Scrum - Advantages and Disadvantage

Imagine navigating through a bustling marketplace, where every vendor represents a different task and every customer is a stakeholder waiting for their needs to be met. Just as a skilled merchant adapts to the ever-changing demands of the market, Scrum enables teams to efficiently manage their projects in a dynamic environment. Understanding Scrum advantages and disadvantages is crucial for anyone looking to adopt this methodology.

In this blog, we'll explore the multifaceted nature of Scrum, delving into its numerous advantages and uncovering the potential challenges. By understanding the Scrum advantages and disadvantages, you can determine if this Agile Project Management framework is the right fit for your team, helping you deliver impressive results and maintain a competitive edge.

Table of Contents 

1) What are the Advantages of Scrum? 

   a) Adaptable approach 

   b) Highly efficient  

   c) Promotes creativity 

   d) Lowers project cost 

   e) Provides regular feedbacks 

   f) Transparent 

2) What are the Disadvantages of Scrum? 

   a) Requires experienced individuals 

   b) Scope creep 

   c) Ineffective with large teams 

   d) Changes the standardised working environment 

   e) Requires rigorous testing 

3) Conclusion

What is Scrum? 

Scrum is an Agile Project Management framework that organises work into repeated cycles called Sprints. The Scrum Team oversees the work delivery while the product owner acts as an intermediary between the stakeholders and reflects their demands by prioritising the work.

Scrum has been largely used in the software sector, as it helps a team to focus on a smaller task and then connect it with the main objective of the project. On the plus side, it is also suitable for projects in many different industries, especially those that need fast delivery while keeping track of constantly changing demands of the team and quick adaptation.
 

What Is Scrum Framework?

The Scrum framework helps understand the processing of the project. It consists of the following processes:

1) A Product Owner generates a list of all tasks required for the achievement of the project and then prioritises them into a product backlog.

2) The Scrum Team inspects this product backlog and divides the big tasks into small pieces of work that are easier to understand and quicker to execute.

3) After the process of reviewing the tasks, the team generates the Sprint backlog and agrees on how to implement the tasks. When generating the Sprint backlog, the team also establishes the length of each Sprint with the typical duration being two to four weeks.

4) The squad holds Daily Scrum Meetings for the course of a Sprint called Standups. In these meetings, team members report back on progress and potential difficulties. The project manager then evaluates the project by taking into account the information he receives.

5) The Product Owner and the organisation’s stakeholders hold a review meeting at the end of each Sprint and the team conducts a Sprint Retrospective to examine and improve their working process.

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What are the Advantages of Scrum?
 

Whether it is Software Development, Information Technology, Finance Services or Medical Sector, Scrum easily gets the work done by continuously experimenting and providing feedback to improve product quality. While this is one quality, there are many other advantages to this method as well. Let us have a look at some of them: 

Adaptable approach 

The Scrum approach to handling projects is adaptable to dynamic work environments. If your organisation does not have pre-defined goals or identifiable requirements at the beginning of the project, then Scrum can do wonders for you. This approach operates in Sprints, where changes required in one Sprint can be implemented during other. Therefore, it helps to modify any project without impacting the results. 

Highly efficient 

Scrum Team size is usually small. It means each member takes full credibility to own up to their work. It, as a result, improves the quality of work. Moreover, as the work gets divided among teams, it ensures timely predictions of product bottlenecks and provides quick solutions. 

Promotes creativity 

The projects are under continuous analysis during the product development process. It allows the team to scrutinise the areas of improvement and clarify the work process. Thus, it involves brain-storming on the part of team members to bring out creative ideas and carry on the process. 

Lowers project cost 

One of the advantages of adopting this approach is that it is budget-friendly. The Scrum approach does not require any documentation and control. Thus, the organisation's overhead expenses are saved from being exploited. 

Provides regular feedback 

The Scrum meetings held daily, help in providing continuous feedback on the product. Also, each member is given a daily update report of their work, and it eliminates any confusion on the part of team members. Further, this daily feedback helps the project to function smoothly in the long run.

Transparent 

As discussed above, this methodology involves providing regular feedback and ensures each team member's participation. This further means that even little modifications made at any level in the project are visible to all the team members. Thus, building trust and ensuring the delivery of finer products. As a result, you can say that the Scrum methodology is transparent. 

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What are the Disadvantages of Scrum?
 

While 1.2 million candidates hold PMP Certification worldwide, only over 80k people opted for Scrum as of February 2023, according to PMI and Scrum organisation, respectively. So, you see, although the Scrum methodology has many advantages, people still prefer other Project Management approaches. Therefore, it is better to be familiar with Scrum's Disadvantages to know whether this approach is for you.  

Some of the Disadvantages of Scrum are as follows: 

Requires experienced individuals 

To develop projects using Scrum, organisations require highly skilled and experienced employees. So, if your employees do not have any prior experience working with this methodology, it might be difficult to operate projects. Further, training the employees will also be costly. 

Scope creep 

There is no pre-determined end date for the project. So, it takes a lot of patience, cooperation and commitment from the team members to work continuously on the project. So, if any member quits during the process or the team lacks cooperation, the chances of failure of the project increase. 

Ineffective with large teams 

If you want to work with large and complex projects using the Scrum workflow, you might get into trouble. The Scrum framework is not built to handle such projects as it will require a larger team. It further implies a lack of communication among the large team within the Scrum workflow. Additionally, these projects can become hard to understand and implement.

Changes the standardised working environment 

It is difficult to work with a set organisational hierarchy using Scrum. Every organisation works on a hierarchy, but to work with Scrum, Business Owner and the Scrum Master need to collaborate. It means they have to break the barrier during various project stages, which can be difficult sometimes.   

Requires rigorous testing 

The quality of the project cannot be ensured unless the team members have gone through rigorous testing. Testing here implies daily team meetings involving updates on project development and individual employee reports. This further means the employees must be on their A-game throughout the project.  

Conclusion 

This approach can help your organisation in many ways by providing transparency and efficiency to your projects. But simultaneously, it can be scope creep and test your patience. Now that you have gone through several Scrum Advantages and Disadvantages in detail, it is time to choose wisely. 

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