“But isn’t that just doing mini-waterfalls?”, asked a recent attendee at one of our Agile Essentials courses.
Scrum requires the team do all the same type of activity they used to do in a Waterfall environment — analysis, design, build and testing their product. I showed the person the faster feedback cycles and the anti-patterns of waterfalling Sprints, but it still wasn’t enough for her.
What I needed was a side-by-side comparison that illustrated how each of these two methods handled different aspects of project management and delivery.
| Waterfall | Scrum |
| Schedule driven | Value driven |
| Plan creates the cost, schedule, estimates | Valued features drive estimates |
| Development is phase based and sequential | Development is iterative and incremental |
| Focus is predictive | Focus is adaptive |
| Demonstrate progress by reporting on activity and stage gateways | Demonstrate progress by delivering valued features every two weeks |
| Product quality at the end after extensive test/fix activities | Quality is built in with upfront standards |
| Batches are large (frequently 100%) | Optimises smaller, economically sensible, batch sizes for speed of delivery of valued features |
| Critical learning applies on one major analyse-design-build-test loop | Leverages multiple concurrent learning loops |
| Process is tolerant of late learning | Work is organised for fast feedback |
| Handovers between analyse-design-build-test phases with knowledge stored in documents | Cross-functional team with knowledge of the product invested in the whole team through shared experiences |
For me, the main difference in comparing the two methods is:
- Scrum is value driven, where the plan is formed around the question “what is the most valuable item we can deliver today”
- Waterfall produces a plan from which costs, schedule and estimates are created
If I wanted to deliver value to clients and stakeholders, Scrum is the method I would choose.
M
