Agile For Scrum Masters

Prior to the 1990’s software development was very slow, often taking years to complete development and release the product to market. The industry was following a very formal approach for products and software development, with a lot of documentation, procedures, and approvals. There was no space for changes throughout the way, there was no time for it, which means no time to adapt when needed.

Although the development was very slow, the business needs were not. The business was changing really fast but the development couldn’t follow its velocity, which resulted in many projects being cancelled, products coming to market with outdated technology. Within this scenario, some people started thinking in a different way of developing products to be faster and in accordance with the business needs: that’s when Agile was conceived.

Why Agile?

While Agile is sometimes thought of as a software development project management approach, it isn’t just for these types of technology-centric companies. Instead, most business organizations can benefit from using Agile as well. Scrum Masters working in non-technology sectors of business can still benefit from getting companies to switch to Agile.

 Agile is great for companies that want to respond quickly and efficiently to opportunities, threats, and events that affect their company. With the landscape of business ever-changing, remaining flexible and responding efficiently to events can keep a company competitive.  Since teams work collaboratively and make decisions quickly, utilizing an agile approach to business can be very effective in staying ahead of the competition.

Difference between Agile and Waterfall

Waterfall is a heavy, hierarchical traditional project management approach that emphasizes procedures and documentation along with the software lifecycle. When a software is developed through Waterfall it’s going to follow basically six stages:

Requirements: the team will gather all the requirements for the software to be produced through meetings and interviews with stakeholders, including the customer.

Design: this stage is when the software is going to be designed, to translate the requirements into wireframes and user interfaces.

Implementation: phase to create the code to put into effect the software designed. This code is the essence of the software development, that is what gives ‘life’ to the software.

Testing: time to test the code created to make sure that everything works accordingly to the requirements and design.

Deployment: now the software is completed and tested and it can be placed on the market to be used.

Maintenance: the last stage is to fix and correct possible errors found down the road as well as to make improvements where needed.

In summary, Waterfall believes that each phase of the software development needs to be completed before the next phase can start, to deliver the whole product at once at the hand of ensuring that everything is well documented and approved by the stakeholders.

Now, the Agile values and principles has some contrasts to traditional project managment but also some similarities: it believes that is more important to produce small portions of the software and deliver it constantly, making room for changes throughout the way. It emphasizes people over processes, it gives the development team the autonomy needed so they can work according to their time estimation and knowledge.

The ‘Agile Scrum Master Training Course With 59 Seconds Training‘ is now available for free. This free Scrum Master Certified Online Training Course provides an in-depth understanding of the Agile Scrum Master roles and responsibilities, where you find out what a Scrum Master does and how to do it. During this free course you will learn all of the tools needed to succeed as an Agile Scrum Master.

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