Agile versus Agile

Who benefits the most from being Agile? Who are you trying to make Agile by implementing Scrum? Is it the development team that needs to be Agile? Or is the Product Owner that needs Agile?

Depending on whom you ask, agile means different things. For a software developer Agile often means light on procedure, process, meetings and documentation, so there’s more time to actually develop software. For a Product Owner Agile means being able to quickly change the priority and details of requirements and still be able to forecast the success of a product development project.

Because Agile means different things to different people you get discussions like this on linkedin: Do you agree or disagree that Scrum is not Agile?.

In my opinion the main Agility that Scrum delivers is product management agility. The ability for a Product Manager to empirically get to the best possible product. This means get quick feedback on vision and features by being able to test working software. Being able to quickly assess ROI by having real feedback on feature size and productivity. Being able to re-prioritize features and reschedule release dates based on changing markets.

Scrum delivers business Agility to Product Managers.

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