Scrum with Some XP Practices In the Lead

Recently Brian Marick posted on Scrum + XP practices being the default Agile methodology:

The gorilla of Agile is Scrum + a selection of XP practices

This gels with my experience as well. Most of the Agile practitioners I know are using Scrum with at least some XP practices, and a few are using straight XP. Beyond that I don’t have a lot of exposure to other Agile methodologies.

I do realize that my experience may be badly skewed. I assume the appeal of Scrum is that it’s a pretty lightweight project management methodology which almost assumes you’ll be doing some XP practices. XP is harder to fully adapt since it prescribes things like pair programming that are typically a harder sell.

I have seen some counter evidence from Scott Ambler’s Agile survey:

  • Agile MSF 191
  • Agile Unified Process (AUP) 216
  • Crystal Clear 91
  • Dynamic System Development Method (DSDM) 26
  • Extreme Programming (XP) 954
  • Feature Driven Development (FDD) 502
  • Scrum 460
  • Other 171

Scrum doesn’t do too badly, but it’s only 18% of the total. XP makes up 37% and FDD is 19%. Maybe Scrum isn’t the default just yet. And things have a long ways to evolve still so we’ll see is Scrum + some XP practices really becomes the most common Agile process over the next few years.