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Scrum vs Plan-driven Project Management — Four Dimensions

publish date: 2026/06/04 22:55:39.047419 UTC

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The table below compares Scrum and conventional plan-driven approaches across four project management dimensions.

Dimension
Plan-driven
Scrum
Planning allocation of people
Assigned per stage
Team self-organises per sprint
Estimating project cost
Fixed contract / schedule
Time-based, evolves per backlog
Maintaining team cohesion
Roles formally assigned
Daily stand-ups, backlog visibility
Managing team membership changes
Re-plan, reassign tasks
Harder — relies on implicit knowledge


For each of the four dimensions, which statement correctly describes how Scrum differs from a conventional plan-driven approach?

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Dimension

Planning the allocation of people to projects
Estimating the cost of projects
Maintaining team cohesion
Managing changes in project team membership

How Scrum differs

The team self-organises each sprint — the Scrum master facilitates but does not assign tasks top-down; the whole team decides how to do the work
Scrum uses time-based contracts where cost is estimated iteratively based on the evolving product backlog and sprint velocity, rather than fixed upfront from a complete specification
Daily stand-up meetings give the whole team visibility of progress, problems, and plans — everyone knows what is going on, enabling short-term replanning without top-down direction
Scrum is more vulnerable to team membership changes because it relies on implicit shared knowledge built up over sprints — new members take time to build the same understanding

Correct Answer

(1) Planning the allocation of people to projects,The team self-organises each sprint — the Scrum master facilitates but does not assign tasks top-down; the whole team decides how to do the work
(2) Estimating the cost of projects,Scrum uses time-based contracts where cost is estimated iteratively based on the evolving product backlog and sprint velocity, rather than fixed upfront from a complete specification
(3) Maintaining team cohesion,Daily stand-up meetings give the whole team visibility of progress, problems, and plans — everyone knows what is going on, enabling short-term replanning without top-down direction
(4) Managing changes in project team membership,Scrum is more vulnerable to team membership changes because it relies on implicit shared knowledge built up over sprints — new members take time to build the same understanding

Explanation

People allocation: Scrum teams self-organise — no top-down task assignment. Cost estimation: Scrum uses time-based contracts with iterative cost estimation from sprint velocity, not fixed upfront contracts. Team cohesion: daily stand-ups keep the whole team informed, enabling collaborative replanning. Team membership changes: Scrum is more vulnerable than plan-driven because it relies on implicit shared knowledge — new members must rebuild understanding incrementally.

Reference

Software Engineering, Ian Sommerville, 9th edition

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