Difference between Scrum and other Agile methods?

Question

Hey guys, I am looking to introduce an agile method to my boss so that we could hopefully implement it at our work place. I've been doing a lot of research yet I can't find what makes it standout from other agile methods. I am thinking maybe it is the consistent meetings or is it the heavy reliance on artifacts? Please let me know. Thanks!

Answer 1

Look on wikipedia. The scrum agile method is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_%28development%29

Here is another stackoverflow question that tells the difference between scrum and extreme programming (XP). Mountain Goat Software also goes into this.

This tells the difference between waterfall, iterative waterfall, scrum and lean software development if you want a wider view.

Answer 2

I'd try not to get bogged down in the little differences in the different approaches. It's perfectly legitimate to pick and choose the practices that you think will fit best into your workplace or environment, or the ones that will be easiest to convince your boss (and team) to adopt. You don't have to be dogmatic about just doing SCRUM or XP or whatever.

The key things I would try to implement (but YMMV)

• group planning
• daily stand ups
• time boxed iterations
• end of iteration reviews

If I was trying to convince my reluctant boss or team, I'd probably start with daily stand ups. They are low-cost/low-effort, and if done well should help the team gel a little more with understanding what everyone else is doing and what the roadblocks are.

Answer 3

I suggest you take a look at these articles:

Managing an Agile Software Project
Introduction to Scrum

Grz, Kris.

Answer 4

Scrum is focused on how to manage a project, particularly with respect to planning and estimation.

XP (Extreme Programming) is focused on technical excellence and quality within the project, and keeping the cost of change low.

Think of each of them as a toolbox, where one toolbox doesn't build a house. Scrum relies on a low cost of change in order for its measurements of velocity and its estimation off the back of them to be accurate - but it doesn't actually provide the methods for this to work. XP has most of Scrum contained within its practices, though some Scrum techniques like breaking stories into tasks can be useful for teams who are learning.

Even together, you may find that they don't provide quite enough tools for adaptive planning, large-scale organisational change, cultural change, good recruitment practices, and the many other inputs to an Agile team which often get left out of methodologies.

I'd aim for a combination of Scrum with XP, and you might like to look into Lean, Kanban, BDD and Feature Injection while you're at it - there are some useful tools there too.

As for starting, here are my two core practices:

• Try to deliver some software (showcase or release every couple of weeks)
• Work out why that was hard and what to do about it (retrospectives).

Good luck!