Agile is a movement that provides alternatives to traditional project managerial methods. With the help of Agile, a team can gauge risks and prepare for unpredictable problems that are likely to arise in the course of your project. They achieve this through sprints, a time boxed effort that is assigned a particular duration, usually a small interval of time. With each sprint, a team is capable of hitting deadlines faster and more efficiently.
Scrum is a convenient way of using Agile in project management, specially designed for software development. Though Scrum is technically a software development methodology, it can be considered a framework to manage a process.
In simpler words, Scrum, with its flexibility and simplicity, is the basic way you can implement Agile into your project management.
With that said, the question arises, “Is it possible to implement the Agile movement without knowing or using Scrum while managing your projects?”
It most certainly is!
Agile Without Scrum
Even though Scrum is the most sought-after project management technique, it is essentially a part of Agile. Scrum is just a method of implementing Agile practices into a project.
Scrum was introduced in the recent past and organisations started “doing Scrum” only about fifteen years ago. This shows that software development companies were using Agile techniques in their managerial strategies and project advancements.
Here are some points you can consider to base your projects entirely on Agile, without any traces of Scrum.
Good Things Come In Small Packages
If you want to achieve success without Scrum, you’ll have to keep your projects small with moderate visions.
In order to achieve this, keep your team compact. When a project has a small goal, it’s best to make it a short-term goal, so that you can move on to achieve success in other aspects and projects of the organisation.
Whether it’s the time, the goal, or the number of people involved in the project—keeping it to a minimum helps provide a convenient workflow in project management.
One Speaker
Since there’s a constraint on the number of people on your team, you can assign the work of an intermediary to a sole person who can look after the business needs as well as the particular requirements of the product’s probable users. The speaker can keep in touch with development managers and product owners and make necessary changes in the workflow process of the project.
Frequent Meetings On Planning
Since the aim of the project is small, you don’t require exceptional planning strategies involving a number of factors, resources, and time. A short meeting once a week might suffice to discuss the goals to be achieved at the end of the week, the important elements to keep in mind when carrying out the process, and tasks with a higher priority that need to be completed first. You can also discuss any problems that the team might be facing in order to overcome it and maintain harmony amongst the team members.
Reviews
This is a crucial thing to do irrespective of the volume of the project. Review the project as a team frequently and see what new changes have to be inculcated in the orientation of the workflow towards the target, with no compromise on quality.
You can also identify which areas of production require attention and improve the overall quality of the project.
Most of these strategies may seem similar to Scrum practices, but are naturally occurring practices that meet Agile standards. With a smaller team, the members develop self-organising skills that help in the improvement of the product and a gradual advancement of the project as well as organisation.
While most companies and employees find the Scrum methodology convenient, easy to use, and time-saving, it is quite possible to use just the Agile practices in project management.
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