- So far, you've heard me use terms
such as the product owner, sprints,
Scrum Master, and the product backlog.
These are common terms that you'll hear
with most Agile teams,
but these terms are not part of the Agile Manifesto.
These terms are actually from Scrum,
which is the most popular Agile framework.
The developers of Scrum were a key part of the group
that helped write the Agile Manifesto,
but the Manifesto doesn't prescribe Scrum.
In fact, it goes out of it's way
to generalize Agile methods into a larger mindset.
So Agile is a mindset
while Scrum is a way to help you embrace that mindset.
Think of it this way.
A lot of people like to be physically fit,
so they jog or swim or take long bike rides.
These are all different ways
that you can achieve better fitness.
You can even improve your fitness
by mixing and matching some of these methods
and doing something completely different.
Agile, like fitness, is a mindset
while jogging and biking are methods you can try
to help you embrace that mindset.
Some people even try a fitness framework,
maybe something like CrossFit or aerobics.
These mix and match jogging, running or biking
into a larger framework.
Scrum and Agile are basically doing the same thing.
Agile is a mindset and Scrum is a framework
to help you embrace that mindset.
So in a sense, Scrum is to Agile
in the same way that something like aerobics is to fitness.
Now like aerobics, Scrum is not the only Agile framework,
but it does work in a way that's slightly different
from other frameworks.
Scrum describes itself
as an empirical process control framework.
The empirical side means that Scrum runs experiments
to improve the product.
The shorthand for this
is that Scrum teams inspect and adapt.
They inspect the product and then adapt quickly
if they need to make changes.
So a Scrum team might learn something new
and then work with the customer
to quickly improve the product.
As of today, Scrum is the most widely used Agile framework.
That's partly because Scrum is very lightweight.
A Scrum team only has three roles
and should only have five events,
and then there are just a few outputs
for what Scrum calls artifacts.
There's not much to it,
and so, Scrum teams have a lot of flexibility
in what they like to do with the framework.
Because Scrum is so popular,
a lot of the language became the default terms
for Agile teams.
That gets a little confusing because you'll have Agile teams
that are using Scrum terms,
but not actually practicing Scrum.
But even with this mix-up,
most teams have settled on these terms.
So even though you should remember
that Scrum and Agile are different,
you should expect to run into these terms
when you start to work on your Agile teams.