method as well.
Of the many differences between the Agile Scrum method and the Waterfall method, there are a few extremely large differences. For one, there is a lot more communication between the different internal sectors of a company within the Scrum methodology. The developmental team as a whole talks and brainstorms together before going ahead and taking any steps, whereas in the Waterfall method, every department has their own list of tasks and follows those tasks without any sort of communication outside of their own department. This causes problems because if there is an issue in one department, it isn’t relayed to the other departments which causes a domino effect. Another major difference between the two methodologies is the flexibility that is available in the progression of the project. The team is able to move from step to step and go back and fix errors without having to start over from the top and progress through the steps. Also, since in the Agile Scrum methodology, you have the flexibility to complete steps in iterations, this also decreases the amount of time that you need to spend completing each step, which in turn decreases the amount of time required for the entire project overall.
Now some large well- known companies that have switched over to the Scrum framework include: Salesforce, Accenture, Vendesk, AutoZone, Wells Fargo, Walmart, Symantec, etc…so what do you say, are you ready to become Scrum certified?