PM FPX 4080 Assessment 2

Introduction

Over the last two decades, project management methodologies have seen significant transformation. The waterfall method used to be the standard in how organizations handled their projects irrespective of their size and complexity. However, in 2001, 17 developers launched the Manifesto for Agile Software Development, which is commonly known as the Agile Manifesto (Pratt & Torode, 2020). These programmers wanted to produce a better alternative to the then-dominant software development methodology, something that they found to be too complicated, too inflexible, and too document-oriented. Agile is based on incremental software development in order to have more visibility of finished work per sprint.

In the CapraTek project, the Agile process is new to the team. Yet, it can bring tremendous advantages to the team, the company, and the end product, Alfred.

How Scrum and XP (Extreme Programming) Represent the Agile Manifesto

The Agile Manifesto is constructed upon four main values and 12 principles to guide the team in building a customer-satisfaction-centric culture. Agile favors flexibility and ensures it becomes easy for teams to accommodate the changing market conditions and user requirements as well. Agile focuses on people and outcomes and delivers more results than on structures and processes (McFadyen, 2021).

Scrum and XP are methods that are in accordance with Agile values. Both seek to produce a product for a purpose by actual people for actual needs. For example, Scrum has a daily scrum and sprint retrospectives. The daily scrum is a brief, 15-minute meeting every day at the same time so that the development team can plan and review progress. This exercise is in accordance with the Agile value of “individuals and interactions over processes and tools” (McFadyen, 2021).

Scrum retrospectives provide the team with a chance to look back at work that has been done and learn to do better for the next sprint. This regular reflection is one of the key values of the Agile Manifesto.

XP, or Extreme Programming, was designed by Kent Beck, one of the co-authors of the Agile Manifesto. Similar to Scrum, XP focuses on teamwork, continuous developer learning, and a positive work environment. In XP, developers code in pairs, with one person writing the code and the other observing. The roles alternate often, with ongoing feedback, which increases the quality of the product and the developers themselves (Digite, 2022).

Comparing Agile Methodologies

Agile practices such as Scrum, XP, and Kanban all follow the same values and principles derived from the Agile Manifesto. They emphasize people over processes, product over documentation, collaboration instead of contract negotiation, and responding to change over following a plan.

The CapraTek project, Alfred, is an ongoing iOS app project. Since the project features have not been clearly stated, Agile is an appropriate methodology since it does not demand proper documentation or thorough comprehension of requirements prior to starting work.

There are four primary differences between Scrum and XP (Cohn, 2007):

• Scrum teams develop in two-week-to-a-month sprints, whereas XP iterations run one to two weeks.
• Scrum does not favor changes after a sprint has been established, but XP does permit changes if nothing has been done on a feature.
• There is a strict customer-defined priority in XP, whereas Scrum allows the team to decide the sequence of work from a prioritized backlog.
• XP focuses on engineering practices, something that Scrum does not.

Lastly, it was decided to implement Scrum as the most appropriate and adaptable methodology for the CapraTek project. 

Essential Principles and Practices of Different Agile Methodologies

There are a number of core principles that are common to Agile approaches. To be considered genuinely Agile, a process should emphasize customer delight, be change-friendly, provide frequent previews, encourage collaboration, permit a self-directed and trusted team, enable face-to-face communication, value working items as a measure of progress, employ good design and technical excellence as the highest priority, and look frequently at finished work in order to learn and get better (Simplilearn, 2022).

Scrum enables a company to transform from a conventional waterfall model by adding to current practices. Scrum teams are self-managing, and there is an important role for the customer in prioritizing work. Small- to medium-sized teams, being typically co-located, emphasize collaboration (CapraTek, n.d.).

XP is more technical and involves customer participation in feature selection. There is minimal documentation, and it is hard to implement the process. Similar to Scrum, XP focuses on collaboration, but there is development that is performed in pairs (CapraTek, n.d.).

How Personnel Are Used in Different Agile Methodologies

Agile teams are typically co-located and working on single projects. Scrum teams are typically composed of five to eleven individuals with common project delivery responsibilities. Key roles are the Scrum Master, who is responsible for making sure that the team applies Scrum practices; the Product Owner, whose objective is to maximize product value; and the development team, whose task is to deliver the product (Duggal, 2022).

Roles in XP are typically customer, developers, trackers, and a coach. The customer is the project leader; he/she makes decisions on features, budget, and priorities. The developers implement the customer’s vision, and the trackers track efficiency measurements. The coach coaches the team in following XP practices (Chappell, 2020).

Conclusion

Briefly, this paper defined the key principles of Agile methodologies, specifically Scrum vs. XP, with special emphasis. The CapraTek project eventually chose to implement Scrum because it was the most flexible and most suitable. Although Agile methodologies are preferred due to their flexibility and iterative nature, both Agile and waterfall methodologies have their own strengths and weaknesses and even complement each other in certain implementations of the projects.

PM FPX 4080 Assessment 2: Comparing Agile Methodologies 

McFadyen, J. (2021). Scrum and the Agile Manifesto. Agile Centre. Retrieved from https://www.agilecentre.com

Pratt, M. K., & Torode, C. (2020, April). Agile Manifesto. TechTarget. Retrieved from https://www.techtarget.com

Simplilearn. (2022, August 9). What is agile: Understanding agile methodologies and principles. Retrieved from https://www.simplilearn.com/tutorials/agile-scrum-tutorial/what-is-agile

What is agile methodology? (2022). Digite. Retrieved from https://www.digite.com