Back in March, I had posted to twitter “#openagile and/or #scrumalliance certification. thoughts?”.

I was looking to take a course and I was wondering about the differences/similarities of these two organizations approaches.  I am glad I signed up for a course led by Mishkin Berteig of Berteig Consulting “Agile PM + Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) + OpenAgile + Kanban” that presented both Scrum and Open Agile together.

So, what are the differences?  One key difference between the organizations is that OpenAgile is ‘open’ (as in open source) whereas Scrum from the Scrum Alliance is not.  Is this important?  I don’t know but if the history of ‘open’ projects is any predictor then it could be … particularly as the community grows and a bunch of smart people start to figure out ways to improve the framework.

What about the differences between the frameworks?  The Scrum Alliance says “Scrum originally was formalized for software development projects, but works well for any complex, innovative scope of work.”  However in the two or so years I have been observing and working with Scrum teams I have always struggled with how it could apply to other non-software projects.  As an ‘education-guy’ the language of Scrum projects a world-view that I expect engineers like but others might not fully appreciate — if you think ‘labels’ don’t matter then take a look at this …

OpenAgile (OA) came from Scrum but wanted to transcend the software developer mindscape and re-orient towards a more general audience.  Part of this include a language change so:

• A “sprint” becomes a “cycle”
• A “story” becomes a “value driver”
• The “product backlog” is a list of value drivers
• Instead of the “daily scrum” and “stand-up” there are “work periods” and “progress meetings”…

In addition to changing labels there are other key differences including:

The length of a cycle in OA is determined by the team and depends much more on an organization’s flow.  So if your year tends to operate in thirds with regular ‘busy’ periods and deadlines (e.g. like a university with final exams and start of classes) then your cycles can be sized to work within those circumstances.  It may be a month and half cycle — or not.  Scrum has some flexibility here, too but it is generally held that 4-weeks is the longest with 1-week being the shortest sprint length.

In OA there are team members. That’s it.  There is no Product Owner or Scrum Master.  Instead there are ‘paths of service’.  Two of the five that any (or every) team member can take on are “Growth Facilitator” and “Process facilitator” where, (respectively):

• growth is encouraged at the project, individual, and team level; and
• the process of using OA is facilitated.

This also aims to break down the “us vs. them”; “team vs. management”; or “pigs and chickens” perspectives.  

OA also has a place for other kinds of work — new, repetitive, calendar, obstacles and quality.  For example, in the repetitive category one might include checking the support tickets, responding to them, and updating the customer knowledge base system.  

Personally, I know that this particular example is valuable work on my project.  It has business value (happy customers!) and value to the team in that many of the issues that customers have are indicators of a design issue that may lead to a set of new stories.  In Scrum this is lost time — there is no way for me to account for this.  In OA it is recognized and if it is not valuable then it will be discussed during the engagement meetings.

Anyway — I can see the value of taking the concepts and practices of scrum outside the domain of software development and ‘softening’ it for other domains.  I would be more comfortable introducing the OA process to colleagues non-tech fields, too.  I still have lots more to learn and, honestly, for me I tend to use whatever works. 

The OpenAgile site has good materials including the “OpenAgile Primer” and becoming a member is simple.  I look forward to seeing how the OA community grows and changes.