Agile Methodology vs Framework vs. Toolkit — Does it Really Matter Eddie?

What is in a name? A lot apparently. If you want to stir people up, just call one of the popular agile approaches by the wrong label. Particularly offensive would be calling an approach a methodology. Let’s take a closer look.

We are Not an Agile Methodology!

Over the years Scrum proponents have been adamant that Scrum is a framework, not a methodology. And they keep an eye on those sorts of things.

I even had an employee at Scrum.org contact me when I used “Scrum Methodology” as a tag for a blog post, even though I didn’t use the term Scrum Methodology in the post itself. Here is what the employee said in a comment:

Nice summary. Just for clarity sake, Scrum is a Framework, not a methodology. Methodologies provide you with little room for inspection and adaption, they provide you with a set of items you must follow and how to achieve the tasks from end-to-end. Scrum is an empirical process which asks you to change based on the makeup and capabilities of the team, add new practices, etc. based on a very small set of items you must follow.