What is the Difference Between Scrum and Agile?

Agile is a category of software development methodologies that are based on iterative and incremental approaches. The focus is to deliver smaller pieces of software functionality in short time periods (or iterations) rather than taking longer periods of time to deliver larger chunks of functionality.

Scrum is an Agile framework created by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland. Scrum focuses on development by cross-functional teams that work in time-boxed units referred to as sprints. Teams are small and highly adaptive. Multiple scrum teams can work together to deliver functionality for a product. The term “Scrum” in relationship to development processes originated from a paper called The New Product Development Game by Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka. In this paper, the authors used the game of rugby to illustrate the importance of working as a team during product development. Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland based their Agile framework on the pricipals outline in that paper.

Scrum is one of the most popular Agile frameworks in practice today. According to the 13th Annual State of Agile Report, 54% of respondents use Scrum methodologies and another 10% use Scrum/XP Hybrid approaches.