Agile programming has continued to gain popularity in this world of uncertainty and environmental instability. The average software development life cycle is less than two years. To compete with the growing economy and to meet customer needs and expectations, projects have to be executed in a timely manner.  The demand for customized products in the information system industries has grown drastically. A company must response to change fast enough to maintain competitive advantage over its counterpart. This means meeting the need of its customers and exceeding those needs through new product development. Traditional project development is slow to response to change. Hence Agile method to system developments reduces the time to produce and market a product. This paper will focus on scrum agile methodology, a non-traditional methods of project management and execution.

Scrum Method to System Development.


Traditional project managers execute projects using traditional method. This method is well planned, which requires systematic way of doing things. It involves using the following stages; project definition, planning, execution, and the closing stage. Each step has preconceived measures necessary to produce a tangible result. So why do over 60 percent software projects fail? Are the traditional methodologies inadequate to yield the best result? What about the time to market technology? Is the traditional method the best method to execute technological project. These questions will be answered in the succeeding paragraphs.

Before further discussion, it is important to define Agile project management. Agile project management is the management of project in response to change in requirements to meet customers’ needs. Agile project management determines the speed of operations within an organization and speed in responding to customers, by reducing cycle times. According to Kennedy and Ward, the degree of agility when developing an Information Technology system determines the organization’s ability to response to change (2002). Kennedy and Ward further said that agile method to system development support early and continuous improvement of the user, multiple and rapidly executed increments, early and successive prototyping to support an evolutionary approach.

Agile software development is a term used to describe development methodologies that adhere to a set of values and principles defined by the Agile manifesto. The manifesto was designed to find an alternative to the current documentation driven, heavyweight software development process. The manifesto also defines the following principles, which are used to separate agile method from traditional method.