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Jose Duarte on the differences between Agile and Scrum

There is a certain amount of confusion between Agile and Scrum. Numerous groups and organizations portray their activities as Scrum or Agile essentially on the grounds that they are popular phrases in software development. However, it’s important to point out that a team can be Agile-based without practicing Scrum, but cannot practice Scrum without being Agile. Longtime entrepreneur and Scrum Master Jose Duarte explains some of the key differences between the two.

Agile can be defined as the implementation of methods that produce or promote a disciplined project management process that emphasizes frequent adaptation and inspection. It is a set of standards that help a software development team maintain cohesion, organization and efficiency.

Agile is focused on streamlining processes to make teams more efficient. It also recommends that teams do away with unnecessary documentation (i.e. paperwork, forms, files, etc.) that takes up time that could be used for more valuable projects. Scrum teams must follow these guidelines as they manage their backlogs and develop new software during Sprint sessions.

Scrum is training that is a subset of Agile. Explains Duarte, “Consider Agile as a smartphone brand, such as Samsung, and Scrum as a model – the Galaxy S, for example. Scrum is a method of implementing the principles of Agile through a project management system that enables teams to accomplish their goals.”

The objective of Agile and Scrum is to enable you to achieve more by hyper-concentrating on the jobs that need to be done and actualizing an operational framework that is both efficient and organized. Basically, Agile will enable a group to construct a lot of standards to take care of business, and Scrum is an approach to execute those standards effectively.

Groups that execute Agile into their product improvement will think that it is beneficial for productivity and maintaining organization. “Both of these strategies will streamline the basic leadership process and advancement tasks, so it is up to the group to choose whether or not they need to pursue the Scrum structure, as well,” asserts Duarte.

Remember that teams can employ Agile and not Scrum, but it is not possible to employ Scrum without being Agile. This is due to the fact that Agile is a mindset and a lot of standards, though Scrum is an activity intend to actualize those rules.

Agile is an approach to get tasks done and Scrum is an approach to complete tasks. Putting both of these into training will require some serious energy and arranging. A portion of the standards of Agile may not work out easily for every group, and it’s conceivable that changing project management strategies to adhere to the framework of Scrum might only be possible through trial and error.

Utilizing an online project management system can enable the business to effectively make the transition to Agile processes. Organizations that executed an online project management solution discovered that team communication increased by 100% and that output quality improved by just under 45%. Additionally, more projects were able to be completed on time and within budgetary constraints. With results like these, most organizations would be smart to execute collaborative tools that are developed to consolidate project management processes.

Adds Duarte, “The most effortless approach to separate these two ideas is to excuse it like this: Agile clarifies why; Scrum clarifies how.” In the modern working environment, a team can only be as productive as the system it has in place. It isn’t difficult to understand why a lot of individuals confuse Agile and Scrum or use them interchangeably. There are a number of overlaps between the two and they both follow the same guidelines, but they are two completely separate approaches to develop that work in two completely different ways.