A scrum is an Agile process

A scrum is an Agile process for project management, in use since at least 1990. It has been called a "hyper-productivity tool", and has been documented to drastically improve productivity in teams previously paralysed by heavier methodologies - quickly producing results where there had been little or none.


Scrum is characterised by:

A living Backlog of prioritised work to be done;
Completion of Backlog items in a series of short iterations or Sprints;
A brief daily meeting or Scrum, at which impediments are raised.
 
Scrum is an agile approach to software development. Rather than a full process or methodology, it is a framework. So instead of providing complete, detailed descriptions of how everything is to be done on the project, much is left up to the software development team. This is done because the team will know best how to solve the problem they are presented. This is why, for example, a sprint planning meeting is described in terms of the desired outcome (a commitment to set of features to be developed in the next sprint) instead of a set of Entry criteria, Task definitions, Validation criteria, and Exit criteria (ETVX) as would be provided in most methodologies.
Scrum relies on self-organising, cross-funsctional team.
 
For many developers in the software industry, the agile methodology is nothing new. Most folks know that agile was a direct response to the dominant project management paradigm, waterfall, and borrows many principles from lean manufacturing. In 2001, as this new management paradigm began to pick up momentum, agile was formalized when 17 pioneers of the agile methodology met at the Snowbird Ski Resort in Utah and issued the Agile Manifesto.
 
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