The market of software development is extremely vast and complicated. There are various processes and methodologies, called as software development models, which are used by companies for the development and release of the software. The choice of the methodology often depends on multiple factors such as business needs, team expertise, type of application, business goals, development timeframe etc.

Each methodology presents a different approach to planning, design, development, testing, and overall project execution. In this article, let us examine two such methodologies – SDLC and SCRUM.

Software Development Life Cycle

The Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) model include the following stages

Scrum vs Agile Testing

There is more than one model in SDLC. Few traditional models of SDLC are Waterfall, V-Model, Spiral etc. Waterfall is the most famous and widely referred traditional SDLC models.

AGILE

Today’s fast-paced business environment forces companies to quickly respond to the changing market conditions. To be able to stay competitive, products need to quickly adapt to the changes and demands in the market and roll out new features and additions at a fast pace. Software product companies are, therefore, increasingly turning to Agile development practices.

Agile is a methodology which has multiple frameworks like SCRUM, Kanban, Scrumban etc. SCRUM is the most powerful and structured methodologies of Agile. It is so said that “SCRUM is like a mother-in-law. Expects you to follow every principal that it has defined and is excellent in pointing out the flaws”.

Though both traditional SDLC and Agile have their own pros and cons, let us have a look at the major differences between Scrum and the traditional SDLC (Waterfall Model).

No.	Description	Traditional SDLC	SCRUM
1	Core Players	Business Analyst Delivery Manager Project Manager Developer Tester Designer/UI Expert	Product Owner Scrum Master Cross Functional Scrum Team
2	Core Processes	Analysis, Design, Development, Deployment needs to be done for every phase of the project.	Every phase of the project has multiple iterations. Analysis, Design, Development. Deployment needs to be done in every iteration.
3	Release Timelines	Based on the overall project duration	Every 2 to 4 weeks
4	Idle Team Size	Focuses more on hand off. The team size can vary from 2 to 100’s members.	Prefers having smaller teams, between 2 to 8 team members with high coordination and collaboration.
5	Customer Availability	Customer involvement is more of milestone-based.	A more collaborative approach where customer involvement is high.
6	Change Management	Leans toward contract terms. The cost for a change could be higher if the change has a bigger impact on the design.	Is adaptive to changes. The cost for a change is lower as the scope is defined for smaller release timelines.
7	Prioritization	Emphasizes on building everything that has been given in the requirement. Increases the risk of having features built which do not add major value to the application.	Focuses on implementation of the most valuable features first. Reduces the risk of having unusable/deprecated features built in the application.
8	Project Size	Best for long duration projects which require a lot of documentation and multiple stakeholder involvements.	Flexible for projects as small as 2-3 weeks to projects that run for years together.
9	Funding/ROI	Works well with fixed price projects where the scope and agreement deviations are limited. ROI is achieved after successful deployment of the project.	Works well with T&M and non-fixed funding projects. With the right team, ROI can be seen in a shorter span of time.
10	Overall Thoughts	Even today, there are several large businesses which use waterfall methodologies in the software industry. I feel this best suits best for sectors like construction i.e. Building a bridge. Having said that, even the construction sectors are now moving to Lean, Kanban (Agile) based approach to eliminate wastes from their process.	Scrum suits more for the fast-paced development environment or continuous production industry.

Everything said and done, knowledge is only good if it is implemented. Be it Agile or Waterfall, it can be only successful with the right set of experts who are instrumental in forming the right team in any project.