Advantages and Disadvantages- Scrum Vs Waterfall

When you take any kind of project in hand, the question is which methodology you will use for your project? Will you opt for Scrum Vs Waterfall Scrum/ Agile or go for Waterfall? This is decided by the project type itself.

Both Scrum as well as Waterfall has benefits as well as drawbacks.  Hence, both are equally in demand.  Here, in this blog; we will take a look at the advantages and disadvantages of Scrum Vs Waterfall.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Scrum Vs Waterfall:

Waterfall:

Advantages:

In this project methodology, work is done step by step where every part of work is done in small steps. Once one phase is finished, the project then moves to the next phase. Numbers of phases vary according to the methodology chosen.

Like as, when you choose Waterfall methodology, the project phases may increase or decrease as compared to Scrum methodology and vice versa.

Advantages of Waterfall: 

• Easy implementation of forward and backward planning.
• Visible output at every stage – This can lead to better visibility. It includes a baseline to move forward on.
• Choose a target delivery and end date based on the scope of the project.

Disadvantages of Waterfall:

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•   If the project scope changes, it can impact the quality of the project.
•  If the tasks are not done properly and if the mistakes are found at the last stage, complete project can be impacted.
• If the project is dependent on internal or external resources, it can lead to delays as the “plan” is already written. 

Well, this was about Waterfall. What is about Agile/ Scrum?

Agile/ Scrum Methodology

It is a type of process where everything required to complete a project is done parallel. There are different Agile frame works, each of them has the similar empirical structure where the tasks are divided into small subparts.

Requirements and solutions keep on changing based on project priority.

Agile Advantages: 

      a)      Change- Requirements keep on changing. Agile can quickly cater the changes for shorter planning cycles.

     b)      Active Involvement:  This project methodology always boosts the active involvement as well as interaction from the stakeholders that is useful to build product depending upon the accuracy and privacy.

     c)       Team interaction:  In Agile methodology, there’s constant team involvement and structured communication channels which help in the progress discovery, their impediments and collaboration.

     d)      Constant improvement:  At one phase, lessons learnt are useful to improve further steps.

Disadvantages: 

• Planning becomes difficult at times because requirements keep on changing. Hence, long term planning never serves the purpose.
• There’s a continuous need for time and efforts. This is important to planning the cycle as well as success.
• Agile has unique and alternative approach. Hence, for projects with a different approach, training is required. 
• The teams must be experienced and skilled enough to deal even with the toughest projects.

Based on these advantages and disadvantages of both the methodologies you can choose the best suitable approach depending on the delivery type, structure of the organization and resource accessibility.

In a nutshell:

Both the approaches can be blended together, i.e. Agifall and Wagile. These blended in Scrum Vs Waterfall approaches are becoming popular today and are becoming much more common in today’s global organizations.