Advantages and Disadvantages of Scrum

What are the Advantages and Disadvantages of Scrum?

Scrum is a well-known framework that is managed well for creative as well as sophisticated projects of product development. It is a framework in which development teams can solve their complex adaptive problems, and have a creative and productive product of high quality. In other words, it can be said that it is a lightweight framework developed to support people, organizations, companies, and teams to create a product for complex problems. Nevertheless, it also has some drawbacks too. Before getting into advantages and disadvantages let’s get more information about how the framework of Scrum works.

A Brief Overview of the Scrum Framework

Simply, Scrum needs a Scrum Master to support an environment where:

  1. The Product Owner prepares a Product Backlog, especially when a list of tasks is required to be prioritized.
  2. The task list is turned into an increment of value by the Scrum Team during a Sprint Planning Meeting and the list is broken down into sections that can be more practically carried out.
  3. The Scrum Team analyzes the results, modifies and adjusts them for the next Sprint. This is followed by planning the implementation.
  4. The team chooses the time span for each sprint where the most common time periods are two weeks.
  5. The team gathers together every day to hold a short meeting to make each member know the progress of the project.
  6. The Scrum Master makes the team keep focused and cheered up.
  7. The stakeholders and the product owner manage a review at the end of each sprint.

This whole cycle is followed by a development project carried out by the Scrum team.

Typically, a Scrum Team follows this process many times in a product development project. The Scrum Roles – Product Owner, the Scrum Team, and the Scrum Master come together to manage important ceremonies of Scrum.

The Scrum Master

Scrum Masters are the professionals for Scrum within their teams. Their roles include coaching and supporting teams and product owners, as well as running the business on the scrum process. A good working scrum master thoroughly comprehends what the team is working on and, thus can aid them to optimize their transparency in project management and speed of delivery flow. As the Scrum master, he/she arranges the required schedules with necessary resources. These are done for improving sprint review, the sprint retrospective, and sprint planning.

Before discussing the advantages and disadvantages of Scrum, let’s take a look at Scrum Ceremonies and Artifacts.



Scrum Ceremonies

In order to form consistency and regularity, and thus to minimize the need for further meetings events are used in Scrum. All events have a finite time and once a Sprint starts, its time period is fixed. As long as it is ensured that an appropriate amount of time is arranged without any waste, the remaining events may end once the aim of the event is achieved. Below there is a list of the Scrum Ceremonies;

  • Sprint Planning
  • Sprint Review
  • Sprint Retrospective
  • Daily Scrum

Scrum Artifacts

In order to represent the work done and provide transparency and other chances for analyzing and adaptations, Scrum’s artifacts are carried out. Artifacts held by Scrum are especially created to boost the transparency of significant information. Below there is a list of the Scrum Artifacts are:

  • Sprint Backlog
  • Product Backlog
  • Increment

Advantages and Disadvantages of Scrum

Agile methodologies allow team members to review and adjust their plans depending on the situation. One of the most important benefits that Scrum Framework provides is delivering products with the highest possible value. On the other hand, Scrum has some disadvantages. Let’s analyze the advantages and disadvantages of Scrum in detail.

Advantages of Scrum

Below, there are reasons why the framework is so well-known nowadays. Scrum can help teams carry out project deliveries in a fast and effective way.

  • Scrum helps to deliver the product the highest possible value
  • Scrum can help teams carry out project deliveries in a fast and effective way
  • Scrum makes sure that money and time are used efficiently
  • Large and complex projects can be separated into practically manageable parts
  • Improvements analyzed during the sprint review
  • Scrum works well for dynamic and fast-moving project improvement
  • Scrum meetings allow the team to have neat visibility
  • Scrum is agile as it takes and comprehends feedback given by customers and stakeholders
  • Brief meetings allow shifts to depend on feedback more practically
  • During daily scrum meetings the effort of each individual member is visible

Disadvantages of Scrum

However, nothing is perfect, and Scrum is not an exception. Similar to every framework, scrum also has some disadvantages. In some issues, Scrum can be integrated with other techniques of project management which can help to solve some of these drawbacks:

  • Scrum often causes scope creep. That is because of the deficiency of a definite end-date.
  • If team members do not work cooperatively then the probability of the failure of the project is high
  • It is very challenging to adopt the framework of Scrum in large teams
  • Only experienced team members can be successful in the framework
  • Meetings held every day can sometimes disappoint team members
  • A very huge problem will arise if any team member leaves the project in the middle of the progress
  • Quality is difficult to achieve until the team undergoes a tough testing process



Conclusion

As mentioned above, Scrum has both advantages and disadvantages. Not surprisingly, with proper planning and smart decision-making, you can get rid of the drawbacks mentioned above. For instance, in larger teams, each member is required to have certain roles and responsibilities with certain goals. In this way, there will not be any quality and excuse failure so that the team will be kept focused on the goal. What is more, the Scrum Master requires to coach the team efficiently to prevent any failures and assure project success of 100%. Also, there are more than 100 books about Scrum on the market as well as tons of articles, papers, and presentations.

What do you think about the advantages and disadvantages of Scrum? Share your insights with us through the comments section below.

Further Reading

scrum.org

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3 Comments
  1. Avatar for Alex Shadwell
    Alex Shadwell 3 years ago

    Scrum is helpful in being organized but requires experienced people to be together.

  2. Avatar for Deisy STEPHANS
    Deisy STEPHANS 3 years ago

    Growing business and companies being need a tight following for everything and scrum does this so it is hard job and background hero job.

  3. Avatar for Linda Rochelle
    Linda Rochelle 3 years ago

    Scrum ensures efficient use of time and money but scrum often leads to scope creep, due to the lack of a definite end-date.

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