The Project Manager's Guide to Mastering Agile, 2nd Edition

3Scrum Overview

SCRUM HAS BECOME RAPIDLY ACCEPTED as the most widely used agile approach:

• It provides a good general foundation that can be adapted to fit a very broad range of projects. Scrum is also not limited to software development, but that is where it is most widely used at the current time.
• For that reason, much of the discussion in this book will be focused on software development, but it should be understood that Agile and Scrum are not limited to software development. For example, I used a Scrum approach to plan and organize the writing of this book.

It should be noted that Scrum, in itself, is considered by some to be more of a product development framework rather than a project framework because it does not explicitly include any project planning/initiation/startup activities or project closeout phases/activities that would normally be required when using Scrum in a project context. Although these activities are not explicitly defined by Scrum, they can easily be added to extend Scrum for project work.

Scrum, is, by definition, an empirical process as opposed to a “defined and predictive process.” The following is how these two types of processes are different:

1. Empirical process: The empirical process control model was defined to exercise or control the process via following some frequent adaptations as well as frequent inspections.
   • It works best in situations with high levels of uncertainty where it is difficult, if not impossible, to clearly define the solution ...