What is Agile?

The Agile methodology simply recognizes that we generally cannot accurately foresee all of the tasks involved in a complex operation and that we should adjust to meet our improved understanding as the project progresses. Agile welcomes change, as it brings improvement. In contrast, Waterfall, which is the methodology that tries to foresee everything and sees change as the enemy, has been responsible for some of the biggest project failures and cost overruns in history, particularly in software development.

What is Scrum?

Scrum is a method of implementing the Agile methodology. The term comes from Rugby football, where in the scrum, a team of players lends their combined efforts to move forward towards a goal. In the project world, the "team" can be any number from one lone developer to hundreds of developers spread across multiple countries. For this exercise, we will be looking at teams of one. A lone developer.

It can definitely be applied to your project.

What Do All These Scrum Terms Mean?

There are many complex ways of documenting a Scrum project. As might be expected, something that is used to control multi-million dollar projects has many ways of tailoring itself to their requirements.

We are looking at the other end of the scale, so we are after simplification.

We will use the bare minimum of the factors needed to maintain a Scrum project.

See the next lesson for some important terms used in Scrum and their meanings.