Is Scrum a Project Management Methodology? Part II
I had a couple of interesting comments on my last post where I used definitions from both the Scrum Alliance and PMI to compare Scrum project management, projects, and project managers. When looking at definitions I couldn’t help but come to the conclusion that Scrum is very much like a project management methodology. The people who commented disagreed with me, but then I didn’t expect any different. I almost disagreed with me … I just let the definitions lead me to a conclusion.
There is more to Scrum and to project management than definitions., though. While I do think that Scrum can be partially understood from a project management perspective, I don’t think that’s the end of the story. Maybe that’s the crux of it — it’s not necessarily that Scrum simply isn’t a project management methodology, but that it is much more than a project management methodology. Defining it as such may only constrain people’s perceptions of it.
Scrum provides a way to define the work that you want to get done (the product backlog), a way to track that work (the sprint backlog and velocity), and way to predict when it will be done (sprint capacity and release planning), and some roles for people who aid in the process. I still say this is how Scrum is like project management.
So how is it more?
Scrum is a process improvement methodology. This has nothing to do with project management. Scrum is about continuous improvement, continuously questioning and redefining goals, and continuously ensuring you’re only doing the most valuable work. It’s also about constantly examining and exposing dysfunction at the team and organizational level.
Scrum is a team organization philosophy – that philosophy is that teams should self-organize and self-manage. They also play a role in determine what work should get done, and they decide how it will get done. This goes way beyond anything traditional project management looks at.
Scrum gives IT a new way to interact with customers. While project management techniques define certain roles around the PM, sponsor, functional manager, et cetera, they don’t address how an IT group can effectively interact with customer or the business. Scrum provides some great ideas here around stand-ups, product owners, and story valuation and prioritization that have nothing to with with project management.
Scrum is … I’m sure I’ve missed a few, but I think I’m getting the point across.
So, is Scrum a project management methodology? For me the final answer is yes and no. There are parts that can be viewed that way, but it goes so far beyond that that it may be misleading to describe it as such.
I’m going to take the elevator pitch approach … if you have 30 seconds in an elevator with an executive, how would you explain scrum, XP, agile… etc.
See here: http://blog.versionone.net/blog/2008/03/the-agile-eleva.html – by Mike Cottmeyer.
I see scrum as the PM tilt of Agile, and XP as the engineering practice tilt of agile. Is there more? Certainly. But I recall Uncle Bob’s team saying several times that Scrum is the box, and XP is the contents.
Once you grab people’s attention or start experiencing it yourself… you can start making the further arguments about the finer points.
Thinking about things in this way certainly does make the elevator speech more difficult — it’s probably something I should work on, now that “it’s an agile project management methodology” doesn’t necessarily cut it — although I wouldn’t be against using that if it served my purpose at the time.
I’m not that knowledgeable about XP that’s an interesting perspective. It makes sense from what I do know of it.