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Traditional project management emphasizes on conducting detailed upfront planning for the project with emphasis on fixing the scope, cost and schedule – and managing those parameters. Whereas, Scrum encourages data-based, iterative decision making in which the primary focus is on delivering products that satisfy customer requirements.

To deliver the greatest amount of value in the shortest amount of time, Scrum promotes prioritization and Time-boxing over fixing the scope, cost and schedule of a project. An important feature of Scrum is self-organization, which allows the individuals who are actually doing the work to estimate and take ownership of tasks.

Following table summarizes many of the differences between Scrum and traditional project management:

In traditionally managed projects, Change management is closely related to Configuration Management. The tolerances will be defined within which the Project Manager can manage the day-to-day activities and decisions of the project. The basis for considering the changes will be their magnitude of variation from a baseline value. Also, it needs approval from several people. Responding to change becomes extremely complicated since you need to do lot of documentation and seek approvals.

Change in Scrum works very differently as compared to Traditional Project Management. Scrum is a simple framework which believes in responding quickly to changes in business environment and the ability to respond to changes is one of the reasons that made Scrum popular. The Scrum framework is highly flexible and enables managing changes effectively and efficiently. The Product Owner is responsible for getting the Product Backlog ready and prioritizing the items in the Product Backlog. The Scrum Master and the development team will use the Product Backlog as the basis for planning the Sprints based on the priority of the items listed.

In complex projects, the customers may not have a concrete idea regarding what the end product should look like and what are their actual requirements. Whenever there is a problem or new requirement that needs to be addressed immediately and mandates a change affecting the current Sprint, the Product Owner terminates the Sprint, with approval from relevant business stakeholders. Once terminated, the Sprint will be re-planned and restarted to incorporate the new requirements.

However, if the problem or change is not major and does not warrant a change within the current Sprint, the change will be added to the Prioritized Product Backlog and incorporated into the planning for a subsequent Sprint. Scrum projects are completed in an iterative manner delivering value throughout the project lifecycle. In large projects, various cross-functional teams work in parallel across Sprints, delivering potentially shippable solutions at the end of each sprint.

Scrum vs. Traditional Project Management Approach in Delivering Value

Before we discuss the Scrum and Traditional approaches assessing and maintaining business justification for a project, let’s understand some of the key differences between these two types of methodologies.

The emphasis in traditional Project Management is to conduct detailed upfront planning for the project with emphasis on fixing the scope, cost, and schedule and managing those parameters. Traditional project management may at times lead to a situation where the plan has succeeded yet the customer is not satisfied.

The Scrum framework is founded on the belief that the knowledge workers of today can offer much more than just their technical expertise, and that trying to fully map out and plan for an ever-changing environment is not efficient. Therefore, Scrum encourages data-based, iterative decision making. In Scrum, the primary focus is on delivering products that satisfy customer requirements in small iterative shippable increments.

Now, let’s discuss how Scrum approach is different from Traditional approaches to deliver value through projects. Scrum aims to deliver the greatest amount of value in the shortest amount of time. Scrum promotes prioritization and Time-boxing over fixing the scope, cost, and schedule of a project. An important feature of Scrum is self-organization, which allows the individuals who are actually doing the work to estimate and take ownership of tasks.

Unlike in Traditional approach, in Scrum projects, extensive long-term planning is not done prior to project execution. Planning is done in an iterative manner before each Sprint. This allows quick and effective response to change, which results in lower costs and ultimately increased profitability and Return on Investment (ROI). Moreover, value-driven delivery (section 4.3) is a key benefit of the Scrum framework and provides significantly better prioritization and quicker realization of business value. Because of the iterative nature of Scrum development, there is always at least one release of the product with Minimum Marketable Features (MMF) available. Even if a project is terminated, there are usually some benefits or value created prior to termination.